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Taking Obama’s Measure
With ten percent of his term in office gone, Barack Obama is being graded from the left and right and, not surprisingly, found to be doing (1) not enough and (2) too much.
(1) Paul Krugman faults him for “Not Enough Audacity,” praising “Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues–and ability to explain those issues in plain English–is a joy to behold” but faulting “Barack the Post-Partisan, who searches for common ground where none exists, and whose negotiations with himself lead to policies that are far too weak.”
(2) Peggy Noonan sees “a persistent sense of extraneous effort, of ambitions too big and yet too small, too off point, too base-pleading, too ideological, too unaware of the imperatives. And there is the depressing psychological effect of seeing government grow so much, so big, so fast. This encourages a sense that things are out of control and cannot be made better.”
Somewhere between these polar views may be many who are less outspoken but trust Obama’s instincts and judgment…
4 Responses to “Taking Obama’s Measure”
Wait a minute….
“whose command of the issues–and ability to explain those issues in plain English–is a joy to behold”…
Are you saying that the vague communications to the nation on the issues from the last President were not mere sound byte encryptions meant to hide the real right wing agenda, but actually lack of understanding of the issues leading to an inability to explain them to the American public?
WHAT?! WITH ALL THE FRIIGGEN MEDIA WE HAVE AND NOBODY POINTED THIS OUT?
A move to New Zeland is looking better every day!
Krugman, as usual, is a pathetic Dem Party and farther-left hack. DQ.
Noonan is right but Obama's situation is complicated by the lib Dems in Congress, and this rushing to pass really bad legislation is complicated by them. Are they really over-reaching even Obama's record of overreach? Do they really misinterpret the 2006 and 2008 election results? (The public jammed comm lines to Congress insisting that they not pass the awful climate bill.) To return to Obama, is the wrongful rushing to pass bad legislation and do too much (wrongly, overreaching to gross excess by the federal government in each instance) too soon a cynical manuver to exploit current Democratic power in the federal district and to institutionalize “accomplished facts” that set the Republicans back for years, or is it instead due to naive and childish views of the world as well as ignorance of (or contempt for) the public and they truly believe in what they're rashly and wrongly doing?
What this country needs is an FDR and sadly what we got with Obama is Bill Clinton without the penis issues.
What this country needs is an FDR and sadly what we got with Obama is Bill Clinton without the penis issues.