...Mr. Obama’s problem wasn’t lack of focus; it was lack of audacity. At the start of his administration he settled for an economic plan that was far too weak. He compounded this original sin both by pretending that everything was on track and by adopting the rhetoric of his enemies.
The aftermath of major financial crises is almost always terrible: severe crises are typically followed by multiple years of very high unemployment. And when Mr. Obama took office, America had just suffered its worst financial crisis since the 1930s. What the nation needed, given this grim prospect, was a really ambitious recovery plan.
Could Mr. Obama actually have offered such a plan? He might not have been able to get a big plan through Congress, or at least not without using extraordinary political tactics. Still, he could have chosen to be bold — to make Plan A the passage of a truly adequate economic plan, with Plan B being to place blame for the economy’s troubles on Republicans if they succeeded in blocking such a plan.
But he chose a seemingly safer course: a medium-size stimulus package that was clearly not up to the task. And that’s not 20/20 hindsight. In early 2009, many economists, yours truly included, were more or less frantically warning that the administration’s proposals were nowhere near bold enough.
Worse, there was no Plan B. By late 2009, it was already obvious that the worriers had been right, that the program was much too small. Mr. Obama could have gone to the nation and said, “My predecessor left the economy in even worse shape than we realized, and we need further action.” But he didn’t. Instead, he and his officials continued to claim that their original plan was just right, damaging their credibility even further as the economy continued to fall short.
Meanwhile, the administration’s bank-friendly policies and rhetoric — dictated by fear of hurting financial confidence — ended up fueling populist anger, to the benefit of even more bank-friendly Republicans. Mr. Obama added to his problems by effectively conceding the argument over the role of government in a depressed economy.
I felt a sense of despair during Mr. Obama’s first State of the Union address, in which he declared that “families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.” Not only was this bad economics — right now the government must spend, because the private sector can’t or won’t — it was almost a verbatim repeat of what John Boehner, the soon-to-be House speaker, said when attacking the original stimulus. If the president won’t speak up for his own economic philosophy, who will?
So where, in this story, does “focus” come in? Lack of nerve? Yes. Lack of courage in one’s own convictions? Definitely. Lack of focus? No...
The problem was and is not a lack of courage in one's own convictions among the Democrats, the problem is a lack of real convictions.
Democrats weren't cowards, they were and are owned by a lot of the same people that own the Republicans.
Goldman-Sachs, beotches. So does $electing an ex-faculty member of the University of Chicago mean anything to you? This administration was designed to fail. Heckuva job, Larry.
And this sanity meme, really, now who owns Jon Stewart these days? One hears he's getting love letters from Timmeh Geithner. Or something.
So the One just goes belly-up and compromises more, for the next couple years. We will all be told by our DINOcrat betters how unSerious and how childish we are for bitching every time the One capitulates, because after all Resistance is Futile, right?
After all, if we let the Serious have their way, everything goes so Right. Take Iraq, where combat operations have ended, with an untold number of mercenaries still fighting in non-combat roles, our soldiers guarding the bases guarding the oil-fields, and billions going to bribe the Sunni not to fight us. Or Afghanistan, where we bankroll the warlords producing the opium that makes the heroin addicting more and more kids on the street.
But it's all our fault, us moonbats, because we refused to praise the wire that garrottes us.
No, the Democratic leadership believes in the real Progressive values it's constantly going on about in the same way the Republican leadership believes in the real Christian values it's constantly going on about.
That is, not at all.
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