Spring Break
President's change still a promise away
Obama's face is about the only thing new likely to be coming out of Washington anytime soon.
By: Jason Staggs
Issue date: 2/11/09 Section: Opinion
I am going to watch with an uncommon sense of pleasure over the next few months my friends and acquaintances who voted for Barack Obama. Look for an enormous grin to spread over my face as they realize what I've known for the last two years, really since he spilled onto the national scene in 2004: Barack Obama, our beloved, intrepid, fearless, cool, messiah of a president is - a politician. Nothing more, nothing less.
My friends, of course, thought they were voting for the biggest thing since sliced bread. That's how he was sold, how he was packaged. You could hear the winds of change blowing. If you couldn't hear them, it was because you were deaf; there is no search engine powerful enough to tell us how many times Obama tried to monopolize the word 'change' as if he had invented it.
With great profundity, he launched his campaign at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, repeatedly declaring, with appropriate solemnity, "there is the United States of America." On such a platform, he glided through turbulent waters into the Democratic nomination, sailed past the septuagenarian senior senator from Arizona, and landed smack dab in the middle of the Oval Office, beginning a new era of copasetic getting-alongness in our troubled land.
Now that he is president, what kind of change have we seen from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? Our last chief executive was chastised for setting a winner-take-all attitude in D.C.; how has Obama brought change to Capitol Hill? To quote the Great Mediator himself, "I won." That was his reaction to a GOP Senator's questioning of the contents of the stimulus bill that had just passed the House of Representatives. Republicans in the House weren't consulted when the bill was being written. That's why it garnered no Republican votes at all. And that is what our leader calls a win.
His supporters will say that he tried to bridge a gap by visiting the GOP senators' caucus to explain why they should vote for the package. The package had already been written, been rammed through House committees without the slightest nod to suggestions from members of the minority party, and then put to a floor vote which went strictly according to party lines. Why not just give in, for the country? That sounds awfully familiar to the stance President Bush took before Democrats re-took congressional majorities in 2006. What an evil, partisan fiend he was!
But wait. President Obama is doing the work of the country. He has brought change to the way Washington, D.C. does business, right? Or at least he is trying. Right? Well, that depends on your interpretation of the 'stimulus' plan he had the House pass last week. There are two ways to look at it.
1) As the federal government spending money it doesn't have to create jobs in failing industries whose products consumers have deliberately rejected, which has been standard operating procedure since 1933.
2) Or, as stimulating the private sector by drastically increasing borrowing and spending by the public sector, which has also been standard operating procedure since 1933.
It is widely acknowledged that the Great Depression was worse in 1937, after four years of government 'simulation,' than it was when Franklin Roosevelt assumed office. I wonder if the same great change is in store for us over the next four years.
My friends, of course, thought they were voting for the biggest thing since sliced bread. That's how he was sold, how he was packaged. You could hear the winds of change blowing. If you couldn't hear them, it was because you were deaf; there is no search engine powerful enough to tell us how many times Obama tried to monopolize the word 'change' as if he had invented it.
With great profundity, he launched his campaign at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, repeatedly declaring, with appropriate solemnity, "there is the United States of America." On such a platform, he glided through turbulent waters into the Democratic nomination, sailed past the septuagenarian senior senator from Arizona, and landed smack dab in the middle of the Oval Office, beginning a new era of copasetic getting-alongness in our troubled land.
Now that he is president, what kind of change have we seen from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? Our last chief executive was chastised for setting a winner-take-all attitude in D.C.; how has Obama brought change to Capitol Hill? To quote the Great Mediator himself, "I won." That was his reaction to a GOP Senator's questioning of the contents of the stimulus bill that had just passed the House of Representatives. Republicans in the House weren't consulted when the bill was being written. That's why it garnered no Republican votes at all. And that is what our leader calls a win.
His supporters will say that he tried to bridge a gap by visiting the GOP senators' caucus to explain why they should vote for the package. The package had already been written, been rammed through House committees without the slightest nod to suggestions from members of the minority party, and then put to a floor vote which went strictly according to party lines. Why not just give in, for the country? That sounds awfully familiar to the stance President Bush took before Democrats re-took congressional majorities in 2006. What an evil, partisan fiend he was!
But wait. President Obama is doing the work of the country. He has brought change to the way Washington, D.C. does business, right? Or at least he is trying. Right? Well, that depends on your interpretation of the 'stimulus' plan he had the House pass last week. There are two ways to look at it.
1) As the federal government spending money it doesn't have to create jobs in failing industries whose products consumers have deliberately rejected, which has been standard operating procedure since 1933.
2) Or, as stimulating the private sector by drastically increasing borrowing and spending by the public sector, which has also been standard operating procedure since 1933.
It is widely acknowledged that the Great Depression was worse in 1937, after four years of government 'simulation,' than it was when Franklin Roosevelt assumed office. I wonder if the same great change is in store for us over the next four years.
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