It's too early to declare the Obama Presidency a disaster, and there is still some justice to the complaint that Obama inherited his problems, but more and more we're seeing why it's a bad idea to elect Senators -- particularly young Senators with zero administrative experience -- president. The White House has completely failed at its most basic responsibility of staffing the new administration. George Bush had two months less than Obama and yet, on Inauguration Day, had a working administration. The other failures of the administration run from the catastrophic -- a commitment to raising taxes in the teeth of a recession -- to the merely incompetent -- the Treasury Secretary's inability to even pretend to know what he's doing -- to the burlesque -- the "reset" button (a stupid idea even if the State Department could speak Russian), giving Gordon Brown zone 1 DVDs, leaking the excuse that the reason Obama blew off Brown was his exhaustion at dealing with the economy.
All in all, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that were seeing Carter redux, bad policies implemented badly. Getting another "great" ex-president is small compensation for having to live through the 70s again, but if I were the Secret Service, I'd be on the look-out for wascally wabbits.
11 comments:
Potential assassins need to be told just three words: "President Joe Biden".
Never would have pegged you for a domestic terrorist wannabe ,but hey, I guess on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog.
Carter wasn't a senator.
I'm not impressed by Obama so far, but when I look back to the people that Bush so efficiently put into place, I'm not inclined to say the present situation is worse.
'Heckuva job, Brownie.'
Yeah, one of the largest and most successful Coast Guard rescues ever -- wouldn't want that happening again.
As far as I can tell, the rap on Bush and Brown for the Katrina resuce is primarily a myth created by Old Media, just like the horrors and cannibalism in the Superdome during the event.
I would guess that's about where the bar will settle for him: not clearly worse than the Worst. President. Ever. But the day is young, so keep those shovels handy.
Harry:
I've reread the post and I don't think that it implies that Carter was a Senator. Not all bad Presidents were Senators and not all Senators were bad Presidents, but Legislative and Executive are different functions and different skills and success at one doesn't imply future success with the other -- not that Obama was a successful Senator.
And Brownie was doing a heck of a job.
... and now that unions are back on the front burner, remember all those school buses that weren't used to rescue people? Well, only union drivers could drive them, so rather than upset the unions, the mayor let the potential victims fend for themselves knowing the media would blame Bush et al.
Be nice if Jindal led an investigation of the whole Katrina fantasy.
Ah, yes, nobody ever dissed Old Europe in the last administration.
Said about the people working against us, not the people working with us.
Two major differences:
1) It was on purpose.
2) It was basic on specific policy issues.
It wasn't a very selective diss, was it?
I also won't agree that Bush didn't suck up to my enemies, and his, though he still never figured out who those were. He was breaking bread with Muslim clerics before the steel at the World Trade Center cooled off.
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