Twenty-four days into his presidency, Barack Obama recorded last night a legislative achievement of the sort that few of his predecessors achieved at any point in their tenure.Missteps in other areas?
In size and scope, there is almost nothing in history to rival the economic stimulus legislation that Obama shepherded through Congress in just over three weeks. And the result - produced largely without Republican participation - was remarkably similar to the terms Obama's team outlined even before he was inaugurated: a package of tax cuts and spending totaling about $775 billion.
As Obama urged passage of the plan, he and his still-incomplete team demonstrated a single-mindedness that was familiar from the campaign trail. That intensity may have contributed to missteps in other areas, as the president's White House stumbled repeatedly in the vetting of his Cabinet and staff nominees. And high-minded promises of bipartisanship evaporated as Republicans accused the president and his Democratic allies in Congress of the same heavy-handed tactics that Obama, in his campaign, had often demanded be changed.
I think they mean the total repudiation of the campaign's promises for hope, change, and a new era of responsibility. And the authors are blaming the GOP for abandoning bipartisanship? Republican members of Congress weren't even including in bill-writing and markup, "completely excluded from the process and it was done without Republican input or public oversight."
And people wonder why we've had growing cynicism and declining engagement in the political process for decades? Analysts say the traditional news media is a dinosaur on the way out, and it pains me to say this as a traditionalist supporter of the broadsheet press, but it's frankly impossible to find honest news and analysis nowadays in the mainstream media outlets. It's no longer maddening, it's frightening - and the burial for stories like this one at the Post can't come too soon.
3 comments:
Donald, I hope I live long enough to see news coverage completely taken out of the hands of the MSM that we know today. I really think they are to far gone to be fixable and they do not deserve to continue on the path they are on. It is way to dangerous for the country.
Professor,
We are witnessing a transformation of Americans, once a proud and pioneering people eager to fight back in hard times and ride out the storm. Now, far too many stand meekly in the twilight of independence, waiting for a bailout. As bailouts become increasingly routine, the task for conservatives is to explain—and thereby to avert—the danger that current “temporary” measures might swell and eventually congeal into a long-term centralization of power, with all its destructive concomitants.
interest, for our post
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