Cabinet Woes
Most would grant that Newsweek has been very favorable to Obama over the last year, so it is remarkable to find Michael Hirsh declaring that Obama has lost control and already has to mount a “comeback.” This is a measure of how badly things have gone for the administration in the last week. There is certainly something different about a President who can admit publicly and without much coaxing that he made mistakes, but it doesn’t inspire confidence that while just in its third week the administration has already managed to bungle the handling of multiple major Cabinet choices and finds itself criticized by friendly pundits for a lack of leadership. The comedy of the Commerce appointment continues after the embarrassment of Richardson’s withdrawal, which was only made necessary because of the need to placate interest groups who wanted to see Richardson in a significant Cabinet post and were disappointed that Clinton received the spot at State that they expected him to fill. The strange chain reaction can be traced back to the decision not to select Clinton as VP and the supposedly “clever” move to neutralize Clinton by bringing her into the Cabinet. That “clever” move, besides freezing out many Obama loyalists from top slots at the State Department and elevating to the top foreign policy post in the government a rival whose foreign policy judgement he regularly derided as poor, continues to have negative effects on the administration weeks later.
Richardson is a clown. I’m not a fan of Sec. of State Clinton, but she always seems competent and prepared. He has always struck me as a bit of a slob – messy in all of his affairs. She may not be great, but he always has struck me as one wrong move away from disaster. We’re better off without him, for sure.
It’s hard to strike the Messianic pose of a reformer and then reempower the posse from eight years ago.
Sort of like driving the money changers from the temple and then hiriing some of them to build a drive-through live pigeon concession.
‘It’s hard to strike the Messianic pose of a reformer and then reempower the posse from eight years ago.’
And Bush rehired all the criminals from Reagan and daddy Bush’s terms. Did you freak out about that?
He’s reforming the mess Bush made, why can’t he use people who were in charge when things were going well? Maybe if what they had started under Clinton wasn’t overturned we wouldn’t need to reform. Or not. Who cares? He’s been president for two weeks!
I would say rather that this is among the signs of The Village fighting back. Remember, they don’t want reform, not even some weak-tea reform. They want large gov’t bailouts, restricted as much as possible to the top 1% of the population, with no strings attached. Or rather, with conditions which have all of the actual strength of string.
Note the econo-dumb-f*ckery which has graced our editorial pages, where elite econ professors profess ignorance of standard economics for a world where FDR’s reforms didn’t do j*ck, and we are at full employment (save for lazy workers who decided en masse that they’d rather take a year or so off).
This is more a sign of the Village fighting back and trying to peg down the president. A lot of this whining is just idiotic. Of all the options possible for Secretary of State, Clinton was the least noxious. I am not going to worry about her cronies who I am pretty sure would be gone by 2010. But all this whining when in just a month the President had just passed 1) healthcare for children 2) put caps on executive pay for bailout companies 3) is likely to pass some version of fiscal stimulus is just a tad disgenious. You would think he had hostages trapped in Iran he is unable to bail out at the tone of condemnations and exhortations in the MSM.
He’s done some good things, including the torture order (even if it doesn’t do away with renditions in all cases).
The bailout is really an open question. If it’s infrastructure and real stimulus, that’s one thing, but if it’s a sop to all the namby-pamby “helping professions” I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.
‘(even if it doesn’t do away with renditions in all cases). ‘
Could we do that without a constitutional amendment? Isn’t it part of Geneva Conventions also?
Rendition isn’t a problem, extraordinary rendition is a problem. I’ve seen nothing to indicate extraordinary rendition will continue.
I wouldn’t put a lot of weight on how the press plays these things. They have become addicted to a campaign-style horse-race over the last two years, and it has made them a lot of money. So expect that every week is going to be played out like some kind of dramatic sturm and drang theatrical fight, he’s up, he’s down, can he recover, can the republicans fight back, blah blah blah. It’s all just to sell magazines, papers, hits, etc. The thing is, it works. For better or worse, people have been following politics more than ever these last couple of years, and the press isn’t about to let things return to “normal”. I just would expect someone like you to see through this transparent hype. The idea that Obama actually has to mount a “comeback” three weeks into his Presidency says absolutely nothing about his Presidency, but everything about the needs of the press to create dramatic storylines and personal arcs that simply don’t exist in reality.