If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Oscar Wilde
Forbes/Mariotti, "A Failed Presidency: The American Problem": Thumbs UP!
John Mariotti's column is original but is so completely consistent with my own posts, I'm sorely tempted to reprint it in total: he repeats the same bullet points familiar to my regular readers. In terms of Bush: his feckless management of the Iraq occupation until the appointment of Petraeus, the unfunded expansion of Medicare, the failure to veto spending bills, etc. In terms of Democrats, whose deficits were like Bush's on steroids: the failure of Senate Democrats to come up with a budget, Obama's which was UNANIMOUSLY rejected by the Senate, etc.
Great minds think alike. Here is a quote from my original Tuesday post:
No, he took the intellectually challenging alternative and innovative standpoint of criticizing legislative sausage making and making it clear his priorities: the next debt ceiling vote must not interrupt the only thing Obama really is good at: campaigning to be President. Being President is a totally different thing...John Mariotti makes a very similar point:
Appearing on TV more than any other sitting president, Barack Obama is constantly “explaining” why things aren’t working, when he should be working on what to do different and better. Instead he is “campaigning,” which is the only thing he knows how to do reasonable well.I need to reproduce the opening paragraph in full because it is brilliantly written, as spot on as anything I have read to date:
Few Americans needed Standard & Poor to confirm the mismanagement of the United States government and its finances. The downgrading of American credit will raise interest rates on America’s huge debt and ultimately on all Americans. Popular polls say that most Americans blame Congress—but that’s too simplistic. As much as Barack Obama would like to shift that blame onto Congress, the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of President. It is first and foremost a leadership problem that is crippling America—and the leader is President Barack Obama—not the many members of Congress. No matter how many speeches he makes, the conclusion is clear: Obama’s greatest failure is spending America into enormous deficits, and being clueless about how to get the economy to recover.And the concluding paragraph is equally brilliant:
Happy Birthday Mr. President. You have accomplished something no other president has done. You’ve spent America into a hole that will take a decade to fix, and kept more Americans out of work longer than anyone in recent history, and you’ve accomplished all this in record time, only 2-1/2 years. Who knows how much harm you can do given still more time.I want to comment particularly on Mariotti's point on the hits the Congress--in particularly, the GOP House--has been taking. Unfortunately, voters in the 2010 elections did not give control of the Senate to the Republicans. In part, that was due to self-inflicted wounds by failing to field competitive candidates like Pataki and Giuliani in the New York Senate races. Then there were the self-inflicted wounds of counterproductive Tea Party affiliate sniping of competitive Republican candidates in the Senate races in Colorado, Nevada and Delaware. But let's acknowledge that even if the GOP had won control of the Senate, the filibuster remains a potent anti-reform weapon against the serious kinds of budget cuts absolutely necessary. What can be done with Senate control? Well, certainly there's the budget reconciliation process, but President Obama can still veto the measure.
S&P can read the writing on the wall. The parties have no stomach for short-term austerity measures; the Democrats risk insurgent challengers if they rollback funding or make entitlement concessions. If the GOP goes after serious reform in the short term in the House, it has no chance of getting past the Senate or the White House but it will set up populist campaigns next year against the GOP. The American people have no real choice except to elect a new GOP President and new GOP Senate a reality. The Democrats have resided over one or both Houses of Congress since 2007 and the Presidency since 2009. The national debt was roughly $8.6T; it's gone up just over two-thirds in just over 4.5 years spurred on by spendthrift spending. The Democrats twice this year have negotiated budget related agreements that amounted to mere pocket change to austerity. It's hard to pin this on the GOP, because the Democrats control the Presidency and the Senate. The GOP House can't do much more given the legacy of the prior two elections that have allowed Democrats to stonewall against fiscal responsibility.
I understand a populist backlash against the Congress, but it's misplaced. Obama has failed to lead. There has been no attempt to save Medicare and social security; ObamaCare has instituted an investment tax (the last thing a pro-economic growth/job-friendly policy would do), and is utilizing sorely-needed Medicare resources needed to shore up an insolvent benefit. Obama failed to gain a single Senate lawmaker in support of his budget. He failed to support the bipartisan debt reduction committee findings. An objective person would come to the same conclusion: anything Obama has to say about fiscal responsibility is little more than "words, just words".
Glen Campbell Sings the Best Jimmy Webb Song
I first heard this song on a Glenn Campbell greatest hits compilation I bought in the mid-70's, and it became my favorite song on the album the very first time I heard it. I've heard countless other performers do the now classic song, but I want to sing like Glen Campbell when I grow up.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Eagles, "Hotel California". One of the most iconic tunes in the rock era ever. What I most remember about this song was when I was working on a subcontract at an IBM subsidiary on the northern outskirts of Irving, TX in the early 1990's, just after leaving academia. Most of us listened to radio broadcasts on headphones while we worked. One of my colleagues, a pro-abortion choice conservative, used to laugh out loud several times, which is how I first learned about Rush Limbaugh. I used to listen to a classic rock station. One day there was a decision to change station format, and I guess the way the rock format station personnel decided to protest the format change was to put this track on repeat. Just a warning: after the first 15 consecutive plays of the song, it begins to lose its charm, at least in my experience.
