giovedì 28 gennaio 2010

 

President Barack Obama knows how to deliver a speech about as well as anyone since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And, like Roosevelt, President Obama set out a vision for the coming year that focused on the economy, and specifically on the way the government can lay the groundwork for economic growth. Almost every issue he mentioned pivoted back to that central point.

 

The problem is that the Republican Party has a different vision of how the government can help the economy recover. And, they have this obnoxious habit, grown worse since last week’s special election, of acting as if Obama had not won the election in 2008. The President called on Congress to move beyond partisan bickering, but I wish he had been more willing to call out the GOP. When he goes to Capitol Hill to meet with GOP leaders, and they put out a press release saying nothing was accomplished before the meeting, you know they were not sincerely engaging him in the first place. If they put their political goal of impeding any administration efforts ahead of the need for the government to help turn the economy around, shame on them.

 

There is a place for honest disagreement between the parties and Republicans are entirely entitled to propose their own solutions to the economic crisis. Indeed, President Obama has apparently decided to meet them halfway before any negotiations are begun, announcing a series of tax cuts that will appease Republicans but will do nothing to actually improve the economy. A small business does not hire when a tax cut comes on line; a small business hires when its staff can no longer handle growing customer demand.

 

Many on the left have denounced the President’s proposal for a spending freeze on discretionary spending. He understands something they do not, and the section of the speech in which he explained the spending freeze was the most effective of the evening. He said, "families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same….Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don't. And if I have to enforce this discipline by veto, I will." I do not know if the phrase "enforce this discipline" was intended to be so paternal, but it had the happy, and undeniably true, effect of pointing out the childishness of Congress.

 

The President, like his predecessor George W. Bush, tried to cast himself as an outsider, despite living in the most insider home in the nation. He spoke about Washington’s political culture as if he was not living in the middle of it. Sometimes this fell flat. On CNN, the Independents in a focus group flat-lined Obama when he made an inside joke about health care not being good politics. Self-deprecating humor is one thing, but of course a joke about health care was going to fall flat.

 

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