Error Of Good Feeling
Supposedly new Presidents are supposed to get a 90 or 100 day "honeymoon" where what ever the President asks for - he gets. Well if there ever was such a thing it is now over. President Present keeps asking for action and can't get any.
"The time for talk is over. The time for action is now," said Obama. He implored lawmakers in both parties to "rise to this moment" and send him legislation to begin fixing the worst economic crisis in decades.Hostage crisis? Past time we called in Jimmy Carter. He is an expert when it comes to being held hostage.
Obama added he would "love to see additional improvements" in the bill, a gesture to the moderates from both parties at work on trying to trim the $920 billion price tag.
But with the Senate plodding through a fourth day of debate, earlier talk of a large, bipartisan vote for the legislation was fading.
"As I have explained to people in that group, they cannot hold the president of the United States hostage," said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "If they think they're going to rewrite this bill and Barack Obama is going to walk away from what he is trying to do for the American people, they've got another thought coming."
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3 comments:
There's an interesting dynamic going on here. A few data points:
1) Apparently, SecDef Gates and SecState Clinton are not going to represent the U.S. at the Munich defense conference. VP Biden is. That is really not normal.
2) The West Wing is overflowing with personnel (they're dividing offices into cube-spaces). The stated reason is that much more authority is supposedly going to be brought into the White House, bypassing the Cabinet-level departments.
3) A bunch of centrists were brought into the Cabinet, even including Gates, carried over from the previous Administration. At the same time, the White House "advisors", "czars", and what have you are all bat-guano loony lefties.
The obvious conclusion:
Obama has observed the trouble the last few administrations had getting their favored Cabinet appointees through the Senate. His intended policy is way, way to the left of anything remotely acceptable to Americans, so he's doing an end-run around the "advice and consent" function of the Senate. What's more, he gets a centrist Cabinet as a smokescreen.
This is speculation, but if I'm close the next 10 years are really going to be awful.
Neil,
Interesting. Now the deal you run into in a situation like Obama is setting up is this: where do lawful orders come from.
The man has no executive experience. The bureaucrats and Congress will stifle him.
It will be painful - in a clown show way.
And of course we will pay plenty to get entertained.
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