Clinton Thinks Obama Doing Fine But Needs More Optimism in Message

From ABCNews.com:

Former President Bill Clinton gives President Barack Obama an "A" grade for his first month in office, but tells ABC News that Obama needs to put on a more positive face when speaking to the American people about the economy and must keep pressure on Republicans who try to obstruct his plans.

I'd argue on the "A" personally, but then I'm not Bill Clinton. But Clinton continues...

"Look, the American people, I think, know the president has tried to reach out to Republicans," Clinton told ABC News' Chris Cuomo. "And it takes two to tango. I think there are some of them who really believe that just-say-no politics is good politics.

"It was -- briefly, only briefly -- in the '90s. It isn't anymore," he added. "So, sooner or later, I think if he just keeps chugging along, just keeps the door open, invite 'em to every economic conference, invite 'em to every meeting, eventually, he'll start getting some votes" in Congress.

You're forgetting something, Bill. Add "listen to them and use their ideas" and you'll have a winner. Just inviting them isn't going to do the trick if they still feel it's only for show.

On the other hand, even that is more than the Congress Democrats have been doing.

Stimulus and Rescue Backlash?

From Mark Whittington at Associated Content:

The markets are not reacting very well to Barack Obama's latest spending plan, which is to spend about seventy five billion dollars to rescue people who can't pay their mortgages. CNBC host Rick Santelli believes he knows why.

Rick Santelli, who also an experienced investment strategist and trader, put it simply that the government would be promoting bad behavior by subsidizing mortgages given to people who ought not to have had them to start with.

Rick Santelli went on to compare what is happening to America under Barack Obama to Castro's Cuba and to suggest a kind of "Boston Tea Party" anti spending revolt. Rick Santelli's impassionate speech on CNBC brought cheers on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, from where he was reporting.
...
More importantly, Rick Santelli's attack on the Obama mortgage bailout scheme seems to reflect a growing disquiet over President Obama's spending schemes, which started with the stimulus package, and will now not only include a bailout for mortgages but also a new bailout for the car companies and perhaps even a second stimulus. That disquiet has been manifest in recent days by protest rallies in Seattle, Denver, and most recently in Mesa, Arizona.

I think a lot of us are getting fed up. Yes, one can use the economy as an excuse to do almost anything. And the Obama administration has. But they are not acting like anything they're doing is actually going to help. It's as if they want to wreck the economy.

Perhaps they do, so they can use it as an excuse to push even more rubbish disguised as stimulus.

A poll on Instapundit asks if I would join in any protests should one be called in my area. I said no, that I'm not the protesting type, but I'm starting to reconsider.

Update: More from Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO's The Corner:

I think people are hungry for someone who is fed up with the way things are and who seem to believe in something enough to know there in an alternative worth fighting for. Some of the voices may be far from perfect, but Americans are looking for signs of the life of an alternative. And so if a representative pops up — someone who appears to have roots and energy, folks will cheer them on in the hopes there’s a candidate here. Maybe not a presidential candidate, but a leader of some sort. Someone who can offer a vision of something other than a culture of bailout.

Today, Rick Santelli was that sign of life.

People are fed up with the administration.

Bear in mind that this administration is barely a month old.

And A Child Shall Lead Them

Phoenix's East Valley Tribune has a story on high schoolers who watched Obama on TV while he was at their school giving his address on housing relief, and gave their impressions. Some interesting points:

"Overall I think it's a good idea, but he's not addressing the issues of the economic crisis," said Daudfar, a John McCain supporter who added he leans more toward being a moderate conservative. "The spending bill he just passed is just progressing the Democratic agenda rather than addressing the economic issues in the country."

Daudfar thinks Obama's plan is backward and deals with the "less important stuff" first. "Bailing out businesses" and "providing better regulatory systems for giving out money to businesses" should have been first, he said.

"If businesses can't afford to hire people, then people won't be able to work and pay off their mortgages," he said. "It's kind of like putting money into a funnel."

Albach, who is also a Republican, said Obama's plan sounds good but questioned how Obama can want to rely on "people's responsibility" when that is "what got us in this economic crisis in the first place."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

"Even though I don't support him, I think it's cool he's here," said Miller, 18. "I just don't believe all the things he's telling us. His goal is just too big and broad."

Good...respect for the position, but critical evaluation of the occupant. There is hope for the future.

The students also questioned why Obama chose their school for his speech since he wasn't talking about education and wondered how much money the district spent on beautifying the campus while district positions and services are being cut.

And they say no one is teaching critical thinking any more.

Freedom of Speech Under Fire?

(hat-tip Instapundit) An Oklahoma City man gets pulled over for having sign on his vehicle reading "Abort Obama, not the unborn". The policeman confiscated the sign and informed the man he was now part of an investigation. Internal Investigations later returned the man's sign. But next the Secret Service show up at the man's house and ask to walk through the house to make sure the man wasn't part of any hate groups.

Somehow I don't think anyone would have looked twice if it had said "Abort Bush". The double-standard here is quite sad, and disturbing as well.

This Much Is True

From President Barak Obama:

“All of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis,” Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery at a ceremony announcing the program at a Phoenix area high school.

...and for the banking crisis, and for the automakers crisis, and for the Democratic Wish-List Funding Deficiency crisis, and for the supporter payback crisis...

At least it's coming from money that's already been wrung from our dissicated corpses.

Obama Delays Signing "Emergency" Bill

From the DC Examiner:

“Sunlight Before Signing” faded into darkness with the first bill that came across Obama’s desk. The new president signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act two days after it was passed by Congress — and without posting it on the White House Web site.

Then he signed the second bill of his administration, an update of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, within hours after Congress passed it.
.....
As Gibbs spoke, the massive economic stimulus bill was racing through Congress, and the spokesman stressed that Obama’s campaign pledge specifically exempted “emergency” legislation. “If we get this [stimulus] bill, this would certainly meet the president’s test of emergency legislation,” Gibbs explained. “And if we’re lucky enough to have it pass, we’ll sign it rather quickly.”

Then, late Friday, after House and Senate Democratic leaders moved heaven and earth to pass it, the bill was ready for the president’s signature. And did President Obama sign it rather quickly? Not at all.

He also chose not to sign it on Saturday. And not to sign it on Sunday. And he chose not to sign it on Monday. Only on Tuesday, with a big campaign-style event in Denver, would the president finally be ready to put his signature on the bill.

He signs nonemergency legislation in the blink of an eye. And he lets emergency legislation sit for days before lifting his pen.

I don't see the sense in this, either. Either it was an emergency or it wasn't. Weren't we facing the end of civilization as we know it if the bill wasn't passed quickly?

If he didn't plan to pass it for four days, why not let us all have those four days to look it over? I think we know the answer to that one. "Sunlight" was not something this vampiric bill could tolerate for long.

I think he was expecting to see a massive Wall Street rally today. Had he signed it on Friday the markets would have been closed and we would have missed seeing the seas receding and the blossoms blooming. Except today there was no rally. The Dow fell nearly 300 points today. Wall Street, it seems...is not impressed.

I think this "emergency for thee, but not for me" moment will come back to bite him.

Tell How You Really Feel!

MSNBC.com's Politics section sports the following headline today:
"Obama urges Americans to follow Lincoln"
The snide cynic in can't leave that one alone, of course! Just how would he like us to follow Lincoln? Based on the rubbish he's been pushing lately I think he means:

Drop dead, America!

Or is he admitting that he's a lousy president? "Don't follow me anymore! Follow Lincoln! A dead guy would be better than any of our so-called leaders right now!"

Change?! We Don't Need No Stinkin' Change!

Obama nominee Kagen is all set to reverse Bush's policies. NOT!:

Elena Kagan, Dean of Harvard Law School and nominee for Solicitor General, announced that she believes that the government has the authority to detain indefinitely terrorism suspects because the country is "at war" with Al Qaeda. Because I am busy finishing edits on a law review article, can someone please explain to me how this differs from Bush's position, which liberals condemned, bashed and burned in effigy? (from Dissenting Justice via Instapundit)

Oh, times they aren't a-changin'....

You're Making Me Sick!

Bloomberg.com reports on the various medical reforms hidden in the Stimulus Bill, which seem to be going completely unnoticed by both sides of Congress:

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

President Obama can warn of national apocalypse until he's blue in the face. Senate protocol is there to protect us from idiotic moves such as this. We're being given a trojan horse, and it's not all chocolates and daisies inside. We're being force-fed worms fried in dung-sauce, told its for our own good, and forced to vote for it quickly before anyone can really understand what's in there.

The president who promised us unparalleled transparency is throwing a thick cloak over everything he's doing, and it's going to cost us all very, very dearly.

Read the whole thing. If it doesn't make you sick, then you'd better hope you never get sick after it passes.

You Still Need to Ask?

Jennifer Rubin at Pajamas Media asks "Have They No Shame?"
A lesser-noticed development in Washington lately is that Obama has moved jurisdiction over the 2010 Census under the White House instead of the Commerce Department.

I can't think of a good reason for that. Can you? Neither can Rubin:

Had this stunt been attempted during the Bush years one certainly would have heard a hue and cry from good government groups, the media, and academics. We no doubt would have heard a chorus of opposition: “The professional public servants are being shunted aside!” And from those so aghast about attempts to suppress or manipulate voting, we would have expected the shrieks: “This is an attempt to politicize the census and stack the deck for reapportionment!” It is not hard to imagine the reaction if the Bush White House had suggested that a supposedly unbiased statistical undertaking should be directed by, say, Karl Rove.

National Security Council Expanded

Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post has the details:

President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Too soon to tell. It's a known maxim in business that "to err is human, but to really screw things up requires a committee". All I know for sure is that if this were Bush making this change there would be all sorts of protests.

Pres. Obama - Insurance Salesman

MSNBC.com is running the following lead paragraph today:

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama takes to the road this week to promote his plans for reinvigorating the economy.

Except it's not his plan. Pelosi and Reid wrote the thing, remember? So why does Obama have to work so hard to sell their plan?

I think Pelosi and Reid see Obama as a useful fall-guy. If their plan is defeated, or if it doesn't work, it'll have Obama's name and fingerprints all over it, so it'll be his poltical neck.

What gets me is that Obama is not stupid. Why is he sinking so much political capital into this?

My guess is that the Democrats--and perhaps the Republicans, too--see this issue as the battle. If the Dems win it the Republicans may be forced to roll over and sit things out for awhile. If the Republicans win it they're suddenly a party to be reckoned with again, and their minorities in Congress become less symbolic.

Both sides realize the importance of this issue. Still, it bothers me to see Obama taking the role of foot-soldier instead of general. It would be different if it were his plan, but it's not. If he's not careful he could become a lame duck before he completes his first month in office.

UPDATE:

Toby Harnden of the Telegraph has an interesting take:

After a distinctly rocky start to his presidency, he has admitted he "screwed up" and is returning to one thing in his political career that he has perfected – campaigning.
...
Already, however, he is struggling, and the product he is now selling is not himself but a near-trillion-dollar economic "stimulus" package loaded with pet Democratic spending projects that has awakened slumbering Republicans in Congress and is now supported by barely a third of Americans. In between the Indiana and Florida stops, he will return to the White House for a prime-time press conference in which he will appeal directly to citizens and seek to rekindle the magic of his campaign.

Read the whole thing for additional insight on Obama's presidency and the Stimulus Bill.

Yes, We Can, But We Don't Dare

Philip K. Howard has some ideas on why Obama's call for people to get involved may fall on deaf ears:

Those who deal with the public are the most discouraged. Most doctors say they wouldn't advise their children to go into medicine. Government service is seen as a bureaucratic morass, not a noble calling. Make a difference? You can't even show basic human kindness for fear of legal action. Teachers across America are instructed never to put an arm around a crying child.

That instruction to teachers is one of the reasons I did not become a teacher. As a man, I sensed very early on that the risk of lawsuit or arrest was just too great to risk touching children, even though it broke my heart.

I did a short-term teaching job at a private Catholic school for a few hours each week. The moment I stepped onto the playground the kids would come flocking up to me and wrap their arms around my legs. I longed to hug them back, and I know that some would have benefitted from it enormously. But I couldn't afford to care about their needs. The threat to my potential livlihood was greater than their need.

As long as the modus operandii in America remains "No good deed goes unpunished" we will not live up to our values, no matter who is in office. Indeed, I have to question if those are still our values anymore.

My sister-in-law is a speech therapist in the public school system--at least for a few more weeks. Part of her job is working with mainstreamed special needs students. She tells of the incessant paperwork involved in her job and the lawyers constantly looking over their shoulders looking to sue if every piece of documentation isn't completely perfect. How does that serve the students?

It doesn't. The best special education teachers are quitting in droves, because they got into the job to help children, not file paperwork and fend off lawyers. But the job has become all about the latter and not the former. So they leave. In their place school administrators are forced to hire lesser-skilled stand-ins who are good at neither helping nor paperwork. In the end no one is served.

But it's not about helping people any more. It's about extorting money from the system. It's about "getting yours" regardless of who you have to crush in the process. It's about forcing people to do what's right, even if the definition of "what's right" is unclear or even contradictory.

The very people who are accusing churches of trying to legislate morality are doing just that themselves. Only they can't even get that right, because they have no moral compass of their own. Common Sense has become an oxymoron. Common decency has been replaced with lowest common denominator.

The problem is going to take much more than a sharp-dressed president with a bag full of platitudes. His community organizer tactics won't work here. America needs more than a bandaid, and he's offering little more than to kiss our owie better.

From The Diversity Files

I'm not a minority--at least not in the standard political definition. Let's just say that nothing I'm a minority in is likely to gain me any special protections.

But I try to be sensitive enough to realize that my perspective on race relations in America could use some expansion. It's just that (and perhaps this is wrong of me) I don't like having to take personal responsibility for the entire scope of American history.

I'm willing to take responsibility for whatever prejudices my parents may have passed along that I may not have questioned yet. I'm willing to accept that my nervousness about some people may run deeper than my own personal insecurity with any stranger, and with the lifestyles certain clothing choices communicate.

I try not to be prejudiced, but let's face it. We all make choices about people and our reactions to them based on appearance. And when people dress in a specific way because it advertises a specific lifestyle they can't really hold people responsible for judging them based on that. In short, if you're going to dress like a gang-banger or rapper, it's not unduly prejudiced of me to suspect that you're going to be angry with me for being white--and as a result be nervous about you or even try to avoid you.

It would be unduly prejudiced of me to be nervous about or seek to avoid a black person who dresses within the realm of socially acceptable norms. I believe that is the key. If someone chooses to dress or act in an intimidating manner they should not expect people to react positively or even neutrally to them. I have as much right to be nervous about someone dressed like a gang-banger as I do a white person with disheveled hair and clothing walking down the street muttering to themselves and gesticulating wildly. It's simply, like the old Far Side cartoon, nature's way of saying "Do not touch".

Anyway, what I started out to say is that I do appreciate efforts by minorities to politely give the rest of us insights as to what their world is like for them. One such example is an article by John McWhorter in Forbes. This article makes it clearer that blacks in America are not unified in how they see themselves, but just as it appears more and more whites are moving past their historical prejudices, so are blacks.

If Obama's election does nothing else than open the way for people to have polite, respectful conversations about race he will have done this country a great service. I look forward to the conversation. I have much to learn.

We Shall Make No Policy Until Its Time

Michael Totten defends Barack Obama over his silence regarding the Gaza crisis:

If Obama opposes Israel’s use of force to defend itself from missile attack, he deserves credit for keeping his opinion to himself while he is not actually president. As he has stated on several occasions: the United States only has one president at a time. “We can’t have two administrations running foreign policy at the same time,” he says. “We simply can’t do it.” He could try to undermine the current President Bush, but he’s right that it wouldn’t be proper.

On the other hand, perhaps he silently supports Israel’s short operation in Gaza against a terrorist army with whom he himself repeatedly said he would refuse to negotiate. If he said so out loud, though, his global “hope and change” honeymoon would be over before it even began. It’s not in his interest to hobble himself from the start, nor is it in America’s interest or Israel’s.

I have to agree. While I'm still in wait-and-see mode over many things Obama, I appreciate his respect in not undermining the current president, however unpopular. While it could just be that he really doesn't want to have to take the job any sooner than necessary (and who could blame him), evidence suggests otherwise.

He's NOT silent on the economy. He's saying plenty there, and it's a good thing. Right now the economy is as much a matter of perception as a matter of substance. The Democratic Congress wants to get to work fixing things, and if Obama doesn't want to lose control of the helm there he needs to be involved. Even though it may be weeks before anything gets through congress, it's important to be seen doing something.

Foreign policy, on the other hand, is NOT Congress' arena. It's important there be one and only one Voice of the US. Congress has passed resolutions supporting Bush's position on Gaza, however, and that is entirely appropriate. Obama seems to know that on matters of foreign policy he needs to keep quiet until it's his turn.

He'll get his turn soon enough. For many reasons, most of which could be simultaneously true, he is smart to wait.

A Return to Bill-dome

The headline on MSNBC.com reads "Obama team: No Inappropriate Contact". I have to admit my first thought was "Now there's a sexual harrassment scandal?!"

Nope. It turns out he's released a formal statement about the scandal around his senate seat.

What's more, the official statement was no "inappropriate conversations".

Nice headlining, guys.

Obama Cabinet Roundup

I've been focusing on other things lately, but The Purple Center has been following the Obama administration announcements. Publius is perhaps more optimistic about it than I am, but I think we both can agree that so far Obama is showing no signs of yanking America hard to port.

Heck, even Rush Limbaugh seems to approve of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. But perhaps not for the right reasons.

The Chicago Way? Not Today.

President-elect Obama has supposedly told his friends in Illinois not to expect any favors:

"Part of the charge [of the budget team] is to make sure that we are proceeding on projects and investments based on national priorities and not based on politics. Now you mentioned, sort of, my friends. I want to be clear friendship doesn't come into this. That's part of the old way of doing business.

"The new way of doing business is, let's figure out what projects, what investments are going to give the American economy the most bang for the buck. How can we protect taxpayer dollars so this money is not wasted; restore a sense of confidence among taxpayers that when we spend their money, it's on things that are actually gonna improve their quality of life; create the jobs that are so desperately needed; help to spur on economic growth and business creation in the private sector? That's all part of the new way of doing business."

Good for him.

Watching as he has rolled out his administration picks, and listening to the media report it (and the lefties scream), it appears that he really does plan to be more moderate than anyone would have suspected. While I'm not terribly fond of Hillary Clinton, foreign policy is one area she's more acceptable to me than many others he might have picked. In the election she was one of the more hawkish Democrats on national defense.

I also think that ignoring the media calls for him to unveil a team and a plan immediately to stabilize the economy was a good move. He only took a week longer than they wanted, and it's obvious to me at this point that one week is not going to make a real difference. Any gains he might have made by announcing earlier would have been psychological, and would have evaporated quickly if they hadn't been backed up with real substance. What he's showing so far is caution, but not indecisiveness.

I'm still holding judgment until he gets into office, but so far I'm not frightened by anything he's doing. I even find some of what he's doing encouraging.

Obama-mania vs. Non-Critical Thought

Howard Kurtz takes a somewhat bemused, somewhat cautionary look at the excitement swirling around Obama:

"Here we are," writes Salon's Rebecca Traister, "oohing and aahing over what they'll be wearing, and what they'll be eating, what kind of dog they'll be getting, what bedrooms they'll be living in, and what schools they'll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas' tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?"

But aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

I've been one of those convinced that the media has lost their objectivity. But in reading this article it occurred to me. It's not necessarily that media has lost their neutrality. It's that they've lost their focus on news. Somewhere along the road they decided that the public wanted commentary along with the news. The result is that you can read a newspaper from cover to cover and not find a page without an editorial, whether official or not. Online news especially thrives on the "reporter-as-personality" model.

To be sure, even when media tries to report straight news they still have the potential for bias in what stories they choose to report. Consider how long media sat on the John Edwards affair compared with the rumor of a Sarah Palin affair. One was surpressed for half a year until a tabloid broke the story, the other was plastered coast to coast before any real verification had taken place. There is media bias.

But there is also a serious lack of critical reading. Far too few readers (myself included sometimes) pay attention to whether what they're reading is true news or commentary. And even in straight news stories, how many of us take the time to ask critical-thinking questions about what we've read?

There is media bias, to be sure. There has always been media bias (in "State of the Union" (see below) our hero was practically hand-picked for candidacy by a media mogul), and there always will be. Certainly the degree and direction of bias changes from source to source and over time. But we do need to take at least a little responsibility for what we read and how we read it.

Afghanistan: WWOD II

MSNBC reports on some early plans here.

If means what he says--and doesn't botch the victory in Iraq--I may be able to back him on this. I do think the focus on Bin Laden is misguided and could lead us into trouble with Pakistan, but we'll see.