I have to agree with James Fallows that, overall, Obama’s Oval Office address was a wasted opportunity to leverage an event (the spill) that could be used to justify changing the status quo.
That said, the status quo has a powerful protector: Congress, specifically the Senate. We just saw the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression and all we’re getting is ever more watered down legislation. Sticking it to the banks is a political no-brainer in an election year, yet it isn’t happening.
Similarly, setting aside climate change, the politics of lessening our dependence on foreign oil and creating our own high-tech energy industry are also no-brainers. We don’t need to defend global warming to justify our need to get off the oil teat via energy reform legislation. Yet we get this strange passage in Obama’s speech:
[…] Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill –- a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses.Now, there are costs associated with this transition. And there are some who believe that we can’t afford those costs right now. I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy -– because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater.
So I’m happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party -– as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels.[…]
There’s not even a call for the Senate to take up the legislation. The bitter political reality is that Obama doesn’t have enough confidence in the Senate’s ability to pass anything to even suggest that they try. That’s why he’s specific on the small things the Executive Branch can do (restitution and MMS reform), and mushy on the big changes needed to keep us from drilling at 20,000 feet or propping up despots on the other side of the earth.
ItAintEazy
I don’t even watch Obama speeches anymore, precisely because of stuff like this.
Montysano
On an earlier thread, I ran some math and calculated that offshore drilling accounts for about 7% of our oil supply. But if Obama had suggested that we cut our usage by this amount and quit taking these insane risks, the MSM would treat us to a months-long festival of wankery. “Why did Obama say this?”, “Should Obama have said this?”, without ever discussing the actual content of what he said.
What I saw last night was a brilliant guy who can’t wait for 2012, so that he can turn over the reins of this dumbass nation to someone else.
arguingwithsignposts
I don’t agree with Fallows. I think his “analysis” is a lot of meh, which is disappointing for someone I generally enjoy reading and respect.
For instance, this part:
As is often the case, punditry thinks the public remembers SOTU speeches. I’d wager you’d be hard pressed to find someone outside of the Beltway who even remembers George Bush *gave* SOTU speeches, much less what he said about oil dependency.
And as for reax to the speech, I’d be much more interested in what Joe and Jane Public thought about the speech and the energy themes Obama mentioned.
Hell, Fallows is in China, maybe he could step outside his door and as Joe and Jane Chu what they thought about the speech.
I’ll reserve judgment on Obama’s speech until I see what he *does.* Talk is cheap, and so is punditry.
Hunter Gathers
Because there is no fucking way a climate bill gets past a filibuster. The ‘centrist’ Dems who joined with every single Senate GOPer in voting strip the EPA of it’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases will not vote for anything dealing with energy and climate change. Why waste the effort?
MacLaurin
I listened to his speech with some shred of of hope and just shook my head at the end of it. blah blah MMS reform blah blah China’s beating us blah blah vague visions of America’s greatness. His speeches are sounding routine now, same voice, different text, just doesn’t cut it anymore for this once-fervent supporter.
If you can’t motivate Congress to pass a climate bill, then why not call them out for continuing wasteful, distorting energy subsidies?
Quiddity
What Obama should have said:
Linda Featheringill
Ah dear.
I thought it was good speech. Not an enjoyable one, but a good one.
Obama didn’t promise anything? Perhaps because he isn’t sure how much he can deliver.
He didn’t say that everything will be all right? Perhaps because it won’t.
He didn’t threaten to go drop bombs on some other nation? Perhaps because that wouldn’t do any good.
The main problem with the speech was its honesty. We have a big problem. It is going to get worse before it gets better. It is going to cost a BUNDLE.
Reality sucks.
master c
Sorry-I liked John’s take better.
this was a reaction to critics saying he’s not on it. So he gives an oval office speech to bat it away. There are 900 people on Kos saying ….
“well I would have said…..” Total bullshit. A comment on a blog requires only the smallest effort and I think Obama is working hard, a lot harder than that anyway. Lets see where this goes.
Rhoda
@MacLaurin: Obama’s the President of the United States; his legislative priorities and hopes are at the mercy of Congress. He can’t afford to alienate them in an election year. He can’t afford to alientate his party. This dyanmic is actually part of the reason why if the Republicans took over the House Obama would have an easier time; he can call them out at will.
Unlike the Republicans; Democrats do not march in lockstep to fulfil the president’s priorities. Hell, with sky high approval and entering office he had to beg, cajole, and cut his stimulus package to get it to pass Congress.
******
The senate is broken and the House is in campaign mode so until the politics of the moment shake out IMO nothing happens until after November.
Violet
@MacLaurin:
I agree in principle. I just don’t know how well it would work in practice. Honestly, I don’t know WHAT will work to make Congress change their ways.
If there’s one thing that people on all sides seem to agree on, it’s that Congress is bought and paid for by special interests and doesn’t do much that’s in the interest of the general population. People are sick of Congress, but they feel helpless to get it to change.
Davis X. Machina
Exactly. He made this speech because various political and media bigfeet told him he had to make this speech. The speech’s sole objective, and only virtue, is that it was made.
Its intended audience was a few thousand people who work in Washington & New York, and a few thousand more scattered across the country, not us.
And since he has utter contempt for that audience — he’s an intelligent man, after all — it wasn’t going to be an A-game speech from the get-go.
“When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash.” One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Comrade Jake
Obot number 23 here. I can understand all the arguments for him saying this or not saying that. I get that there are a number of constraints he’s dealing with.
Still, at the end of the day, with regard to our nation’s energy policy, I’m just not seeing a whole lot of leadership here. I want him to push more, stick his neck out more, get things going. It deserves the same level of effort as health care, in my opinion, and I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that from Obama.
cleek
a “few thousand” ?
currently 60% of Americans disapprove of his handling of this situation.
Davis X. Machina
Mirroring exactly what those few thousand people told them to think….
Ash Can
OK, maybe I’m just a silly O-bot who’s short on caffeine and long on sleep deprivation, but I look at this post, see a complaint that the president isn’t addressing climate change, lessening our dependence on foreign oil, or creating our own high-tech energy industry, and then goes on to basically cite as an example a segment of the speech that, um, addresses climate change, lessening our dependence on foreign oil and creating our own high-tech energy industry. Am I still misreading this after three tries, or is there something that really is wrong with this picture?
And really, with respect to the Senate, what good does it do Obama to be openly confrontational with a bunch of princesses and prima donnas whose main talent is to go all mavericky and obstructionist on the president at the drop of a hat? And how do we know that some/any kind of climate bill is dead in the water? We don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes on this, and behind the scenes really is where all the action takes place. I can easily see the climate bill taking the same tack as HCR — dragged out, watered down, and better than nothing. And all the while, the screaming from both the right and the left will be nonstop. Lather, rinse, repeat.
cleek
@Davis X. Machina:
nah, i don’t buy it.
pundits just don’t have that much influence.
master c
right on Davis, John is right, nation of stupid.
DecidedFenceSitter
@Linda Featheringill:
Precisely, the Senate is designed to slow down bills, to be a break on the populism of the moment. And it is working. Unfortunately. Whether this is just a case of what was envisioned taking it’s natural course, or it being the turbo-charged, pedal to the metal version, I’m not sure. I’m far too populist-oriented to be unbiased and analytical as to whether this is something “new” or just what happened 50/100 years ago, but we’ve got better transparency.
JAHILL10
@Linda Featheringill:
This.
Davis X. Machina
Pundits per se probably don’t. But the news machine does. Exhibit A — the last two Republican nominees for President. Completely manufactured, from bullshit and textured vegetable protein.
Yara
The speech was a simple update on the situation, which is not what the pundit class wanted to hear. They wanted to hear him say that he’s firing BP and that his taking charge and his creating this new task force filled with the best minds from around the world to help stop the link. And as the task force is working on a magical quick fixing solution, all the college kids and unemployed worker from around the US are coming down to the golf to clean up. Of course all this will happen within the week.
I think that there is lack a realistic expectation of what a president or a national / state government can do about something they lack expertise in. Yes, perhaps the clean up can be handled differently and more effectively but to be honest I don’t know what else there can be done, ad perhaps where the president “failed” yesterday was in explaining what has been done in a more detailed manner, without getting into the nitty gritty.
arguingwithsignposts
@cleek:
Maybe not the Fallows, Armbinders, Ignatiuses, Milbanks, Broders and Wills of the world, but what pundits say gets echoed by the anchorfolk, and then there are the Limbaughs, Becks and O’Reillys, not to mention the Huffingtons and Moulitsas.
When you have left, right, *and* “objective media” bitching about how you’re not doing enough to “handle” the spill, 60 percent of the public will have a vague feeling that they know what the hell they are talking about and get in the “disapprove” column.
Personally, I think any balanced analysis of the entire timeline so far would show that the government has done an “okay” job wrt the spill. It’s not great, but it’s not Katrina.
And I posted this in the last thread, but it bears repeating:
Shorter beltway pundits/firebaggers: We’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is … moar bully pulpit!
mr. whipple
I thought the senate taking up the bill was implicit in this mention of the house. Then there’s the emails OFA keeps sending saying to contact your reps on this issue.
Nick
@Comrade Jake:
I don’t think hec an stick his neck out more than he has already.
El Cid
The logic that a President can’t urge or call for things which may not happen seems pretty weird to me. I always thought part of speechmaking was to try and change peoples’ knowledge and opinions on matters, rather than to prioritize existing constrictions.
arguingwithsignposts
@Davis X. Machina:
See, and people say America can’t produce renewable energy.
Nick
@El Cid:
Thats how it used to work. Nowadays, with the country so damn polarized. There is nothing you can do to change minds that are already made up.
If 77% of people want to drill for oil, there’s nothing you can do to change that opinion…nothing. That’s in God’s hands.
mistermix
@Ash Can: I agree that he used all the right words in that passage. The point of quoting it is that the bill has passed the House, it’s in the Senate, and Obama doesn’t say one word about the fact that the Senate needs to pass it (not even the usual boilerplate, like “I call on members of both parties in the Senate to pass this important legislation …”).
Which isn’t necessarily a criticism of Obama. I’d have liked him to say more, but I recognize that the politics of the situation are that he can’t, because the Senate just isn’t going to do anything.
El Cid
Vegetable?
I would think instead of textured vegetable protein it would be pink slime.
MikeJ
@arguingwithsignposts:
Exactly. I heard a MotS interview yesterday and all of the rejects form Leno’s “jaywalking” segment said, “I want him to say he’s going to do everything he can”. And not one actually said what they thought he could actually do about it.
If the media narrative was that everything is already being done, it would help a lot. It’s too bad that “Obama’s version of thing Bush did X” is such a compelling storyline.
El Cid
@Nick: It might be worth emphasizing, to somebody, that fuel use by Americans has gone down since the recession, that no company will increase production and thus production costs to Americans in a shrinking market just because we want them to. That’s not how markets work.
Plus, very little of that BP rig’s oil came to the U.S. The jobs question is certainly a different matter.
Nick
@mistermix: He actually did say something like that
It doesn’t take someone with a doctorate to realize he’s talking to both the media and the Senate here.
Nick
@El Cid: That would be a good idea, except anyone who hates Obama, Democrats and liberals doesn’t believe a word I say, even when it’s true.
So what do you do about that?
Brian J
I know that I, as well as many other people, consistently call for him to get tough, angry, or some other adjective, but in these cases, it might actually be justified. Actually, it would be justified, and it would go along perfectly with his style: cool, calm, collected, but ultimately mature and easily tired of the bullshit. He doesn’t need to call for the executives to be castrated and then shot while screaming hysterically. He simply needs to make clear that he won’t stand for Democrats who act as sticks in the mud for their own personal ambitions and Republicans who take the side of big business for the same reasons. And then repeat it, over and over and over again, in every congressional district, up until election day and perhaps even after that.
If it doesn’t work, what’s the worst that can happen? Republicans will start to act like true obstructionists?
srv
I’d say he’s on autopilot until November, and after that, he’ll probably just be a hostage. This will not play well as the economy runs out of stimulus to burn.
Brian J
@Montysano:
Are you sure about that? I didn’t watch the speech, so I can’t judge his performance, but if I had to guess, I’d say that he was mentally exhausted with the stupid stuff, like giving last night’s speech. I can’t think he’s had enough problems with the job that he’s prepared to hear “President Palin.”
John S.
What would another rousing speech full of undeliverable promises accomplish?
Any bold moves Blacky McPresident attempt to make are panned by the media, demagouged by the GOP and quibbled over by the Democrats. So why set such a high bar? Obama cannot enact the necessary changes by fiat.
kay
@El Cid:
I think there’s an example where he did that, El Cid, and it really failed. Not only did it fail, he got no credit for setting a goal.
The example that comes to mind is the prison in Cuba. Obama (actually, I think, his former WH counsel) set a time-line of one year. Probably unrealistic, just as a practical matter, expecting the legal machinery to grind out a result in a year, but what the hell. Promise a year. See what happens.
Congress responded, all right. They passed bipartisan legislation barring moving the detainees here. Not only that, he got no credit for setting a high rhetorical goal, from the Left. The only thing I’ve ever heard is “is the prison closed?” He didn’t deliver, and he got no credit for trying.
When I hear this “if he would just set higher goals, he would get more” in what is really an elaborate negotiation with the public and Congress, that just doesn’t ring true to me. That’s because I’ve watched that approach fail.
He’s going to be judged on his ability to deliver. There are very few people who are going to credit him with an unmet goal.
arguingwithsignposts
@mistermix:
You know, I’ve heard presidents use that boilerplate since I’ve been aware of politics (around 1976), and I don’t recall it ever having any impact whatsoever. Maybe it’s time to take that old saw to the scrap yard.
And, if I read the passage quoted above correctly, it seems that he wants the energy bill to be stronger, with more green energy incentives (the “full hearing in the months ahead” phrase). After all, the House passed that bill *before* the spill.
arguingwithsignposts
@kay:
well said.
cleek
@Davis X. Machina:
nope, still not buying it. if you have any data that shows the public has been swayed by the MSM in this situation i’d love to see it.
otherwise…
@arguingwithsignposts:
with all due respect, that is also pure speculation. and it doesn’t even begin to explain why people like me, who pay no attention at all to cable yakkers, wingnut radio and op-ed writers, think Obama has been lackluster on this.
Nick
@kay:
Exactly…I hear people say “If he had foguht harder for the public option, i would be happy”
No you wouldn’t…you would think he didn’t fight hard enough!
So he’s not going to make unrealistic demands for the sake of stroking OpenLeft’s ego. He’s going to do what can get done, not what he hopes he can get done.
Nick
@cleek:
pick any poll…any poll.
I work in the media, we know for a fact that our narratives drive public opinion. That’s why we create them. It’s not a coincidence that popular opinion tends to mirror media narratives.
arguingwithsignposts
@cleek:
Okay, now you’re just being obstinate for obstinacy’s sake.
Let me ask you this: If the public doesn’t get information from the MSM about the spill in order to make their immensely informed opinion that they disapprove of Obama’s handling of the spill, where the hell are they getting the information?
You seem to be implying that these people wake up one day and suddenly have intimate knowledge enough to conjure up an opinion about Obama’s handling of the spill ex nihilo.
People don’t work that way. If they are getting their “Obama isn’t handling the spill right” information from forwarded e-mails from their wingnut friends, or from their buddies at the local coffee shop, that information is still coming from an external source. Sixty percent of the public doesn’t just come up with a disapprove out of nothing.
arguingwithsignposts
@cleek:
You pay attention to left-wing blogs, and you have to be reading some MSM on the Internet, I assume.
Nevertheless, your statement once again confirms the truism: “Anecdotes =/= data.”
Nick
@John S.: This is indeed true. Had he laid out a set of goals and specifics. He would’ve been slammed for reaching too high and getting people’s hopes up.
the current media business model is to breed cynicism and despair in the public, and as long as that works, they’ll do it. Already, Obama is being slammed for reaching too high when liberals think he didn’t reach at all. This morning I hear a pundit say
“We can’t get off oil overnight, it’s going to take years. What Obama is asking us to do will have no impact for decades”
cleek
@Nick:
and do what with it?
no, probably not. but that doesn’t mean public opinion is reflecting the media, and not the other way around.
Brian J
@El Cid:
How can we be sure that energy use and new production haven’t gone down because of the health care bill?
kay
@El Cid:
I think Holder and Obama made a very strong argument for trying terrorist suspects in US courts. Holder actually stuck his neck out.
The response was really overwhelmingly negative, public and pundits, and Holder is now considered a political liability.
The people who I would expect to take up that fight, the civil libertarian Left (which I think is a small group) did nothing. They not only didn’t have Holder’s back, they threw in the towel almost immediately, and list that issue as a huge failure on Obama’s part. So what did he gain from that approach? His base didn’t support him, the public didn’t support him, Congress ran for the exits, and his AG is now “politically damaged”.
People don’t generally don’t continue to try things that don’t have any upside.
cleek
@arguingwithsignposts:
but none of them told me that Obama could have handled this better – that ‘narrative’ (or, reporting on what people were concluding on their own, if you’ll take the big leap of assuming people are capable of coming to their own conclusions) took a few weeks to bubble-up. and like i said, the lefty blogs i read are uniformly of the opinion that Obama is doing fine with the spill. i’m sure the die-hard PUMA blogs agree with me on this, but i don’t read them. never have.
by your the prevailing theory of the easily-led media consumer, my opinion should reflect that of the media i read. it doesn’t. i disagree with the majority of the opinions i read on this.
well, no shit. now apply that keen sense of statistical analysis to your assertion that the MSM tells people what to think, and that they obey. got any data ?
Davis X. Machina
Progressives don’t do happy.
IndieTarheel
Can I just say for the record that I think the Tweety/Fineman/Olbermann wankgasm was nauseating? WTF was the President SUPPOSED to do, go on camera and tell the leaking oil to be out of his Gulf by sundown? I thought intelligent people (yeah, I know, leaves Tweety out, but still) had no interest in politicians posturing and banging their
dicksfists on the podium? I hadn’t been watching much of the media of late; glad to see I didn’t miss much.wobbly
@Davis X. Machina:
Thanks for the link!
I, for one, am happy about this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2010/jun/15/northernireland
but maybe I’m not that progressive.
Montysano
Slightly OT, but I caught an interesting moment last night. I was channel surfing after the speech and Palin was on O’Reilly’s show:
“Obama needs to be startin’ with the doin’ of pluggin’ that hole too which guarantees our coastal freedoms also and…” when O’Reilly cut her off and barked “What would YOU do to plug the hole?”
She froze. Total deer-in-the-headlights. She had nothing. Then Bill-O reminded her that, really, no one knows how to plug the damn hole. Nice one, Bill-O.
arguingwithsignposts
@cleek:
I never said the media told people what to think, although there are a lot of people out there (Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly, even Olbermann and the other wanksters on MSNBC) who try to do just that.
But reporting on the spill in the so-called MSM often frames the narrative. There’s an entire field of mass communications on framing and agenda-setting. You should study it sometime.
My point was that people who approve *or* disapprove of Obama’s handling of the spill are getting their information that they use to form their (often) ill-informed opinions from some type of media. And *most* people don’t read blogs or political web sites like Politico. You can peruse the Pew Internet and American Life site for numerous studies about that on your own time.
And, FWIW, 46 percent of the country voted for Maverick McMaverick and Sarah Dumbass in the 2008 election. So you’re really only talking about getting another 24 percent of the country to sway to “disapprove” on the oil spill to get to that 60 percent number. Obama’s overall approval is still in the 48-49 percent range.
Finally, I am so fucking tired of the daily tracking poll bullshit. That’s a major reason why we get watered down health care, watered down stimulus, and a president who feels like he has to make an Oval Office speech about the spill even though he can’t plug the damned hole or pass energy legislation all by his lonesome.
MikeMc
He can’t say we are going to get off oil because we can’t get of oil. Our way of life is based on petroleum. Cheap petroleum. Pretty much everything in your home and/or office is petroleum based. Hell, it takes a barrel and and a half of oil to produce the lap top I’m using. One lap top! The stuff is, literally, in everything. I honestly wonder if people grasp how vast this is. Obama can’t give the American people an honest long term vision of a world without oil because that shit would be bleak.
What happened in the gulf sucks. No two ways about it. Still, we ain’t gonna stop. We can’t. Every American, in some way, is responsible for what happened. It’s our fault. What’s worse, 90% of us probably don’t even give it much thought.
Sadly, we will forget this. We always forget.
someguy
Obama kicked ass. Too bad his agenda is at the mercy of Congress. If only there was some way to engineer a Democratic takeover…
Chat Noir
@Montysano: She is an incoherent moron. The word “stupid” doesn’t even do justice. I can’t emphasize enough how much I hate that woman. That she even has a platform to spew her nonsense doesn’t say a whole lot about the level of discourse in this country.
cat48
Was going to leave an opinion, but Ari Fleischer just advised me that “it is too late for Obama. He had his chance & he failed.” Shocking since I never knew Ari was a progressive. :)
Kryptik
Cleek, seriously, if you really want proof about how much sway MSM chattering and echo chambering can have, look at the health care debate. Look how many people bought into the ‘death panels’ bullshit, or thought that they’d immediately lose their insurance once the bill was passed, or that it was a total institution of gov’t health takeover. A significant portion still do.
Is it so hard to believe that people are gonna be influenced by the constant ‘Obama should’ve done something even if he couldn’t!’ crap being perpetuated?
master c
Fox or CNN are on screens in every bank, waiting room, and hotel lobby Ive breezed through in the last decade. They stream words all day at the bottom of the screen. What is there is boiled down to meaninglessness in seven word statements with dots spacing them apart. Yes, this shit seeps in and people arent sure how they got there, but they disapprove of his “handling” of the latest blah blah..
Glen Tomkins
The Rules of the Game
We are only an elected dictatorship in practice. The theory, the written Constitution, still has the Congress in charge, which is the only possible arrangement if we are to have a republic, where public affairs are decided on in public by the people’s representatives.
We still go by the written Constitution. Congress still sits athwart any possible action by our govt, it has to agree to even the smallest thing the executive does. We only activate the unwritten rules that we all seem more comfortable with, whereby the president is the govt, after the president “scares the hell out of the American people”, to quote the locus classicus of our unwritten consitution, Sen Vandenberg’s comment to Truman on what he would have to do to get the country on a Cold War footing under presidential control and leadership.
The problem for Obama here, as in most domestic matters, which is why the in-practice presidential dictatorship extends mostly to just foreign affairs, is that to scare the hell out of the American people, you need a bogeyman, the terrifying threat that justifies abrogating public governance in favor of presidential dictatorship. But neither Obama, nor anyone anywhere near the levers of power in this country, is willing to face all the consequences of making any corporation the all-threatening, all-powerful villain requiring the exercise of dictatorial powers.
It’s one thing to accept all the serious consequences of the systematic failure of reality-testing that follow from fixing on the USSR, or AQ, as the focus of evil in the modern world. We’re a large and powerful country, so we can afford quite a bit of flailing around blindly and stupidly on the international scene, without the immediate and devastating consequences a less powerful nation would face from that behavior. But were we to act the fool domestically in a manner quite typical of our international behavior, every thinking person realizes that the consequences would be immediate, horrendous, and born by us, not some hapless foreigners.
Implicit belief in the competence of big business has become as much a part of the national religion as the related belief in the power and efficacy of the presidency over that of Congress. We believe in the Leaderhip of indivduals, not the doings of some committee. We believe that you get the right answer, not by public discussion, but by having this Leader assemble the experts behind closed doors for their candid advice, uninfluenced by the pressure of public opinion.
Of course a certain amount of pseudo-populist posing is still possible without violating the fundamentals of this religion. But the basic situation is that there can be no real challenge to BP, no effective reining-in of BP or any large corporation, until and unless the religion and the power structure it supports is overthrown. That could certainly happen, but not at the hands of this president, who is clearly no revolutionary.
It could happen because BP and other large corporations are so obviously so much greater a threat to us than AQ could ever be. There is a clear opportunity for a genuine populist to scare the hell out of the American people over this threat from large corporations. But, make no mistake, no threats of any kind we face today are really existential threats, anything close to worth getting the hell scared out of over. That’s true of both the threats posed by AQ and those posed by large corporations. No threat, even a genuine existential one, is best addressed out of blind fear anyway.
Obviously, what we should do at this point is the same thing we should have been dojng the past two generations at least. Let’s admit that our little experiment in half-way, bad conscience, presidential elected dictatorship, has been a serious mistake. Let’s go back to boring old public discussion, and rule by a committee of our representatives. No, this won’t produce magic solutions to our problems. It will only do what democracy and a republic do, prevent the whole cascade of civil strife that results when we accumulate too large a burden of the mendacity, bullshit and inertia that results from systematically refusing to do things the right but boring way of public responsibility for public policy, and try to pretend instead that strong Leaders off in private somehwere, Oval Office or Board Room, can solve our problems for us.
Norwegian Shooter
Um, do you know how our system of government (including voting) actually works? Sticking it to the banks (huge contributors to both parties) is a political no-brainer if you want to lose your job.
Physics point of view: I think you underestimate the power of the status quo. It got to be the status quo for a reason. That reason probably hasn’t gotten weaker, while inertia is working to keep the status quo the same.
Picture the status quo as a bowling ball on a trampoline. Once the ball is placed on the trampoline, it creates a depression that makes it hard to change the position of the ball. And over time, the trampoline fabric gets weaker, leaving the bowling ball at the bottom of a deeper and deeper depression. Getting fundamental change to occur – pushing the bowling ball off the trampoline – is very hard, especially for a well-established status quo.
Objective Observer
Fine, firebaggers. Primary his ass. Get someone and do it, you chickenshits.
someguy
@Glen Tomkins:
Nice book Glen. I’ll make a point of putting that on the read pile.
Sheila
You’re probably right about this, mistermix, but remember also that had Obama mentioned the stalled bill in the Senate, the ever-fatuous pundits would have been shouting that he used this opportunity to play politics.
arguingwithsignposts
Wow, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Wal-Mart) is against unions. Whocoodanode?
ETA: I will repeat what I said after the primary run-off: I think it would behoove the Obama administration to keep their nose out of primary politics. If they want to campaign for someone, wait until the party faithful make their voices heard and then stump for the dem candidate in the general election campaign. And double for the Clenis.
Glen Tomkins
@someguy: Gee, sorry I couldn’t run it down for you as a 30-second TV spot.
JMY
@Objective Observer:
He gets a primary, I believe Dems definitely lose the WH and Congress. I would be less willing to vote and that would make me no better than the people who want him to be primaried in 2012
Church Lady
@Davis X. Machina: Ding Ding Ding!!!!!
mnpundit
He’s so afraid of failing publicly that he’s failing on the grand scale and not even realizing it.
anticontrarian
I think I have to agree with mnpundit. For someone who promised to be a transformational president, he sure doesn’t seem to be taking any chances.
If anyone’s interested, my personal take on the speech can be found here.
Mnemosyne
@anticontrarian:
You mean that after getting beaten up by both sides for almost two years every time he took a chance, he’s stopped taking chances?
Well, color me shocked there.
Admiral_Komack
@John S.:
And if he tries a fiat, they’ll say the nigger’s a dictator.
Nick
@anticontrarian:
His entire presidency is one giant leap of faith. Doing stuff like proposing a healthcare bill or energy bill AT ALL is the biggest chance I’ve seen a President take in my lifetime, with the possible exception of 1993. If you guys can’t see that, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Robert Waldmann
I don’t think the word “ever” means what you think it means. I’d say ever has a meaning fairly close to always and the financial regulatory reform bill hasn’t always been weakened. In particular, the senate bill is in many ways stronger than the house bill and the senate banking/agriculture merged bill is definitely stronger than the banking committee bill.
I haven’t kept up with the latest news, and don’t know what watering down might be occuring. I’d guess it is a relaxation of the derivatives desk spin off provision.
Whether or not it is relevant to this post, I consider focusing only on that provision to be the epitome of firebagging. In many accounts that one provision is called “tough derivatives reform.” No claim that it is more important than exchange trading and clearing is made. I’d say that the exchange trading and clearing provisions of derivatives reform are important, although there are many other equally important aspects of the financial regulatory reform bill.
To some, derivatives trading desk spin off is the issue, because it is the controversial issue. Therefore it is the issue of interest to those who consider actual policy to be a way of keeping score in the really important struggle to see whose got a bigger di… uh caucus, the progressives or the bluedogs.
More generally, if any compromise is proof that someone just doesn’t get it (here Congress at firedoglake Obama) then you can always claim that they don’t get it and you do. They compromise. Adding a provision which is strongly opposed and not very useful to remove it is just good strategy.
At least it is clear what the point of the public option was, but what is the point of spinning off derivatives trading desks ?
Bill Murray
@Nick: what are you like 30? Proposed major health care bills go back to at least Truman — and would include at least Truman, Johnson and Clinton, the Civil Rights Act (s) was major legislation. Every President since probably Nixon had an energy bill/policy