Sunday, May 24, 2009
Suddenly, Barack Obama's inexperience is an excuse
On the front page of today's New York Times in an article about the Gitmo argument, we get this (bold emphasis added):
Now the consensus from the campaign trail [that Guantanamo should be closed] has dissolved, leaving Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike at odds with the White House. The conflagration has been fanned by the determined focus of Republican leaders, fed by the alarms of talk-show populists and aided by the miscalculation of a new president who set a date for a closing without announcing a detailed plan for the inmates. The debate now threatens to make it much harder for Mr. Obama to keep his campaign promise.
I could swear that during the campaign somebody pointed out that Barack Obama's inexperience was not a feature, but a bug. Who knew it was an excuse?
8 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun May 24, 10:20:00 AM:
We warned them.
President Obama is going to make more mistakes as he "learns on the job". If he doesn't learn real, real fast his mistakes are going to get more serious as time goes on.
It would have been better if the MSM would have done more reporting on President Obama's lack of experience way before the election.
By , at
Sun May 24, 10:54:00 AM:
So which is it ... immensely powerful or inexperienced ... can it be both? How about arrogant to a fault.
The most effective opposition to Obama will come from his own party. With the Democrats in total control, they're starting to turn on each other. Obama is already having trouble keeping the factions of his own party in line. Business leaders may be cowering, but not Dennis Kucinich ... god love him.
The NYT's article shows that Senate Democrats didn't want to be on the wrong side of Gitmo detainees getting shipped stateside, and have made this clear for some time ... but still Obama jammed it ... and even grandstanded. Can you imagine LBJ being so wrong-footed with his own Senate majority? If Obama had ever been any kind of legislative leader he'd understand this.
Further, if I understand it right ... Obama made waterboarding a big issue by releasing old legal opinions when he didn't have to. Pelosi got outed because of this -- I'm not hearing anything about the inside baseball of this -- but I can't believe Pelosi is happy with Obama right now. Meanwhile, Reid is getting beat up in Nevada because Obama is single-handedly killing the Vegas convention industry.
Obama will now receive the California poisoned chalice -- he can't not antagonize whole swaths of people and their elected representatives -- many of them Democrats -- over how he handles his bailout of California. It's just a question of how badly it plays and when. There'll be a temptation to accelerate California's share of stimulus, which begs the question of why it wasn't hitting in 2009 already ... wait until we see what it gets spent on, when California can't even afford to pay its schoolteachers.
Obama will soon control GMAC, which has turned itself into a bank holding company ... GMAC is now aggressively gathering deposits. We can expect GMAC to aggressively finance the purchase of Obamamobiles. This would make the federal government a zaibatsu, something prohibited by the Bank Holding Company Act. If you’re from any of the several states that make Toyotas or Hondas, how long will you put up with your own federal government “dumping” product at a loss. Will Kentucky be forced to bring an action before the World Trade Organization against the US?
If Obama had even been a small-time mayor he'd understand the politics of budgets and trade-offs. Instead we have a guy intent on one man command-and-control.
Obama's overextended. He's waking up to the fact that he's tapped out financially -- he has no room to maneuver because of this. I gave Obama too much credit that he could manage a trillion dollar slush fund through 2011 -- he's clueless at budgeting. He's at the point where he and Axelrod and Rahm have to run whole swaths of our economy through a neutered Treasury department -- it will break down -- and it won't just be Republicans who are screaming.
I expect we'll soon see cracks in his calm and his cool.
Link, over
By , at
Sun May 24, 11:00:00 AM:
The Telegraph quotes Joe Biden as admitting ignorance on the complexity of the subject og Gitmo, on the part of the administration and not merely himself, and Marc Ambinder suddenly thinks there is difficulty in figuring out what to do next.
Don't forget to take your daily dose of Irony today, Mr. Bush.
By 
JPMcT, at
Sun May 24, 11:31:00 AM:
Hmmm, I was wondering why Bush was sitting on the sidelines. Was it respect for the presidency? Fear of his low approval ratings? Security issues? Depression?
NONE of the above...if W opens his mouth in a manner akin to Cheney, he will shift the focus on himself and give Obama ammunition to reactivate "campaign-mode" rhetoric.
Bush is playing it smart for the good of his party.
By , at
Sun May 24, 03:29:00 PM:
I have a liberal friend at work who is constantly commenting on how calm Barack is during a speech or talk show appearance. I believe it was Thomas Sowell who said that only somebody who had never managed anything could so calmly anticipate no problems as he sets out to manage everything. At some point even the media cheering section have got to start noticing the gap between their expectations and the reality.
Mangas Colorados
By , at
Sun May 24, 05:41:00 PM:
Mangas, what worries me about Obama is that as calm as he seems to be, his changes to our economy, our country and our alliances are obviously radical. And yet, no one in our free press thinks to even remark about the obvious, much less object. I wonder why that is, because in the course of these changes, and despite his ignorance and inexperience, he's running roughshod over a diverse set of industries and even over individuals. Sooner or later, it won't just be capitalists and republicans who is destroyed, it'll be someone the press actually likes will be among the casualties.
As Spengler says,
"There is a consistent theme to the administration's major policy initiatives: Obama and his advisors start from the way they think things ought to be and work backwards to the uncooperative real world. If reality bars the way, it had better watch out."
By Georg Felis, at
Sun May 24, 08:04:00 PM:
and in 3.5 years, his supporters will point to that invaluable experience of his term in the presidency to prove that nobody else on the face of the planet could possibly be a qualified as Him.
*sigh*
By , at
Mon May 25, 05:54:00 AM:
Obama is immensely powerfully inexperienced and subject to major miscalculations in his policies. But hey, he looks good in front of a teleprompter, and that's all that is needed for the President. Gee, I wonder who might have made mention that closing Gitmo was a bad idea cause there's no way to bring them to the States and no one else wanted them, and there were really dangerous people out there, so only a greenhorn could make that boast?
Oh, yeah, that was the idiot Gov Palin. So once again, the people who are considered 'idiots' in the Republican party are smarter than the smartest people in the democrap party. No wonder dems get so strung out on drugs, that's a terrible life lesson, that the most stupid republican is head and shoulders smarter than the best and the brightest of your party. Rock on Darth Cheney, Sarah Palin, George W.
