Huffington: The Audacity To Win; The Timidity to Govern

Seems that Arianna Huffington (The audacity to win; the timidity to govern) hasn't learned what I'm learning -- that there are processes and procedures and politics deeply entrenched in Washington that have to be dealt with, whether we like it or not. I was hoping all those new to the political process because of last fall's events would learn, for example, that the U.S. Senate is a particularly frustrating body -- by design -- and serves its purpose best when it grinds sea-change level legislation into a better (if not best) form. That takes a lot of time and screaming and empty rhetoric and even back room dealing. I never expected magic to happen with an Obama administration and still don't. Seems as though Huffington always has and always will, and that she doesn't understand that there is a difference between campaigning and governing. During a campaign, you get to promise; once you reach the big chair, you have to deal with the realities on the ground in order to get things done.

I still expect big changes, and they've already begun to occur. The incredibly unpopular -- on the Right and Left -- stimulus package, along with other measures, including a few implemented late in the Bush administration, kept us from another Great Depression and is pulling us into a recovery. If he did nothing else his first year, that would have been major, but he's also on the verge of fulfilling a major campaign promise -- to deliver health care reform, something every previous president who tried failed -- that would also radically change how we do things in this country. Huffington's insistence on the public option is overwrought, considering the Congressional Budget Office has determined it won't cover many people and won't be a major catalyst in bending the "cost curve." It's not necessary. Health care reform itself it. The audacity to govern isn't to become a belligerent tyrant or adhering to a single ideology, it's about getting important things done.

Comments

[Robert Meek]

Sorry, Mr. Bailey, but Huffington is right.
Obama has catered to Snowe.
He has surrounded himself with old players, used old politics.
He did choose an economic advisor (Summers) who argued against extending unemployment benefits. Summers has the position that nothing can be done about foreclosures, increasing unemployment job numbers, and yes, she is right, that is opposite of "Yes, we can!"
Senator Obama is on record FOR "Single Payer."
Candidate Obama is on record FOR Medicare-for-all.
That got dropped for "Public Option," which no one really can define.
That got dropped for "health insurance cooperatives," at one point, and through all of this, every time the Republicans bellowed and spit vitriolic lies, Obama's Administration cringed, writhed, cowed, and struggled all the more to compromise in the name of "bipartisanship"!
How many times does anyone, including Obama, have to be treated like crap with rage and disrespect, to realize that THAT group, the one doing that, is not going to help at all?
Where is his SPINE to stand up to congress, and insist on a STRONG public option, not a WEAK one that has a "trigger" and will only cover 3% of us.
Huffington sees things for what they are, as she usually does.

[Aileron]

Issac,

Where are you getting the idea that the stimulus bill saved us from another great depression? Am I missing something? Unemployment is at 9.8% and climbing. We have stories out of Michigan and Colorado about $220,000 per job and $320,000 per job respectively (if correct the stimulus is an utter failure and collosal waste of taxpayer money). You crowed about cash for clunkers in the past, and yet by most objective reports, it did nothing for the auto industry. Today we learn that CIT (which received billions) is now declaring bankruptcy. Amazingly, Ford (which refused Federal money) is the one US manufacturer that is doing well.

Please help me understand the basis for your claims...

[Issac Baiely]

Aileron: Look up John McCain's former economic advisor and a whole host of other economists and they'll tell you.

[Issac Baiely]

Aileron: Forgot, that advisor's name is Mark Zandi.
Robert: Do you really think the public option is really worth derailing all of health care reform? I don't and never have, and again, campaigning is different from governing. Remember, no president has gotten this close to comprehensive health care reform -- and they've been trying for decades. Decades.

[Aileron]

Here is an article in which Mark Zandi claims that the stimulus has been successful in rescuing the economy:

http://www.reuters.com/article/gc04/idUSTRE59S3GN20091029

What folks need to know is that Zandi was the chief economic advisor pushing the stimulus. He is hardly a disinterested economist. Your attempt to give him credibility by linking him to John McCain is silly. The fact that he was an advisor to John McCain does not give him credibility. Backing up his claims with real results is what will give him credibility.

The Obama administration claimed that with the stimulus unemployment could be held below 8%. Without it unemployment would reach 9%. We are at 9.8% and climbing. Mark Zandi was the chief economic advisor on the stimulus projections.

I will continue to search for ojective economists who can show that the stimulus was effective. Perhaps there is objective support for your claim. I suspect as time passes, we will discover that (like cash for clunkers) the stimulus was far less successful than Mr. Zandi and the administration are claiming.

[Sunny Fry]

Two quick things (and I'm back to work)

The trouble with the motif of hope and change is people start hoping for all sorts of things, and get peevish when you can't immediately follow through. Politics is the art of the possible (Bismark) and in a nation where congress makes the laws, the president can't just enact whatever he feels like (thank heaven!). It's tedious, but it works pretty well.

As far as the stimulus, I don't know -- I'm not an economist by any stretch. But there is this -- that the rule of thumb for an economic downturn is to decrease taxes and increase government spending, which puts more money in the hands of consumers and producers (where money is actually *made*).

I'm sure there's an upper limit to that fix; we may have passed it or even blasted way past it. It may be the fix sponsors more long-term problems than it fixes short term.

But I do know that folks who've studied the depression said that the national response to the first recession then was to tighten the money supply and raise interest rates -- which turned a downturn into a full-blown depression. Common sense would then suggest that the opposite approach might be a better bet.

We won't have any sort of clear understanding of it for another 50 years, though, and even then it's going to be debated.

[Brian37]

I get that Obama had a steamy pile dumped on him by the prior administration. I also accept that this, may take some time, even long after his term, to fix.

BUT why would anyone imply that Huffington is oblivious to how our government works is a bit miffing.

Obama does need to be tougher. The other party had 8 years. I don't think anyone taking a shot at cleaning up the mess has to apologize for taking a different direction.

[Aileron]

Here is the benchmark President Obama set to measure the success of the stimulus:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100542251