David Freddoso
PattericoRep. Scott Garrett (R, N.J.) spoke to NRO late last night about Obama's performance in the presser. Among the things he pointed out was a classical rhetorical device that Obama uses well, even if its origins go back millennia.
I think he gave, on a couple of occasions, a false choice — "Either we do this," he said, and laid out his plan, "or the alternative is, we do nothing at all." I heard that a couple of times, and I thought, that's not a very accurate assessment of the situation. He's assuming that either you do it his way or the highway, because there's no alternative. And we know — or I know, as a member of the Republican Study Committee and as a Republican — that there have been a slew of alternatives proposed, not just by the Republican Party but from I'll say half of America, in the sense of outside groups. There are a number of alternatives, but he just seems to reject them immediately them out of hand.
I thought of a few of Obama's statements along these lines. We choose either his entire program of massive deficit spending or we choose "an economy built on reckless speculation, inflated home prices, and maxed-out credit cards." We either choose his budget, which is "inseparable from this recovery," or we go back to "the very same policies that have led us to a narrow prosperity and massive debt."
Obama frames himself as the man with all of the solutions.
Ed MorisseyPres. Obama went on TV again Tuesday night to flog his “too much, too soon” approach to government, claiming his budget is inseparable from economic recovery, particularly his proposals on healthcare, clean energy, deficit reduction and education.
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, key Democratic Congressional leaders were already performing major surgery on the Obama budget. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad’s mark does not provide for Obama’s signature middle-class tax cut or money for future bank bailouts, and merely patches the alternative minimum tax increasingly hitting the middle class. Technically, these should all be counted as gimmicks, as it is virtually certain these will pass as needed.
More significantly, Obama’s ginormous global warming tax will not be fast-tracked in either chamber, while (as thought yesterday) healthcare will not be rammed through the Senate. Indeed, Conrad said he would leave out new spending for Obama’s proposed expansion of healthcare coverage. It is tough to see how a deficit-neutral Obamacare proposal emerges from the bowels of Capitol Hill.
Moreover, Sen. Evan Bayh’s Gang of 16 moderate Democrats — without whom the Democrats cannot move a budget — plan to push for further cuts. Obama’s ineffectual astroturfing seems unlikely to change this environment.
Accordingly, Pres. Obama spent last night talking to the TV audience (many of whom would have preferred American Idol), while the audience that really matters — Congress — plans to punt on at least two of his key priorities in favor of the deficit reduction Obama only claims to champion.
This exchange took place between Ed Henry of CNN and President Obama during last night’s White House event, when Obama thought he’d gotten the best of Henry:Ed Morissey againHenry: But on AIG, why did you wait — why did you wait days to come out and express that outrage? It seems like the action is coming out of New York and the attorney general’s office. It took you days to come public with Secretary Geithner and say, “Look, we’re outraged.” Why did it take so long?
Obama: It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.
The problem with this is that it took him a couple of days — and he still got it wrong. If you’ll recall, Obama and his team first claimed to know nothing about the bonuses, and then modified that claim to knowing nothing about the amendment in the omnibus plan that allowed them to get paid. Subsequently, we discovered that not only did Tim Geithner and Congress discuss the bonuses on March 3rd (and that Geithner wrote an e-mail about them while with the New York Fed in November), but that it was Geithner and his staff that directed Chris Dodd to make the necessary changes to the amendment that enabled the bonuses. In otherwords, Outraged Obama made the bonuses possible.
Even the press laughed at this Obamateurism. Even after a couple of days on an issue, Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I want to make one final point about Barack Obama and his “I inherited the deficit” meme, one made earlier today by Bruce McQuain at QandO.Some questions that should have been asked last night are here. Too bad the press no longer does its job, or we could have had some real answers.I’m not about to let Bush and the Republicans off the hook for the spending from 2001-6. They abandoned the principles of smaller government and fiscal responsibility in an orgy of spending. However, the deficit actually peaked in 2004 and began declining until 2008, when another orgy of private-industry bailouts shot it to the highest levels of the Bush administration.
However, Bush doesn’t allocate funds to the federal government: Congress spends the money. Democrats controlled Congress in 2007 and 2008, and had plenty of opportunity to cut the budget and reduce spending to trim the deficit. Did they do so? No; in fact, they increased the budgetary spending at a rate higher than that of the Republicans when the GOP controlled Congress.
And even more, the 2009 budget wasn’t Bush’s at all. The Democrats held up most of it, outside of defense spending, in order to wait for the next President. Instead, they passed continuing resolutions until pushing through the omnibus spending bill for the 2009 budget — which was signed by President Obama this month.
More to the point, Barack Obama was a member of Congress during the last four years. What did Obama do to reduce the deficits as the Senator from Illinois? What legislation did he author? What opposition did he provide to the high-spending policies of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in 2007 and 2008?
If the answer is nothing — and it is — then Obama inherited the fruits of his own inaction and the burden of his own party’s policies. Perhaps the national media, which seemed to have awoken a little from their slumber last night, might fully achieve consciousness at the next one and give him this little civics lesson.
Bottom line: Obama flubbed this appearance, too. His delivery was weak because he tried to get away from Teleprompter (though he still used a giant TV at the back of the room), and his statements were full of holes and deceptions.
In other words, it was classic Obama.
There's my two cents.
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