Three Perspectives

Here are three very interesting perspective pieces on the current state of Barack Obama's administration.  They're all worth reading in full, but I'll just excerpt them here to whet your appetite.  Go check 'em out!

So far, Obama's failing miserably

When he ran for president, George W. Bush promised to be a modest reformer at home and a humble representative of the United States on the world stage. The Al Qaeda-organized-and-funded terrorist attacks of eight years ago changed all that. During his presidency, Bush created massive new government bureaucracies, sent troops into two wars and threatened more as part of America's war on terror.

Barack Obama's initial approach to the office of the presidency has been as grandiose as Bush's was restrained. It's not hard to recall that he ran as a transformative candidate, promising sweeping, though somewhat fuzzy, "change" during the campaign.

For the first several months of his presidency, Obama has labored to deliver on that pledge. He pushed a controversial stimulus bill through Congress to help rev up the economy, turned Bush's reluctant bailout of Chrysler and General Motors into a giant government auto buyout and appointed a record number of "czars" to help regulate bureaucracies in both public and formerly private sectors.

Then, Step 2. Obama is trying to fundamentally alter the American economy by backing sweeping environmental, labor and health care legislation. He wants to change the way Americans consume energy, unionize and see their doctors.

So far, he's failing miserably.

This article goes into all of the signature pieces of legislation that are in some stage of limping through Congress, and ends with the conclusion that they all may fail.  The big stunner here for me is that this opinion comes from the historically Obama-friendly Politico.com.


Is Obama the next Herbert Hoover?

The last President to initiate a trade war during a recession wound up creating the biggest economic catastrophe in American history. Yet the current President appears to have ignored the lesson of Herbert Hoover and the Smoot-Hawley Act in slapping tariffs on China and its tire exports while the economy struggles to come back to life after a deep recession. The Wall Street Journal wonders where Barack Obama is leading the US, or whether Obama wants to lead at all...

This talks about the recent tariffs he dropped on China, and how it is eerily similar to what Hoover did decades ago that really fouled up the American economy.  If you want to understand one of the biggest potential economic landmines we face, you've got to read this whole thing.


The Obama presidency so far

It is useful from time to time to recap for people who haven't been paying all that close attention. Or for people who are so focused on the little things they've lost sight of the big picture. So here we go; the Obama Presidency in handy bite-size review:

Domestic Policy: Thus far, the President's one major legislative triumph has been the spendulus. He passed it by scare-mongering that we were in for a Second Great Depression if Congress didn't spend money on Democratic priorities that had gone ignored for the past eight years. Obama blathered about "shovel-ready" projects, but the truth is that only a fraction of the thousands of programs in the spendulus have begun and there is a rising movement to cancel the rest of the spendulus as wasteful. Despite Obama's protestations that the spendulus has made things better, the economy has shed so many jobs that we haven't seen unemployment like this in a quarter-century.

Obama's other legislative goals—card check, a new financial sector regulation regime, mortgage reform/cramdown, greenhouse gas emissions control, and universal healthcare—have all stalled. Every bill that Obama bends his will to gets rejected by Democrats in Congress. Of course, Obama blames Republicans in Congress, the wealthy, corporations, and President Bush. Also racism.

This is a great dissertation on the biggest issues of the past few months, and a number of negative indicators for the future of the Obama presidency.  This really is a great recap of where things stand.

Good stuff, all of it.

There's my two cents.