At what cost

We are entering a place in this administrations history that people who study the direction and actions of the group can effectively analyze what is going on. This article, "All the kings men" does this extremely well.

It is beginning to be "Standard Operating Procedure" for the Obama White House: Mess up, clean up as best you can and move on to the next mess. This past weekend was yet another example.

Last week President Obama jetted around the country to three "Town Hall" meetings and proclaimed that his Health Care Reform Plan was the only way to save the nation's economy from catastrophe. Same technique he used to get the TARP bill passed without anyone knowing what was in it. And today we still don't know how the billions were spent. What a mess.

He used the same "catastrophe" approach with the Cap and Trade legislation which he pushed through Congress before he found out whether China and India would go along with doing their part. They will not, so no matter how much burden Cap and Trade were to put on the American taxpayer and consumer it would have no significant impact on global warming whatsoever. What a mess.

And the list goes on. Both big and small fiascos from Team Obama.

We'll spare you the litany and the details of the appointments that were not properly vetted, the Air Farce One flyover of New York, the infamous "date-night" when unemployment was exploding across the land and even the gaffes of not knowing which office the Russian president holds and committing faux pas with the Queen of England. Not huge, but a mess nonetheless.

But to properly frame this report we should point out that most (some would say ALL) of Team Obama's major policy initiatives have been less than spectacularly successful. Except, perhaps for the CEO's of the financial institutions that were bailed out who are now drawing mega-million dollar bonuses still. Six months on and the housing market is still in the pits with thousands of Americans still losing their homes on top of the hundreds of thousands who have already lost their life savings, which will never be recovered for many of them. The bailout of GM and Chrysler failed to prevent their bankruptcy and the attempts to save them have resulted in bond buyers being everso reluctant to invest in American companies. What a huge mess.

And you can say you heard it first here: GM and Chrysler, even with the boondoggle that was "Cash for Clunkers," are still not out of the woods yet, and may not survive longterm. A mess that keeps on going.

The Stimulus is viewed by nearly two thirds of Americans as being a non-success and indeed by many as the most costly failure in history. Team Obama quadrupled an already massive deficit left by GWB yet unemployment continues to climb with no real improvement Team Obama can point to none other than it's not climbing as fast. Remember, candidate Obama promised to create 6 million new jobs. Within days he had revised that to 4.5 million and a few days later he hedged that bet by changing it to "create or save." Of course neither way of saying it matters to the millions who have no job, and even more who have taken lower paying jobs or had their hours cut even though they may still technically not be "unemployed." To call this a "mess" denigrates the enormous human tragedy that these Americans have, are and will continue to suffer for many years to come.

And of course, there is the one about the genius who came up the with the idea to close Gitmo before they knew where they were going to send the terrorists. And we feel no need to further chronicle the debacle that was "the Cambridge cops acted stupidly..."

Week before last the talking heads like Harry Reid were sent out to warn Republicans the "time was running out" on them getting on board the Obama Express Heath Care train or they'd be left in the dust. Then that train wrecked in a series of "Town Hall" meetings that have become historical messes.

So fast-forward to this weekend. After going to New Hampshire, Ohio and Colorado and telling friendly crowds that a Public Option was an essential part of his Health Care Reform, he learned that he did not have the votes to salvage the "end-of-life counseling" provisions in the bill and then he learned that he did not even have the votes in the heavily Democrat Senate to the votes to get the public option out of committee.

And this week the players are scatterd all over the field on the Public Option issue. You have to wonder if they know the Republicans would love for them to proceed to push for it. But whatever the case, it sure does look like a leadership vacuum. Team Obama has grossly miscalculated the Town Hall Syndrome thus far and it appears they will continue to do so short of an epiphany.

And the epiphany is not likely to even occur to them because they think the anger at so many of the town halls is about health care. They still do not realize it is about government control. Failing to grasp that point will cause them to exacerbate, not correct the mess. The irony of it is that at a time when their strategy would call for increasing American's confidence in the effectiveness of government to solve people's problem their bumbling is increasing that distrust.

One suspects that although the double barrel blast his Health Care Reform took last week was certainly more symbolic than substantive on the "death panel" issue, but for the fact that Sarah Palin shot down that idea is bound to be extra bothersome for the Obama/Emanuel cartel.

And on top of all this the White House's handling of the email imbroglio simply added to the Keystone Cops appearance of the Obama Administration. It was not one comedy of errors but two email blunders after first trying to defend the indefensible. Now that was messy.

There was a period a few weeks ago that Obama's personal credibility and "likeability" superceded the policy debacles that were accumulating. But that has changed. His approval ratings have declined faster than any president in modern history. And as we have pointed out, that decline is most troubling (for him) in the unaffiliated/independent voters who voted for him because they saw him as being a "change" from the way they had seen Washington operate in the past. It is these voters he is now losing as we learn about the some of the deals they have already cut with Big Drugs and the dealing has not even really begun yet. Wait until there is a bill that has passed on the floor and better still when there is a conference committee doing the Real Deal.

And Team Obama has been even less successful in foreign affairs. There is, of course, the infamous debacle of how they dealt with the Iranian Revolution. And they have been arguably less successful with North Korea than was Bush & Co. Most notably they failed to convince NATO to help out more in Afghanistan. And things are not going so well in Iraq and the jury is still out on whether the Iraqi secruity forces will be able to hold the lid on when Americans are pulled out. We suspect it will not be too long before some wag will be pointing out that even though candidate Obama cut George Bush no slack on his not catching or disposing of Osama Bin Laden that Obama has done no better.

And some would say our relations with Israel are at the lowest point they have been in years and the Middle East "Peace Process" is not much more of a success than was Obama's trip to Africa to put an end to the genocide there. What they learned there (hopefully) was that brutal dictators don't respond well to sanctimonious lectures.

But we are encouraged. Things have just got to get better. The Law of Averages dictates so.

Meanwhile, the Office Pool is handicapping odds that Team Obama will see staff changes before Labor Day at 50:50, and 10:1 before year's end. The line on Emanuel is 3:1 he's gone by Christmas and 10:1 within three months of Gibbs.


Posted on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 8:33:33 PM by SJackson