Breaking It Down With The Commentator

Aside from a bunch of "duhs" in this op-ed, there are a couple of paragraphs I'd like to break down in Frank Rich's piece in the NYT.

It was not a referendum on Barack Obama, who in every poll remains one of the most popular politicians in America. It was not a rejection of universal health care, which Massachusetts mandated (with Scott Brown's State Senate vote) in 2006. It was not a harbinger of a resurgent G.O.P., whose numbers remain in the toilet. Brown had the good sense not to identify himself as a Republican in either in his campaign advertising or in his victory speech.

So, what was it about?

Gotcha. It was about everything else. Remind me again?

Dunno. According to Rasmussen, the GOP look ok. Didn't Obama get in less on his ideas and more on the anti-Bush vote? And what about Obama's approval ratings? 

In a two-party system, when one falls the other stands to gain. Simple really.

And yet Tuesday's special election was a dire omen for this White House. 

Huh? I thought you just said...aw forget it.

Obama’s 50-ish percent first-anniversary approval rating matches not just Carter's but Reagan's. (Bushes 41 and 43 both skyrocketed in Year One.) Still, minor adjustments can’t right what’s wrong. 

I would love to see his source for 50ish because from what I've seen it's more like 40ish. Wait. I'm confused. First he sets it up that the loss wasn't what people think it was about, and that Obama's approval ratings still look healthy but yet he's deluding himself? That major adjustments are needed?

The president is no longer seen as a savior but as a captive of the interests who ginned up the mess and still profit, hugely, from it.

Newsflash. He always was a captive. When Goldman and GE gives you the dough you got you're pretty much taking it in the ass.

It’s a business culture where the rich and well-connected get richer while the employees, shareholders and customers get the shaft. And the conviction that the game is fixed is nonpartisan. If the tea party right and populist left agree on anything, it’s that big bailed-out banks have and will get away with murder while we pay the bill on credit cards — with ever-rising fees.

It's hard to disagree with this. However, can we cut it out with the "dysfunctional" economy thing? Our economy is not dysfunctional. Small-medium size businesses are pretty healthy. What's fucked up and makes it dysfunctional is the constant government intervention and the collusion with their buddies at the top.

Worse, the master communicator in the White House has still not delivered a coherent message on his signature policy. He not only refused to signal his health care imperatives early on but even now he, like Congressional Democrats, has failed to explain clearly why and how reform relates to economic recovery — or, for that matter, what he wants the final bill to contain. Sure, a president needs political wiggle room as legislative sausage is made, but Scott Brown could and did drive his truck through the wide, wobbly parameters set by Obama.

Ask yourself this: All these months later, do you yet know what the health care plan means for your family’s bottom line, your taxes, your insurance? It’s this nebulousness, magnified by endless Senate versus House squabbling, that has allowed reform to be caricatured by its foes as an impenetrable Rube Goldberg monstrosity, a parody of deficit-ridden big government. 

I'm not sure, but I think he just agreed with Limbaugh and the right.  That being said, I think he makes a valid point. It really didn't take a financial genius to do the math. Even this guy figured it out.

On the economic front, Obama needs both stylistic and substantive makeovers. He has stepped up the populist rhetoric lately — and markedly after political disaster struck last week — but few find this serene Harvard-trained lawyer credible when slinging populist rhetoric at "fat-cat" bankers.

Just something that was painfully obviously to some. I always got the distinct feeling he was about to pull out a chalk - a yellow one. I hated the yellow ones - to explain his lesson - erm, policies.

His two principal economic policy makers are useless, if not counterproductive, surrogates. Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary, was probably fatally compromised from the moment his tax lapses surfaced; now he is stalked by the pileup of unanswered questions about the still-not-transparent machinations at the New York Fed when he was knee-deep in the A.I.G. bailout. Lawrence Summers, the top administration economic guru, is a symbol of the Clinton-era deregulatory orgy that helped fuel the bubble.

It's nice to see some honesty spelled out this way in a major paper like the NYT.


Never mind that the Bush White House gave us the bank (and A.I.G.) bailouts, or that the G.O.P. is even more in hock than Democrats to corporate patrons. The Obama administration is so overstocked with Goldman Sachs-Robert Rubin alumni and so tainted by its back-room health care deals with pharmaceutical and insurance companies that conservative politicians, Brown included, can masquerade shamelessly as the populist alternative.

True, that he did. However, no one asked Obama to do it either. Heck, he expanded it! I don't know. I heard Brown speak a lot in the past month and he doesn't sound like an opportunistic populist. He just simply capitalized on the mood of the people. He spread for them.

*Bites Chinese pear*

Last year the president pointedly studied J.F.K.’s decision-making process on Vietnam while seeking the way forward in Afghanistan. In the end, he didn’t emulate his predecessor and escalated the war. We’ll see how that turns out. Meanwhile, Obama might look at another pivotal moment in the Kennedy presidency — and this time heed the example.

This paragraph confuses me. Didn't JFK actually start the Vietnam festivities? Obama inherited his war. So how could he emulate him?

Can anyone picture Obama exerting such take-no-prisoners leadership to challenge those who threaten our own economic recovery and stability at a time of deep recession and war? That we can’t is a powerful indicator of why what happened in Massachusetts will not stay in Massachusetts if this White House fails to reboot.

How's about this: He doesn't try to be omnipotent. The mistake, I guess, was believing people were ripe for an FDR 'New Deal' type thing. They may want action, but not the action the Democrats want to deliver. For example, the insanity of trying to ram health care in an economic downturn.

Bah.

What do I know? I just wanted to add a post.