Oh, About That "End" of the Obama Honeymoon ...
Does watching too much cable TV news turn your brain into gelatinous mush?
Is that wacky Alec Baldwin ad for Hulu about too much TV softening your brain like a ripe banana really true?
It's funny how not paying attention to the latest cable chatter gives you a very different perspective on politics. After a couple of years of paying non-stop attention to all aspects of our hyperactive news flow while covering the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, I decided to check out of cable news for the last week or two. I just read polls, selected news stories and reports, and talked to experts about what was going on. With glitches here and there, it seemed Barack Obama was doing well. Most voters certainly thought highly of him.
Not that I didn't know what was going on with the cable nets. I can't stop doing a little channel surfing, and it was clear that the cable chatters were talking themselves into a tizzy. Obama, they said, was flopping, his presidential honeymoon long since a thing of the past.
President Barack Obama zeroed in on the economic crisis in his weekend video/radio address.
Obama has been president now for 20 days. He's actually gotten some stuff done already, and is close to passing what looks like the beginnings of a new New Deal. And as for his honeymoon being over, maybe so inside the yaposphere, but outside it, eh, not so much.
Tomorrow, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a key backer of John McCain's Republican presidential primary campaign, will join President Barack Obama at his town hall meeting in Myers, Florida. Crist and several other major Republican governors, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed a letter last week backing Obama on his economic revival program.
Later, a small group of Republican governors mainly from the Deep South came out against the program. They actually got more media coverage. Go figure.
The polls? Well, they're good. Actually, very good. They've been good right along, while Obama's presidency was supposedly collapsing.
The brand-new Gallup Poll shows Barack Obama with a 66% job approval rating. Only 21% disapprove.
Obama is also rated much higher than his Republican opponents on the economic issue. Despite a lot of pounding in recent days, his economic recovery program has a wide margin of popular support.
While conservatives have poked a few holes in the package - thanks in no small measure to some congressional Democrats pinning a kick me sign to it with a number of add-ons that are easy to make fun of - Obama has a whopping 67% approval rating on the economic stimulus while congressional Republicans have only a 31% approval on the issue.
President Barack Obama at his town hall meeting today in Elkhart, Indiana.
Other credible polls say much the same thing. Even the Republican Rasmussen poll has Obama's approval very high.
It looks like the Senate will adopt a version of Obama's economic recovery program early this week, which then must be reconciled with the version that sailed through the House of Representatives late last month. Obama wants that reconciliation done swiftly.
In future, although in reality this is all happening very quickly, since the guy was inaugurated exactly 20 days ago, Obama and company might want to avoid letting entrenched congressmembers write too much of their legislation. That provided some easy, though relatively minor, targets for their opposition and the ADD media culture to chew on throughout the day. But in the end, the chatter won't matter.
Has Obama and his team made some other mistakes? Sure. Mistakes always happen. Two things matter about that. Are you moving in the right direction, especially in contrast to your opposition? And do you make needed adjustments?
There have been a couple of misfiring appointments. And Obama may have been too enamored of bipartisanship, for example.
That is to say, too enamored of political bipartisanship, not rhetorical bipartisanship. The non-hyperpartisan public likes the idea of bipartisanship. It would certainly be a good thing if everybody worked together.
President Barack Obama told the Democratic congressional retreat Friday night in Virginia that Republicans are forgetting that their ideas have been rejected.
But it's not much of a surprise that only a few Republicans will play along in a substantive way. It would be nice to think that John McCain, after his unfortunately erratic performance on economic policy in the campaign, would have learned that tax cuts uber alles is not a credible approach. He hasn't yet.
What a lot of folks chattering away on the tube have apparently forgotten is that the Republicans got killed in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
They lost 52 seats in the House of Representatives and 14 seats in the U.S. Senate.
Those big defeats carved away a lot of relatively moderate Republicans, especially in the House, where gerrymandered districts drawn for safe incumbencies are the order of the day in both parties. What's left for the Republicans is a more dominant hard right-wing core.
So, knowing that, is it a mistake to call for bipartisanship, knowing that all but a few Republicans won't really respond because they are inherently incapable of responding? Of course not. To the public, if not the pundits, it makes the Republicans look worse. And that is what the polls show.
Fox News commentator Glenn Beck claimed that Obama is ushering in a "Communist" regime. With children's health insurance and capping executive pay in financial outfits in any new government bail-out to $500,000 a year.
Is it a mistake to prod Rush Limbaugh into further exercising his massive ego? Maybe to a pundit who wants to get promoted by Limbaugh's strange running mate, Matt Drudge. But not for the public, most of which does not like Limbaugh and regards him as an errant extremist.
Where Obama may have made a mistake is in being too substantively accommodating -- say, on tax cuts, which are a less efficient way of stimulating the economy than infrastructure development -- with people who are basically not going to support him except in the event of an extraterrestrial invasion.
And even then, some of these folks would balk, claiming that Obama himself was the aliens' advance guard. Or that without Guantanamo Bay there is no way to win.
But those are the details. In the overall, Obama is doing pretty darn well.
You can check things out during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.
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Krugman: Obama Let Centrists Hurt Stimulus Bill
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Stimulus, Yes; Bank Bailout II, No
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Economic Stimulus: Investing in Vets Delivers a Huge Bang for the Buck
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Billionaire For A Day: A More Entertaining Economic Stimulus Package
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Bipartisanship Fetishism vs. What's Best for America: Obama Needs to Choose
At last night's press conference, CBS's Chip Reid asked President Obama about whether, given the lack of bipartisanship on the stimulus bill, the White House was "moving away" from its "emphasis on bipartisanship?" Obama replied that his "bottom line when it comes to the recovery package" is: does it create or save jobs? That's good to hear because the president's actions over the last couple of weeks have left many wondering whether bipartisanship, rather than what's best for America, has been his priority. Perhaps there will come a day when the Venn diagrams of the Republican Party and the national interest actually intersect. But, at the moment, we find ourselves with a GOP whose leaders believe, among other things, that government jobs are not real jobs, and that Obama's stimulus plan is "the socialist way." Hard for bipartisanship to flourish in this kind of atmosphere.
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Palin's Facebook Page: Opposes Obama's Stimulus Plan
We learn on Facebook that Palin has "serious concerns" with Obama's stimulus package. Say what?
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Stimulate Me!
Experts seem relatively unified, if such a thing is possible, on the issue of direct economic stimulus to every taxpayer. They're against it.
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Just imagine: What if McCain Had Won the Election and Obama had Shafted him During the Stimulus Debate?
Um, are McCain's feelings after losing an election the big question on people's minds in the nation? I think the stimulus package is the focus of the country right now, don't you?
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Where's Ross Perot When You Need Him?
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Rahm Throws Pelosi Under The Bus To Save Stimulus Bill
The story of the morning seems to be that the Obama team is unhappy with Nancy Pelosi and the House committee chairs for delivering up such a liberal, pork-laden bill that they themselves really had nothing to do with.
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Our Twin Crises
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Spaghetti Economics
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Steele Crazy After All This Year
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Patriotic Extortion
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Command and Control?
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Why the Stimulus is Needed, Part II
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House vs. Senate Stimulus Bills
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A Better Stimulus for the Economy
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The Truth About the Stimulus Package
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Operation Zero Cred
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Stimulus Package: If You Jump Halfway Across a Chasm You Fall Into the Abyss
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Delusional or Just Cynical?
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Change vs. Bipartisanship: What Happens When You Throw a Bipartisan Party and Half the Guest List Stays Home?
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Obama Financial Team to Taxpayers: You'll Get Nothing, and Like It
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No, Seriously: Republicans Don't Get It
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Selling Stimulus
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A New Movement
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Bipartisanship (is) for Dummies
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Stimulating
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Obama: Use This And the Jobs Bill Will Pass With a 100 Vote Margin
Our best salesman is Obama. There is no house or senate member who this president cannot roll over.
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Pulling the Wool Over Our Eyes
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Obama to Speak Monday Night on Stimulus While Rep. Pete Sessions Says Republicans Are the New Taliban
If the media hadn't acted so irresponsibly the past two weeks and President Obama hadn't tried to be so bipartisan, he might not have had to take to the airwaves, but that's not the case anymore.
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Our Phone Calls Are Working, Don't Let Up!
If representatives know that's what their constituents want, they will be both more inclined to keep that critical public investment from the House bill, and act with the speed.
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Obama Undermines Jobs Mandate For the Sake of Bipartisanship
Roosevelt had the New Deal, Kennedy had the New Frontier, Johnson had the Great Society, and Obama has...the stimulus plan. An abstract goal with fungible components that valued process above all else.
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Lions Coach Up Steelers on Stimulus Package
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Republicans Say They'd Support the "Right" Stimulus Bill, But Stimulus for Them Is Only More Tax Cuts
If you look closely at what the Republicans are saying, this isn't a debate on the merits of this stimulus legislation, but rather another round of policy battles fought during last year's campaign.
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Democrats in Congress Need to Learn How to Lead
I am losing patience with congressional Democrats' innate instinct to capitulate, something that has been evident since the November 2006 mid-term elections.
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I don't watch cable news since I lost my job. When I was at work, I watched CNN and Fox during my breaks, because that was what was on tv... one or the other. When it came to the pure news content, there was not a significant difference between the two. They were both running the same 'blood, tears, and scandal' variety of tabloid newstainment with little of what I consider to be real journalistic value.
Since I lost my job, I read the news on the web. While there is plenty of 'newstainment' here too, I am more easily able to avoid it.
Commercial media is just that: commercial. Everything is driven by advertising dollars. People complain every day about what influence money has on Washington. What influence, then, does money have on the news? Why is no great movement underfoot to clean up the media? The political argument is that campaign donations are a first amendment right because money equals speech. Does that mean control over the 'free press' by corporate money is also justified by the first amendment?
If the 'free market' and 'free press' are dominated by corporate money because 'money equals speech', is it possible to protect the constitutional freedoms of individual American citizens by any means?
Yes, more massive debt and massive overspending on foolishness is going to help our problem of massive debt and massive overspending.......absurd.
What's absurd is your hypocrisy. Your party took a big budget surplus and turned it into the biggest deficits in history. Your party took a strong economy and turned it into a shambles with your feed the rich policies.
What you don't get is that this economy is in the tank without a big stimulus. You lost again, big time, in the Senate. Get used to it.
Who said it was my party? Why is it that if you criticize anything on this site, you are automatically assumed to be a republican? I know it must be difficult for you democrats-are-good-republicans-are-bad robots, but there are still a few of us left who think for ourselves. A few of us who decry out of control spending and debt when both parties do it. But what do you care......someone else will pay for it, right?
Try thinking for yourself for once.
'Debt' and 'spending' are not themselves the problem. Debt and spending are necessary parts of any economy. The question is one of 'good' debt versus 'bad' debt (as the credit market demonstrates) and 'good' spending versus 'bad' spending. What monetarists fail to understand is that while sound fiscal policy will do you very well in good times, it may not help you at all during bad times.
In 2001, facing the biggest budget surplus in years, a Republican House and a Senate coalition of Republicans and Democratic centrists chose to spend the surplus to fund tax cuts rather than pursuing the proper course in times of economic prosperity: raising (or at least maintaining) tax levels and paying down the national debt. The whole national system of credit is based on paying down the debt in times of economic prosperity.
Pursuing tax cuts, which continued through reckless military adventures (and regardless of whether you are for or against Iraq and Afghanistan, strategically and militarily speaking both were pursued quite recklessly) that increased government spending exponentially beyond the norm with little practical domestic benefit and uneven strategic results, ballooned the deficit and made it impossible to pay down the debt. Indeed, the debt has ballooned to new record levels along with the deficit. This is 'bad' debt and 'bad' spending. This is why people and corporations go bankrupt.
One cannot 'save' one's way out of financial crisis. One has to invest. Investment means borrowing and spending.
I never said they were the problem. I said MASSIVE debt and MASSIVE OVER spending. Read a bit more carefully, please...... and if you think that those two things aren't a problem, then you must be someone who doesn't have their own business, or doesn't pay taxes. Not your problem, right?
And the spending you call for...... Yeah, I'd be fine with that if they actually BUILT FREAKING SOMETHING. You know, like a power plant, a dam, a highway system..... Where is that? Instead, we get freaking std preventions and money for community organizers..... what a colossal waste of money this is......
See William Bradley's Profile
You know, you keep saying the same far right stuff, over and over, on my column threads.
A great day for Obama. His weekend speech really set it up for him.
That Glenn Beck is a real tool.
See William Bradley's Profile
That is a remarkable piece of footage. Fox has really dropped the pretense.
I am NOT defending Beck. I think his political and economic views are not not only wrong, but represent the pinnacle of 'I've got mine, everyone else can go hang' philosophy in economics and politics that got us into this mess.
That said, he is a comedian. Moreso than any of the other conservative pundits (who are all 'entertainers' to some degree) his foremost focus is humor. He is the conservative version of Bill Maher. Taking him too seriously is a mistake. His act is meant to be over the top and excessively nasty, to get the laugh.
The real problems are not Beck, or socialsm, but the selfish and nasty human nature that makes 'socialism' a slur to get a cheap laugh and replaces the public good with 'I shouldn't have to pay my taxes to help anyone else improve their lives even if their taxes DID pay my student loans.'
Obama really laid it down at that congressional retreat in Virginia. These Republicans are so reduced to the right-wing base that they're acting like lemmings.
See William Bradley's Profile
They're going with what they know.
which clearly isnt much.
I guess when the Republicans are down to their right-wing base they just regurgitate their creed.
Obama did really well in that town hall meeting this morning.
The ALec Baldwin spot was the best in the whole Super Bowl.
See William Bradley's Profile
I love it. I know it's not political per se. But it is a commentary on the media culture.
The media culture is too much of the political culture, no?
It was hilarious.
The "yaposphere." Love it!
See William Bradley's Profile
Indeed.
Mr Bradley, are these not the same pundits on the cable channels who said that Clinton had a chance in the primaries......Palin was highly popular...McCain won every debate etc.. OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE PUBLIC!
I have come to the conclusion that these pundits talk for the sake of talking, and to tell you the truth I have lost all respect for most. Love the direct Keith O and Rachel M...the rest are paranoid, out of touch with the people's thoughts and wishes, rather petty and need to upgrade their approach and get with the change!
The last 20 days has seen me at odds with these channels as I keep reaching to slap the screen and I have now reached the point where I do not switch on anymore, because I think I am way smarter than most of them..can you imagine?
Thanks for keeping it real Mr Bradley.
See William Bradley's Profile
Yes, they are. You're welcome.
Well said Trinidadgirl....I can't even watch them anymore because i feel they are completely full of sh*it
Did you mean full of IT? lol
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