Forty-four's calculation is simple: deliver enough superficial adjustments to the status quo to make a politically defensible argument that he brought "change" to America, thus ensuring his re-election in 2012 against weak opposition from a rump party. It is the same political parlor game his politically successful predecessors have played, earning him the name of just another number in the long line of White House occupants. This strategy can be deduced from the major policy decisions he has recently made. He allows Wall Street banksters, wielding "financial weapons of mass destruction", to lean on his Secretary of Treasury{11.28.09}, and then reappoints a Federal Reserve Chairman considered by experts to be an architect of the bubble economy. He escalates the war in Afghanistan under the fig leaf of a fuzzy withdrawal timeline full of caveats. He abandons the public option for health insurance in order to make a deal with a few intransigent members of his own party, rather than deliver on his campaign promise. And he pursues a private negotiating strategy at the Copenhagen climate summit intended to settle for an unenforceable political promise instead of a binding legal agreement. How do you spell failure?
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Forty-four and the Status Quo
Forty-four's calculation is simple: deliver enough superficial adjustments to the status quo to make a politically defensible argument that he brought "change" to America, thus ensuring his re-election in 2012 against weak opposition from a rump party. It is the same political parlor game his politically successful predecessors have played, earning him the name of just another number in the long line of White House occupants. This strategy can be deduced from the major policy decisions he has recently made. He allows Wall Street banksters, wielding "financial weapons of mass destruction", to lean on his Secretary of Treasury{11.28.09}, and then reappoints a Federal Reserve Chairman considered by experts to be an architect of the bubble economy. He escalates the war in Afghanistan under the fig leaf of a fuzzy withdrawal timeline full of caveats. He abandons the public option for health insurance in order to make a deal with a few intransigent members of his own party, rather than deliver on his campaign promise. And he pursues a private negotiating strategy at the Copenhagen climate summit intended to settle for an unenforceable political promise instead of a binding legal agreement. How do you spell failure?