Quote:
Originally Posted by stars99
Well, there has been a lot of talk about how Obama is "failing"...
But, as we know, he showed signs of tremendous genius from early on...perhaps we do just not get his vision. He is a chess player and the game he is playing is so far over or heads that we cannot see the full picture right now.
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Hmmmm. How do I approach this starry-eyed adulation?
Okay, I'll bite.
I have not seen a sign of genius in the man, unless you count reading off a nearby TelePrompter.
To be honest, his political moves since moving into the White House have been ham-handed and really out of touch.
I think you forget that the business of politics is convincing people. In that sense, you have a man who has utterly failed in that regard.
To be fair to the man, he inherited a first-class economic crisis, but even then his political moves were dubious. The selection of Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury was a seriously dubious move, especially considering that Geithner was head of the New York Federal Reserve. When all the subprime mortgages and derivatives were undermining this country's economic system, when economists by the score were raising the alarm 2 and 3 years before Lehman Brothers tanked, Geithner was blithely looking on. So Obama's appointment of him was the ultimate insider's move, not an appointment by someone actually committed to 'change.'
Meanwhile, as the economy remained top-of-mind among the American people, Obama embarked on a grab-bag of programs that proved to do nothing. His stimulus package was obscenely expensive and did next to nothing to increase employment. Instead it funneled money to government programs that notoriously slow in getting underway. Hey, I'm not a big fan of economic stimulus to begin with, but at least the Bush stimulus program actually put money in the hands of American families in the form of a check, not a vague promise of work a few months down the road if you knew the right public official or had the right bona fides with the GSA.
As a result? Unemployment increased way beyond his projections, and has proved intractable ever since.
And even while the economy was still prostrate, what does Obama do? He pulls out ObamaCare, probably the most ill-conceived, obscenely expensive boondoggle ever. It is such a convoluted mess that even its authors, even the idiots who approved it in Congress, did not understand it. What's more, the entire legislation was obviously written by detached think tank nitwits who had never actually managed any enterprise larger than a Georgetown dinner party. Witness their mandates to companies, requiring them to write 1099s for ANY purchase larger than $600.
The Obamacare legislation is so unwieldy, so awful, so filled with backroom compromises and loopholes, that the large majority of the American people want it repealed right now before it can do damage. What's more, by all objective accounts, it will INCREASE the cost of healthcare, not decrease it, by virtue of not address huge business costs such as filing paperwork and paying through the nose for malpractice insurance. What's more, the long-term consequences are certain to be decreased care. I attended a conference for surgeons in October, and I was shocked at the number of surgeons who were looking for the exits.
In short, at a time when the American people were concerned with the economy and only the economy, the Obama administration ruined its credibility by ramrodding through an ill-considered, unwanted piece of legislation that would affect 20% of the American economy.
Add to the sorry list the addiction to Keynesian economics (Take one look at Europe's economic performance over the past forty years. How's it working for them?), the bailouts, and the overall cluelessness of this administration, and small wonder there was an historic rout in November.
Genius? I think the only two people who now think Obama is a genius is you and Obama himself.
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