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View Full Version : Amateur Hour at the White House, no adults present



TomD
23rd September 2011, 07:06 AM
Check this column from today's WSJ (link) (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903791504576586693566324456.html?m od=djemEditorialPage_h) from ex-Obama supporter Peggy Noonan.

Obama and his economic team portrayed as "chaos, lack of intellectual depth and absence of political wisdom". Three Stooges?

WSJ Column by Peggy Noonan follows:

A small secret. In writing about the White House or Congress, I always feel completely free to attempt to see things clearly, to consider the evidence, to sift it through experience and knowledge, and then to make a judgment. It may be highly critical, or caustic, even damning. But deep down I always hope I'm wrong—that it isn't as bad as I say it is, that there is information unknown to me that would explain such and such an act, that there were factors I didn't know of that make bad decisions suddenly explicable. Or even justifiable.

I note this to make clear the particular importance, for me, of Ron Suskind's book on the creation of President Obama's economic policy, "Confidence Men." If Mr. Suskind is right, I have been wrong in my critiques of the president's economic policy. None of it was as bad as I said. It was much worse.

The most famous part of the book is the Larry Summers quote that he saw it as a "Home Alone" administration, with no grown-ups in charge. But there's more than that. Most of us remember the president as in a difficult position from day one: two wars and an economic crash, good luck with that. But Mr. Suskind recasts the picture.

Like FDR, Mr. Obama had big advantages: "overwhelming popular support, Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, and the latitude afforded by crisis." But things were weird from the beginning. Some of his aides became convinced that his "lack of . . . managerial experience" would do him in. He ran meetings as if they were afternoon talk shows. An unnamed adviser says the 2009 stimulus legislation was the result of "poor conceptualizing." Another: "We should have spent more time thinking about where the money was being spent, rather than simply that there was this hole of a certain size in the economy that needed to be filled, so fill it." Well, yes.

The decision to focus on health care was the president's own. It could have been even worse. Some staffers advised him—this was just after the American economy lost almost 600,000 jobs in one month—that he should focus on global warming.

Mr. Suskind's book is controversial, and some of his sources have accused him of misquoting them. The White House says Mr. Suskind talked to too many disgruntled former staffers. But he seems to have talked to a lot of gruntled ones, too. The overarching portrait of chaos, lack of intellectual depth and absence of political wisdom, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter at this paper, rings true.

SWRichmond
23rd September 2011, 07:25 AM
"Another: "We should have spent more time thinking about where the money was being spent, rather than simply that there was this hole of a certain size in the economy that needed to be filled, so fill it.""

I have made this charge numerous places, most notably here: http://seekingalpha.com/article/262620-why-congress-won-t-cut-the-deficit

and no one ever picks up on it. This is the reason Congress won't cut spending: the economy will immediately start shrinking, and that can't be allowed in a "managed economy" as it would reveal the incompetence of their management. They deliberately choose a number to spend that will make GDP look like it's "growing," and then afterwards decide what to spend it on.

MNeagle
23rd September 2011, 10:58 AM
Thanks SWRichmond,
I had signed up at that site, but forgot about it. Well done!

mightymanx
23rd September 2011, 11:10 AM
Hey they just need a smart guy to fix everything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i93BJiYLaj8&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL98B94E99B56420AD

MAGNES
23rd September 2011, 02:32 PM
"Another: "We should have spent more time thinking about where the money was being spent, rather than simply that there was this hole of a certain size in the economy that needed to be filled, so fill it.""

I have made this charge numerous places, most notably here: http://seekingalpha.com/article/262620-why-congress-won-t-cut-the-deficit

and no one ever picks up on it. This is the reason Congress won't cut spending: the economy will immediately start shrinking, and that can't be allowed in a "managed economy" as it would reveal the incompetence of their management. They deliberately choose a number to spend that will make GDP look like it's "growing," and then afterwards decide what to spend it on.

You should post your articles on here or at least open a thread and link to them.

Don't be shy.

;D

Serpo
23rd September 2011, 02:34 PM
http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/birthcert.jpg

freespirit
23rd September 2011, 02:41 PM
shame on you serpo!

you've just offended millions of mexicans!!

LMAO!! ;D