King Andrew Jackson the First.
Always creatively fluent Tom Friedman, NYT, now invents a new rational explantion -- aka rationalization -- for the sluggish performance of POTUS these last 11 months. It is Washington's fault, it's Washington's dysfunction, what Friedman refers to with the old-fashioned metaphor, "paralysis." At first this sounded to me to be avoiding the question of POTUS. Is he adequate? Is he capable? Does he understand the job? Is he learning? Why does he work so distantly with Congress? Does he work with Congress? But then again, saying that Washington is paralyzed like the "failed state" of California is not afterall a new cynical recognition. Washington has been paralyzed since Tom Jefferson's accidental success of the Louisiana Purchase -- and certainly since King Andrew Jackson the First challenged and outmaneuvered Congress and the bankers to break the Second National Bank in 1832. A paralyzed Washington is what developed the Civil War, what abandoned the West to the railroad cabals, what cooperated with the rise of the monopolies and trusts and Wall Street "interests." A paralyzed Washington explains the Great Depression. What Tom Friedman has come up with is a self-assuring even narcotizing way to say to himself that it isn't President Obama's fault. Is it? Then again, it is President Obama's fault because he is part of it. It is his watch. Was it Jefferson's and Jackson's (Second National Bank, now that was dysfunction) and Lincoln's and McKinley/Roosevelt's and FDR's faults? Yes. The rules are that it is your fault if you are POTUS when it happens. However it wasprobably comforting at the time of the presidency (Jefferson, Jackson etc) to say that the president is "charismatic" and bold, and heroic and smart, however the Congress and the Washington system are so broken that even this present successful president cannot solve them.
Is Washington Paralyzed?
No. Tom Jefferson and his Virginia colleagues, the elite burgesses of Williamsburg, dreamed up the system we have today on their own, and Tom Jefferson helped transfer it to the Declaration of Independence. We call it today, liberty. It means that power is in the hands of the people who live here. The Constitution of 1789 was a lawyerly worked up version of the original concept, with a lot of hands from Virginia and Massachusetts organizing the cooking and laying on a lot of silly sauce, but what it comes to is that liberty remains in the hands of the people who live here. The founders were aware of what happens when you give back power to a king, an executive. Instead, they distributed power so broadly that almost anyone could both claim to have power and at the same time not feel powerful at all. It is called checks and balances. Friedman knows all this. He just has decided to step around the issue to make an excuse for Present Obama for the next ten minutes. Blaming Washington is the same as blaming the founders and the Constitution. Every president who runs into trouble also blamed Congress and the bankers and the previous regime and Washington in general. King Andrew the First blamed Washington so effectively that he founded a party to blame Washington, the Democracy, which promptly took over Congress and became part of the problem that Jackson blamed. Nothing fancy here. President Jackson was called the Chief Magistrate, but he was in fact just another noisy part of the government under the Constitution. Same for Lincoln and TR and FDR and Reagan. Same for Obama. The republic is not paralyzed. We long ago decided and agreed that the jeopardy of an unchallenged and uncontained chief magistrate is so great that it is just plan common sense to make sure that no one is in charge.
Power belongs to the people who live here.
We argue; we foment; we err; we overstep; and then sluggishly we make changes that work better for the moment -- always more cautious than cute. Don't like California? Don't live there. And if you do live there, you will figure it out -- it's where you live. Don't like the present state of the Union? You will figure it out. (That AIG thing was a doozy, and look here, Tim Geithner was part of the problem!) Will President Obama figure out that he is not in fact in the boss? That Congress is not in charge? That Washington is not in charge? That mandating laws to the people who live here is not successful government? Yes, but slowly. What is wrong right now -- the Obama administration is frustrated and self-conscious and reluctant and clumsy -- will all work itself out or it won't and there will be a new team. My guess? At this time my guess is that the "Don't Blame President Obama School" invented here by Tom Friedman will turn into the "Blame Obama School" before long. Same as it was for King Andrew the First, so that by the time Jackson ran for reelection, and won, no one in Washington or the banks was speaking with him; and by the time he finished his term, the country was plunged into a panic so deep that no one even noticed Andrew Jackson had left town to sit in his rustic Hermitage another few years, spitting tobacco and blaming Washington.
No, we can't? That's too negative. I prefer the more hopeful, "Yes, we can't!"
It's one of the most popular forms of amusement in Washington these days. It's called 'blame-shifting'. But, strictly speaking, this is a misnomer, as Batchelor himself suggests. The point of the exercise is to give the illusion that those at fault are not at fault. (If one were to tie 'blame-shifting' to its obvious nomenclature, somebody would actually have to be at fault, and suffer the consequences of being at fault: go to prison; go to the gallows, etc. But since nobody is actually in prison and nobody is likely to be executed, I guess, nobody is at fault ...and the crimes continue.)
Friedman, like Krugman among others, has consistently soiled himself in defending the indefensible. Designated by academe and liberal media as a high intellect, he has had to hold his nose and swallow hard in trying to defend the Left’s faulty logic, its broad disregard of historical precedent and its blatant double standard. It is not clear to me whether or not he knows that he has prostituted himself or if he actually believes the stuff he writes. No doubt, he’s made a good living among the like-minded. But even their never robust ranks are thinning, leaving behind only the most seriously hobbled. How long Friedman can continue (assuming he’s reasonably sane) doing his stick before packing away his writing tools and sending them off to permanent storage is anybody’s guess.
Is Friedman deliberately lying or is he just plain stupid. It’s the same question in essence we could pose regarding President Obama. Both men are likely to keep the answer close to the vest. In the final analysis it’s not about them; it’s about us. How we ourselves answer these questions will determine whether we are on the road to better health or locked into a death spiral.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
THE BUCK DOESN'T STOP AT OBAMA. HE SPENDS IT.
The problem is that Obama talks such a good game, some people actually thought he could play. Yes, there will always be apologists, but I actually thought Tom Friedman was smarter than that.
PARALYSIS IS BEING SO INDECISIVE YOU'RE NOT ABLE TO DO ANYTHING.
It's also being stuck in a rut with an outdated mindset that doesn't allow any outside thoughts. Yes, paralysis, thy name is Barack Obama.
HAVE GUN. WILL APOLOGIZE.
The Western is classic Americana. It's about doing what's right not matter what the cost. It's a morality play. It's The Lone Ranger. It's High Noon. It's The Magnificent Seven. It's The Wild Bunch. It's Unforgiven. It's John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda and Clint Eastwood. It's great theme music. It's Big Country panorama. It's Monument Valley. It's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. It's Shane. It's Death Valley Days and, it's even our future. After all, Stars Wars was nothing, if not a Western with special effects. It's the good guys against the bad guys. It's about honor. But, most of all, it's about winning.
Remember the newspaper man from back East who was always such a pain in the butt. Well, that's Obama.
Yes, because the last 8 years of arrogance, lies, and incompetence never happened.
(see Katrina; see Iraq and WMD's)
("La la la la --- I can't hear you!")
Nothing at all to see here. Move along.
Whatever.
The Senate just voted to debate the health care bill, which means it is certain to pass. This is the nail in the coffin of the America that the Constitution and founders had intended it to be. I guess Friedman's "paralyzed Washington" is to blame? Not really. Blame an education system that has made most Americans weak-minded and incapable of critical thought, and a corrupt media that have forgotten their charge to ferret out facts and truth.
Nice work, JB. my 2 cents--
Being totally untrusting of the BO supporters, even those so carefully worded as Freidman, the conclusion they MAY draw is therefore 1) BO is not the problem (he's still the solution), 2) the 250 yr old system is the problem, and it should be fixed, 3) so BO can work within it/rule it it no doubt.
In other words, this is the thin edge of the blade to slice and dice the DoI and the Constitution.
If the messiah can't make it work, it shouldn't exist.
To GT--that's great. you can take comfort knowing BO is no better than GB. Very high standard you're setting there. What BO "inherited" was not (by historical standards) an unplayable hand. He simply made it worse, in part by following Bush's lead on bail outs and then hoping against hope he could impose his lefty model as a solution that is/was exactly opposite of what was needed. He chose to not address the problem but to apply his ideological solutions regardless.
BO = "big hat, no cattle."
Your last comment reminded me to thank JB for his tribute to Richard Boone's Paladin. I have been one of the series biggest fans for 50 years now. I own the Dell comics and boxed sets of the seasons that are currently available; and I still watch the old episodes religiously. No series ever made a more lasting impression on me. Thank you, John Batchelor for remembering. Times are different now. I hear, the comic book action hero is all the rage. Maybe that was the initial idea behind POTUS? - a line drawing of a human figure hurtling through space.
GT:
This isn't about Bush's competence, as he is not president anymore. Any kindergartner could tell you that. Bush made his share of mistakes, but Obama has made a bad situation worse, and he's had the same; disadvantages as any other president and some advantages no other president has had a compliant if not blindly endorsing press. This is just another attempt by a New York Times (HRH Media) reporter to create a template. Remember vicarious PTSD vis a vis Hasan? Even George Stephanopoulis knows that is total BS... At some point, Obama and his minions have to realize that the on the job training hasn't worked. He's simply over his head.
Agree! One of the lamest talking points I've heard in favor of the health insurance takeover bills is that if a conservative argues about the cost of the bill and the increase to the deficit, the liberal shill will respond "Where were you when we were spending all this money on the war in Iraq?" (or alternately: "Why is it OK for Bush to spend $10B a day (sic) on the war in Iraq but we can't spend money to keep our citizens from dying at the rate of 40,000 per day? (sic))
(get it "sic" -- "healthcare"? HAW HAW I made a funny! ... not much of one ... AHEM)
The response is as follows:
"So you're saying that if bad decisions were made in the past, that's a rationale for continuing to make similar bad decisions in the future? If you know bad decisions were made in the past, isn't it your responsibility to make sure that we don't continue to make further bad decisions of this type?"
What I'd like to respond (and do occasionally) is "Not all conservatives were in favor of the war in Iraq. I personally was quite certain that the evidence for WMD was flimsy and that it was not in the interests of our national security to invade Iraq. So where was I? I was saying we shouldn't invade Iraq, and now I'm saying we shouldn't nationalize the health care industry. And both for the same reason: WE CAN'T AFFORD IT. (you nimrod ... implied)...."
But the problem with this second approach is that it introduces a cognitive dissonance into the shill's little mental macro that a conservative could oppose the war in Iraq and health care. The shill is likely to then ignore the discussion any further since it doesn't fit in with what they've read on Huffington.
BUT, MOST OF ALL, IT'S ABOUT THE UNDERDOG WINNING.
This is a correction of what I wrote earlier.
I swear, coming home to this website after a stint on Politico is like coming home to Valhalla! This place is the Shining City on the Hill. No exaggeration. Thank whatever deity you happen to believe in for the existence of John Batchelor's show and website.
You can come here and have your intelligence insulted by a much higher class of shill!
Interesting Meet the Press this morning on the Senate health "reform" bill with 4 Senators representing the four corners of the compass (with Lieberman being his own corner, I guess.) Check it out if you haven't seen it yet.
A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT TAKE ON PALADIN
I remember the beginning of the show revealing a business card, which had a picture of the chess piece knight and saying: "Have Gun Will Travel." Here was a killer advertising his profession. Ironic, indeed. We all know the good guy always wore the white hat and, yet, here was Paladin all in black, including the hat. I guess today you'd call him an anti-hero. But the minute JB mentioned Paladin, I immediately thought of "Unforgiven". Both were exactly the same theme: An underdog has been wronged and the hero/anti-hero comes to his or her aid. For money. Is Obama a champion of the underdog? Will Obama right all the wrongs? Can Obama ever get out of the limelight, stop talking, just be modest or give someone else the credit? Stay tuned.
With this POTUS, it's clearly about ideology versus what's best for his constituents. When did his charter become remaking the USA? It's preposterous for him to want to undo The Shining City On The Hill and "remake" it according to his philosophy. Very damned presumptuous, that he should think this is what people he "governs" want. Wrong man, treacherous time, very daunting. Hope remains, in spite of his "leadership", not at all because of it....IMHO.
Yeah I saw it. I posted to my blog about it. Wasserman lied to Stephanopoulis' face. She wouldn't admit what everyone else knew, what they showed her, and what she probably understood. Talk about shills.
I think JB's characterization of JFK with aggressive policies is a little charitable. What about Bay of Pigs? Even with the Missiles of October, he nearly flubbed it. While many may believe Obama is the Black Jack, like JB, I don't think it quite fits. Obama is a cacasotto, that will only be spurred into action when confronted about his lack of "manhood". Like a cornuto. His confidence is but a veneer, as he doesn't have the stones to back it up. He's gotten by with the smile and slick talk, so in his mind he doesn't have to use force. Unfortunately for him, he's never faced a situation that required it, so he is at a loss as to what to do. He's afraid...
In order for him to be a cornudo somebody else has got to be shtuppin' FLOTUS (point of information)
I know Lou, I said like a cornuto, and that is the Italian spelling. It was a comparison. Cacasotto is correct as a direct observation.
Agua fresca, vino puro, figa stretta, e cazzo duro!
and then there is minchia, sfacime, and finocchio...