By the way, I want to encourage you all to vote. Many races are tight. It’s a mid-term election, so not as “sexy” as the presidential race. But balance of The Senate “matters” as does The House. Remember: Gridlock is sometimes a feature. Not a bug.
73 thoughts on “Americans: Go vote!”
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Living as I do in Alabama, I wasn’t originally planning on voting at all today. Jeff Sessions isn’t even opposed in his race. But I see now that I’ve been caught napping; Mo Brooks has an independent challenger. I’ve got a few hours left to figure out if I think there may be any meaningful difference between the two; maybe I’ll vote after all.
(edit: I heartily agree that gridlock is sometimes a feature. People sometimes seem perplexed when I tell them that my representatives are doing ~precisely~ what I want them to do when they prevent anything from getting done in certain areas.)
When there is no meaningful difference and I care who controls the house or senate I chose based on which party I want to control the house or senate. Sometimes I hold my nose because it’s no meanignful difference between two candidates both of whom I dislike (for different reasons). But I do it. . .
Hi Lucia,
When we lived in Coconut Grove – just south of Miami, they redistricted. The result was that it didn’t matter what the people in our neighborhood did, because the outcome would be determined by what happened in the much larger part of the district which was pretty homogeneous in political persuasion. The symptom was that we no longer got any political ads in the mail – none – not any. I was amazed until it was explained to me.
This, of course only applied to local and state stuff. We were there for the hanging chads. I was astonished that the chads were a problem, we’d used the same system in Washington DC and La Grange before that. but then it was an election where a few votes one way or another could make a difference. I love it. In Florida, your vote is sure to count.
O
M
G
Living that close to Eighth street. The croquetas. The pastelitos! Gosh I miss Versailles!
And on top of that your vote counts.
It’s too much. It’s just not fair to people who don’t live there. We need more social justice in the form of redistribution of good Cuban food. I’m voting the democratic ticket, so there!
(uhm, / silly)
So Lucia, What reason for voting did you write on the back of your hand this time? “Neuter Obama”?
To some extent. Yes.
The way I view it is that gridlock is occurring because he won’t negotiate or compromise. So, from his POV, the only way to avoid gridlock is for him to get all Dems in the house and senate, and then he gets his ‘way’ on everything. But I oppose most of those policies, so I would rather see “gridlock” than many of those policies.
Of course, gridlock isn’t the best of all possible worlds. But it’s better than some!
Hi Marc,
When our personal economy collapsed following Andrew, we moved to Philadelphia. We were able to hold out there for 14 months and then went back to Miami. Mostly we missed the crime.
The Herald was able to regale us all with write-ups of the most amazing variations on the corruption that probably exists everywhere. What made Miami corruption so interesting was that it was so flagrant and often dumbfounding that anyone could imagine that he could get away with what he had been apprehended doing. For example, the commissioner who was on the committee which chose artists for outbreaks of subsidized urban art, and who was found with examples of the work of the chosen artists displayed in his front yard.
And there was the headline “Coral Gables Strangler Case Takes New Twist.” And many many others.
We were also privy to a very clever scheme by which jet fuel was stolen from the fuel operation at the airport for many years. It was creative and apparently beyond the ability of the local authorities to discover and stop although the airlines all sensed it.
And yes, the food too.
:> I never knew any of that. I was a kid when I lived there. I’d heard that crime was pretty bad in them thar parts though.
(edit: yeah, I said them thar parts. Lived in the South too long, clearly gone native, I might be a red neck.)
I voted early last week here in Kansas. In the senate race it’s a choice between an establishment republican against an independent with the democrat dropping out after the primary. The independent claims he will caucus with the majority party but I find hard to believe he will caucus with the republicans given his views. It was a tough choice but I went with the one that was predictable. In watching the endless TV adds I noticed the independent though 20 years younger than his elder opponent never stops shaking his head when he talks. He seems a little too shaky for my likes.
DCA,
Yeah, I was tempted by my independent candidate choice too for a while. But at the end of the day, he’s the devil I didn’t know and who’s much less likely than Mo to convey my disgruntlement to the Obama Administration. I suspect he (Mark Bray) ran as an independent more because he realized it’d be a severe liability right now to run as a Democrat in Alabama than because of his views.
Ah well. Should be an interesting night!
DCA,
That Kansas indie was a puppet with strings firmly in Obama’s hands.
You are lucky he lost.
Now that the GOP controls the Senate and House, count on Obama increasing his unlawful actions (‘selective’ enforcement of laws, changing enactment of laws unilaterally) for the remainder of his term. Count on him vetoing a large portion of legislation which arrives at his desk, and doubling down on things like the Keystone pipeline and EPA forced coal use reductions. Fortunately the damage he will do is limited to two years, and maybe less if his popularity falls any further and Congressional Democrats start to get nervous about 2016 and stop supporting his vetoes. IMHO, he is at real risk of overtaking Jimmy Carter as the worst President in my lifetime… something I thought could never happen. Like Carter, he has shown himself incapable of compromise, because like Carter he is incapable of accepting that any view other than his own, on any subject, could possibly have merit. Both are quintessential losers.
hunter,
You’re right. The more I read and heard about him the more it became evident. The fact that the dem withdrew from the race after the primary started me to question his independence.
Steve– That might happen. But at least when legislation is passed and vetoed, it clarifies the cause of “gridlock”.
This is why there is ‘gridlock’.
On executive branch interpretations of legislation (e.g. EPA, labor relations etc.) — the court has handed Obama a lot of losses. Some aspects of Obama care are suffering “death by papercut” both as Obama just decrees waivers for enrollment, as a certain level of glitches continue and the court may end up ruling that deductions for buying ones own insurance only accrues if that insurance is bought through a STATE pool, not the one the FEDs set up for a state.
I’m curious: Do you think Obama hasn’t yet overtaken Carter as worst president? I was in France when hostages were taken in Iran… but… really, Obama is pretty bad.
While we’re discussing this, I would like the Republicans to immediately get rid of the rules that allow filibusters without filibustering. If you are willing to speak for two days, if it’s massively important to you, you can filibuster, otherwise majority rule. This has been the rule for almost the entire history of the Senate; only recently have the rules changed so that the minority party can block anything they want.
The old way made more sense (even if the Democrats get the Senate back in 2016), and right now it would let the Republicans pass some effective and popular bills and force the president to veto them.
Some other things I think they should do to take stumbling blocks from their path:
1) Get rid of the debt limit. Send the president a bill that says, whatever Congress appropriates, the Treasury is authorized to borrow money to pay for it. Not paying your bills is a really bad idea; it trashes US credit, making us potentially pay much more in interest on the debt we already have. It’s a political loser to do brinkmanship on this issue, and it’s stupid. The place to avoid spending money is when you make laws that spend it.
2) Do the budget in pieces. First pass bills that fund all essential parts of government, anything that everyone agrees should continue during a government shut-down: Coast Guard, FAA, … Be generous here; if shutting down national parks is not something you want to happen, include it. Send that part of the budget to the president, and dare him to veto it. If he does veto it, try to get Democrats on board to override the veto. Those who won’t will risk the political fallout for risking the Coast Guard and the FAA during a government shutdown.
If that did pass, now Congress can negotiate in earnest with the president about the rest of the budget. No more continuing resolutions. Let the president defund the Department of Education by his own inaction if he won’t deal.
3) Do bipartisan things where possible. I wonder if it’s time to give Simpson-Bowles another try. It cut the military, making Democrats happy and some Republicans unhappy, it cut various tax deductions, making some of everybody unhappy, it helped to balance the budget. Since all these things need doing, it’s best to do them at once to give everyone political cover. A nice bipartisan bill with some Republicans complaining loudly might be hard for the president to veto.
lucia,
Just my opinion, but I think Obama benefits from our changing perspective. The American public was a little more innocent with regards to terrorism, during the Hostage Crisis. Benghazi, the ISIS beheadings, etc. should be just as bad for Obama. But, people don’t seem to want to wake up to what is going on. I think the media is partly to blame, as well. To me, Obama is worse than Carter. I think the path he is leading us down is far more dangerous than anything Carter would have had the guts to do.
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IMHO, President Obama has not gone nearly as far as he legally and constitutionally could go in using the EPA to enforce a strong and effective anti-carbon environmental policy.
The US Supreme Court has upheld the 2009 Endangerment Finding under the Clean Air Act; and so the way is now open for the President to go to the full limits of his regulatory authority in decarbonizing the US economy, should he choose to do so.
And if he did choose to do so, and as long as he strictly followed existing procedures in rolling out his anti-carbon regulatory framework, nothing short of a Congressional repeal or significant modification of the Clean Air Act could stop him, legislation he would certainly veto if it came across his desk.
The basic point here is that regardless of who controls the Congress, there is nothing preventing President Obama from legally and constitutionally rolling out a truly aggressive climate change action plan, other than the prospect of suffering extreme political blowback from the voting public if he tries it.
That could be why he didn’t do it before mid term elections. 🙂
One issue: Is climate a big hobby horse for him? He might be able to go full boar anti-carbon…. but is it that important to him? And if he does…. what happens in 2016?
“And if he does…. what happens in 2016?” Sure. And what stops Democrats in Congress from supporting bills that oppose this? Are you sure you couldn’t override his veto with votes from pro-business Democrats? This is not an issue that resonates with most Americans.
Beta Blocker,
“there is nothing preventing President Obama from legally and constitutionally rolling out a truly aggressive climate change action plan, other than the prospect of suffering extreme political blowback from the voting public if he tries it.”
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Well, that prospect will have a lot more influence on Democrats in Congress than on Obama. If he tries too hard on CO2 emissions, his vetoes could be overridden. The guy is out of touch with political reality; members of Congress are less so. A rider on any bill could modify the CAA, eg. “For purposes of the Clean Air Act, carbon dioxide shall not be considered a pollutant.”
SteveF,
Just so. On the one hand, Dems won’t want to do this if the EPA is not being interpreted to curb emissions strongly. It would alienate some of their voting block. But some might be motivated to join a republican lead move to pass such language that if administration moves began affecting their constituency. That could be enough to set back any gains Obama got in court.
Lucia,
” Do you think Obama hasn’t yet overtaken Carter as worst president?”
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It’s neck and neck. I found that Carter made consistently stupid, broadly damaging decisions, reflecting, I suspect, his underlying basic stupidity. His speeches were utterly moronic (I would squirm every time I had to listen to him), and his ‘reasoning’, such as it was, usually betrayed a profound lack of basic understanding. Obama is clearly smarter and much more eloquent. He is also far too certain and far too arrogant, which, when combined with frightening inexperience, leads to the kinds of thumb-your-nose-at-everyone executive decisions he makes.
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You are right that the courts have been unkind to some of his over-reaches, but that will not stop him from doing the same (or worse!) in the remaining two years, since unless a court were to issue a preemptive restraining order (unlikely) he de-facto gets whatever he wants, no matter how outrageous, for a very long time.
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We will find out. In the face of the 2014 election results, President Obama will have to decide what is, and what is not, important to him for his remaining two years in office.
A Republican Senate will never ratify a treaty which has the appearance of sacrificing America’s economic interests for the sake of fighting climate change.
And a legislated carbon tax, or a cap-and-trade scheme, has no real prospects either. (Not that any Congress controlled by either party would ever legislate a price on carbon.)
What is true today is what was also true yesterday. Any decision for taking a more aggressive public policy stance in reducing carbon emissions remains completely in the President’s hands to decide.
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Few Democrats in the US Congress will sign on to a bill that tampers with the Clean Air Act to the extent that would be needed to reverse a Presidential decision to fully mobilize the EPA in aggressively decarbonizing the American economy.
Those Democratic legislators who put their names on that kind of a bill would instantly lose the support of their environmentally conscious constituents. But the Democrats in Congress don’t have to face that kind of dilemma as long as the President takes the heat for them, acting through executive orders.
The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding has withstood serious challenges made to it in the courts; and so the science embodied in IPCC 2007 AR4 is now enshired as the law of the land inside of a constitutionally legal regulatory framework.
As a practical matter, a Presidential decision made in 2015 to fully mobilize the EPA in aggressively decarbonizing the American economy could only be reversed by the new incoming president in 2017 or later.
The only possible justifications an incoming president could make for reversing a major policy decision made by his predecessor would be that, (a) the policy approach adopted in 2015 had proven to be ineffective; and/or (b) the science behind his predecessor’s 2015 policy decision was wrong.
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We will find out. In the face of the 2014 election results, President Obama will have to decide what is, and what is not, important to him for his remaining two years in office.
A Republican Senate will never ratify a treaty which has the appearance of sacrificing America’s economic interests for the sake of fighting climate change.
And a legislated carbon tax, or a cap-and-trade scheme, has no real prospects either. (Not that any Congress controlled by either party would ever legislate a price on carbon.)
What is true today is what was also true yesterday. Any decision for taking a more aggressive public policy stance in reducing carbon emissions remains completely in the President’s hands to decide.
.
.
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Few Democrats in the US Congress will sign on to a bill that tampers with the Clean Air Act to the extent that would be needed to reverse a Presidential decision to fully mobilize the EPA in aggressively decarbonizing the American economy.
Those Democratic legislators who put their names on that kind of a bill would instantly lose the support of their environmentally conscious constituents. But the Democrats in Congress don’t have to face that kind of dilemma as long as the President takes the heat for them, acting through executive orders.
The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding has withstood the challenges made to it in the courts; and so the science embodied in IPCC 2007 AR4 is now enshired as the law of the land inside of a constitutionally legal regulatory framework.
As a practical matter, a Presidential decision made in 2015 to fully mobilize the EPA in aggressively decarbonizing the American economy could only be reversed by the new incoming president in 2017.
Depending on who was elected in 2016, the only likely justifications an incoming president would make for reversing a major policy decision made by his predecessor would be that, (a) the policy approach adopted in 2015 had proven to be ineffective; and/or (b) the science behind his predecessor’s 2015 policy decision was wrong.
MikeR (Comment #132514):
Since you evidently favor Congress delegating its borrowning authority to the Executive branch, surely you would have no problem if it did likewise with its power to declare war. Have I got that about right?
Sure it is, but what that has to do with maintaining the debt limit is a complete mystery.
So lemme get this straight: if I’m $10k in debt, borrowing another $10k makes my credit as good or better than it was before ipso facto. Right?
I don’t agree with any of this, Beta Blocker. Your average American voter is not in favor of any of these things. Environmentalists are nothing like the average voter; for the average voter, this is at the bottom of his priority list, and far-reaching executive orders that devastate American business are going to look like a terrible thing. Congressmen are going to be afraid to do it, or to support it.
All your arguments about what is “justified” etc. are irrelevant. The Democrats already pushed a major legislative change down the American people’s throat (ObamaCare) and against their will. I imagine that most Americans wouldn’t at all mind Congress stopping the president in any way that works if he does something crazy.
I doubt that decarbonizing the economy is going to be high on Obama’s agenda. Watch what he does on immigration and the reaction to it. I’m betting he gives green cards to anyone already in the country who doesn’t have a criminal record other than being in the country illegally. Which, for a first offender, is a misdemeanor, not a felony.
Re: yguy (Nov 5 15:01),
To all intents and purposes, they already have. A debt limit in itself is delegation. Congress hasn’t issued a declaration of war since WWII.
Actually, yes. I don’t have a very good credit score because I pay my credit card bills in full every month, have paid off my mortgage and bought my last car with cash.
yguy, none of what you said makes any sense to me.
“Since you evidently favor Congress delegating its borrowning authority to the Executive branch.” That’s not what I said. I said that they should not be authorizing money unless they are willing to pay the bill for what they authorize. Those should not be two separate steps.
“if I’m $10k in debt, borrowing another $10k makes my credit as good or better than it was before ipso facto. Right?” Wrong. But refusing to make the payments on your first debt will indeed trash your credit.
Look, if you weren’t around or weren’t listening the first time, I suggest looking up some of the discussions from the last case of debt limit brinkmanship. Careful explanations by those involved made it clear to most of us that not raising the debt limit was going to cause an immediate and overwhelming disruption to the Treasury, probably trashing US credit, probably doing all kinds of other damage as well. No one could even understand how the Treasury would do triage to figure out what to do with the money it had, or if it had the authority to do triage at all.
Rereading your comment, I’m offering this explanation in case you don’t know what the debt limit is. Here is the case: Congress has already appropriated more money than the debt limit. It then needs to pass a second bill to allow the Treasury to find ways to cover the debt it has already incurred. The alternative is to allow the US’s checks to bounce.
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That may well be so. Over the next two years, we can infer by his actions that he either views climate change as a real danger, or else he is using it as nothing more than a talking point in gathering support from environmentally conscious voters.
But if the President begins making the claim that a Republican Congress is blocking effective action on climate change, it should be pointed out to him that he doesn’t need another word of new legislation from the Congress to take aggressive action in decarbonizing the US economy.
The 2009 Endangerment Finding gives the President full legal authority to regulate CO2 as a dangerous pollutant, and he has the option of going much further than he has previously gone in using the EPA as a tool for enforcing an aggressive decarbonization policy.
Bea Blocker,
” But the Democrats in Congress don’t have to face that kind of dilemma as long as the President takes the heat for them, acting through executive orders.”
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Sort of depends on the nature of the executive orders. I think Mr. Obama wants to institute an all-out effort to cut fossil fuel use. Can he/will he do this by executive action? EPA staff serve at his pleasure, so it is 100% up to him. Depends on just how disconnected from reality he is… if the past is any guide, his connection to reality is tenuous at best. If he goes WWF/Greenpeace style all-out bonkers, as I believe he would like (based on the Keystone fiasco), then he could well lose support in Congress, and they may even take his EPA/carbon-pollution toys away.
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(Aside: IMO, fossil fuel policy is exactly the kind of difficult choice over legitimate conflicting interests that should be made in Congress, not by a bunch of wild-eyed green bureaucrats at EPA, acting at the behest of an arrogant and inexperienced president.)
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Mr. Obama treads a very thin line with trying to reduce fossil fuel consumption. Of course, I doubt he can appreciate just how much political risk unpopular executive decisions like blocking Keystone pose to him. Arrogance blinds. The later in his presidency he goes, the more likely his Congressional colleges will throw him under the bus.
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I believe Mr. Obama will (yet again) throw down the gauntlet in front of Republican Congressional leaders, and refuse to budge on any of his policies, imagining that nothing has changed as a result of yesterday’s election… and that he can continue do as he damned well pleases. This may well end badly for him.
Krugman on Obama (NYtimes headlines):
The President Is A Lousy Negotiator
Conceder In Chief?
President Pushover
McKibben on Obama:
No wonder his poll ratings are so low.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #132534) November 5th, 2014 at 3:14 pm
Dunno about that. I don’t know the statutory basis of the debt limit, but Congress is granted explicit authority to delegate here and there by the Constitution. What concerns us here is whether it is authorized to delegate to any other entity powers explicitly reserved to Congress; and if separation of powers is to have any meaning, the answer must be a definite no.
Not sure I care to get into an argument over whether the many congressional authorizations for military action qualify as de facto declarations of war, or whether such a declaration is even constitutionally necessary for the making of war; but regardless of any of that it should be clear that the President is not authorized to exercise a power expressly reserved to Congress, and the only President I know of who came anywhere near declaring war was Obama in Libya.
Actually no. If I borrow $10k from a bank, and then the same amount from a relative to pay off the bank loan because I can’t pay it off otherwise, obviously I’m a lousy credit risk regardless of the output of any bean counter’s algorithm.
MikeR (Comment #132535) November 5th, 2014 at 3:17 pm
Sure, but had that been all you said, this conversation would never have begun.
BTW, I hope you understand that Congress doesn’t actually pay for anything, because it doesn’t have a penny to its name.
And if I handled it by paying off the first loan with the second, it might not, but only if the people appraising my creditworthiness were either unaware of my actions or fools.
I’m not about to go fishing for any of that, and from what I’m seeing so far I doubt I’d even click on a link.
I don’t know that to be the case.
Actually, bearing in mind that an appropriation is not a disbursement, there is another alternative: repeal enough appropriations to put us under the debt limit.
Re: yguy (Nov 5 19:09),
Only in your own mind. Your additional information on your borrowing wasn’t in your original statement. I believe that’s called moving the goalposts and it’s an informal logical fallacy, which seems to be your pattern.
In the real world, you borrowed money, you paid it back on time. You’re a good credit risk until you prove otherwise by failing to pay the loan from your relative. I’m assuming your relative isn’t stupid enough to loan you money without a signed contract. Otherwise, it isn’t a loan, it’s a gift. But only you could possibly know that.
DeWitt+Payne (Comment #132545) November 5th, 2014 at 8:59 pm
That is of no moment, since not a syllable of it is inconsistent with the original statement, and since you had all the information necessary to answer the question correctly, as MikeR demonstrated.
Then you believe amiss, because it was you who imagined the goal posts were wider than they actually were.
No, I’m a good credit risk if I have the ability to fulfill the loan contract and and the integrity to follow through. Bearing that in mind it should be clear that a country which borrows money so it can implement programs which will increasingly degrade its ability to produce wealth sufficient to pay off the loan is only a good credit risk in the eyes of creditors who hope to end up owning that country.
I hope you’re not stupid enough to think a signed contract is anything like an adequate safeguard for a loan made to the hypothetical yguy.
DeWitt Payne,
With whom are you wrestling?
“Actually, bearing in mind that an appropriation is not a disbursement, there is another alternative: repeal enough appropriations to put us under the debt limit”
As apparently you won’t be bothered to find out about what was discussed last time this came up, I’ll cut my comments short. Since repealing appropriations is not currently an option, as the Republicans don’t have the political power to do that, the choice involved in the debt limit bill is simple: will we cover our checks or won’t we? The impacts of not covering them are disastrous.
Presumably the decisions on this will be made by people who take the trouble to find out what the impacts are.
Re: hunter (Nov 6 05:46),
Someone not worth further effort who apparently lives under a bridge.
MikeR (Comment #132554) November 6th, 2014 at 7:34 am
Interesting how in one breath you appeal to realpolitik…
…and pretend in the next that it’s irrelevant. As for impacts, you betray no concern for any beyond the short term.
DeWitt+Payne (Comment #132556) November 6th, 2014 at 8:03 am
Here’s hoping I can take that as a promise.
The reason the endangerment finding had to be made by the Supreme Court was that Congress was requested to clarify the issue (the way it is supposed to work) and they were incapable of doing so due to the gridlock on…well…everything.
Executive action to cause material pain to the private sector on emissions reductions that shows up on voter’s power bills is the Rubicon that the left will not cross IMO. The right is basically sitting back now and saying “go ahead, make my day” on this issue. If they do, it then becomes a 2016 election issue and the EPA is likely to be smacked down hard and fast if the right retains all 3 sectors of government. And nobody will care that the greens howl, they are captive to the left and the right will lose exactly zero votes on this. It won’t be until the left reacquires all 3 sectors that it could be reversed, they need to be careful.
For this reason, the ditherer in chief is unlikely to ruffle any feathers that have potential disastrous blowback. He will throw the greens enough bones to keep them from deserting, and that is it. The 2016 campaign theme from the right will likely already be “do you want 4 more years of Obama?”. He could kill the left’s chances by overstepping.
And, by the way, gridlock is a good thing when opposed to a progressive agenda. The left will certainly discover gridlock preferable to a conservative agenda, funny that.
De Witt Payne,
Something tells me there will be a large crash involving reversed polarity soon.
Tom Scharf,
Spot on regarding gridlock. imho you are optimistic about the reluctance of our POTUS to toss over the tables and create havoc.
His petulant presser yesterday does not give much cause for hope of a rational response. His management style, such as it is, does not seem to include ther terms “leadership”, “compromise” or “respect”, much less “flexibility”.
Beta Blocker, Obama seems to be quite supportive of heavy usage of carbon-based fuel. Check out the graphs on this page:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/gasprices
It brags about how oil production is up, and it takes it for granted that “cheap gas prices” are a good thing. It spends considerable space on saying it is not the fault of the White House that gas prices are not lower.
The Obama administration does have energy projects, but they tend to be more symbolic (Solyndra, Tesla) or even just fig leafs to justify industry handouts (CAFE standards). None of this seems likely to put a dent in CO2 levels. Certainly it’s not what you’d expect from a capable person taking on CO2 as if they were truly worried about it.
Going back in time, I noticed similar things about Al Gore. For all his talk about CO2 being a menace, he has always been surprisingly dismissive of nuclear power. I’m not saying he should *like* nuclear power, but on the scale of things, he seems to think that the dominant form of power supply used in France is more dangerous than global warming.
Hunter,
Every time I see Obama speak lately, I think “this guy really really hates his job”. He strikes me as someone who wants to be elected President, but has little interest in actually performing the job function. If it didn’t affect his legacy, he would probably quit tomorrow, and I wouldn’t blame him. The next two years are likely to be no fun whatsoever. He will probably spend the next two years running out the clock doing the least damage possible and complaining that the Republicans refuse to embrace a liberal agenda for reasons he can’t understand.
What he really needs is a national crisis that he can step up and doing something useful with. I’m not on his side of the aisle, but I do not want a weak president or the perception of a declining, incompetent, or weak nation. He can do better.
Before the election: But make no mistake: “I am not on the ballot this fall. Michelle’s pretty happy about that. But make no mistake: These policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.â€
After the election: – well, what would be the logical thing for him to say? I must have missed it in his recent speech.
MikeR
Jim read a report that suggested Obama’s handlers are trying to keep him as quiet as possible to avoid saying anything quotable and stupid. If they succeed, he won’t say anything about this being a referendum against his policies.
Tom Scharf, Re: Obama hating the job.
I think that is dead on. Although I continue to think he is highly intelligent, I think he had very little grasp of what the job entailed. In 2008, I wrote off objections to his lack of organizational experience as being inapt given what looked to me like a brilliant campaign for office. Alas, the objectors weren’t wrong.
I’ve come to think that he was not the originator of his run for office, which more likely, was the creation of a small group led maybe by Plouffe who thought that his style, and background would be eminently marketable and a fable could be concocted around them that would make an effective campaign. We elected an idea, but got a man who was only a facsimile of the idea.
As nearly as I can tell, except possibly for staff for his two prior offices, he never hired anyone and his management purview might have been to a group of a half dozen – likely day-to-day managed by someone else.
So he never had the experience you get when people you hire don’t perform the way you expected, when your organization accumulates counter-productive cells, people aren’t up to the problems faced because you didn’t understand the scope of the things and didn’t get people who could – Napolitano prime example, and Obama-care roll-out cock-up another. Hiring Bill Daley a reknowned passive type to manage? On and on.
If you are going to turn someone loose running a country it would be good if he’s already had the Henry II experience and learned the lesson. Christie certainly has.
The Walter Matthau – Elaine May movie, New Leaf is very instructive. Matthau takes over management of incredibly corrupt household staff of Elaine’s on marriage and immediatly cleans house. Napolitano inherited same situation, didn’t audit what was going on, and absorbed responsibility for remarkable ineffective organization – evidence the underwear bomber.
And this is without getting to Hillary’s manifold management weaknesses.
j ferguson,
I agree– and it’s also not very surprising.
The most similar job to ‘President’ is ‘Governor’. Obama was never governor. The other jobs that make someone familiar with how legislative and executive branches really, truly work is member of the legislator. But Obama held legislative positions for such a brief periods that he didn’t really “see” compromise working in action.
Currently, being a Democrat in the IL legislature meant that someone could be in office very long indeed and manage to not recognize that compromise needs to happen. But he wasn’t in any legislature long enough to experience the ‘disappointment’ of needing to give a little to get a little.
Other jobs that give some practical experience: Executive of anything: even a chain of McDonald’s franchises. At least you learn that even executives need to compromise somewhat– though they also need to cut fat sometimes and so on.
Brief stint as college professor and/or community organizer while perfectly respectable jobs likely do not give anyone any practical application of how the executive branch interacts with the legislature nor how one needs to act in any ‘executive’ capacity. And no, “theoretical” knowledge is not necessarily useful (especially if it’s ‘theoretical knowledge’ of ‘government’ because that’s often highly idealized and can be rather utopian — or distopian.)
IMO, Obama’s real problem is that he always thinks he’s the smartest man in the room. A classic example of this hubris is his statement at a fund raiser in San Francisco during the 2008 campaign:
As a result, any time things don’t go his way, it’s always someone else’s fault. He’s incapable of learning from his mistakes because he never makes any.
Executive experience is definitely something an incoming president should have, and I think an entire generation of voters just learned that. But Obama now has 6 years of this experience and the question is has he learned anything? An article in the WP yesterday stated he has been at odds with Reid and Pelosi as well. Possibly he is simply not an effective manager and will never learn how to be. It may be a long time before America elects an inexperienced legislator again.
DeWitt, there’s a better quote.
“I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters, I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.â€
Wow DeWitt,
that is an absolutely astonishing quote. I quickly found out when I became responsible for getting more done than I could do myself that it was more effective to hire people who were better than i was – in my case not all that difficult.
If what he said was true, than he was a lousy manager.
Had a manager ever said anything like this to me, he/she would have been out the door in short order.
MY GOD. How could he not know how damning a statement like that is? (forgive the rhetorical question)
J ferguson,
Was your question rhetorical because you believe that everybody accepts that President Obama is a narcissist? This (edit: my question) is not a rhetorical question. I don’t think everybody does accept this, but I suspect that it’s in fact true that he’s got some narcissism influencing his decision making processes.
My fondest dream for the next two years would be for the Repubs to do whatever it takes (within their power) to make things work. This would include compromising, accepting incursions into their principles, and perhaps some other sacrifices.
The result would be well worth it. They would be able to say, “We can make the place work, and they clearly cannot.”
If they do this, there will be a landslide in 2016.
Lucia, there are governors and governors. The power of the governor in the different states varies a lot, I am told. I’m given to understand that one of the reasons W was popular (other than being a good guy) in Texas during his governorship even with the Democrats was that the job has little power there. Hopefully hunter will show up to clarify this if I have it wrong.
SteveF. I couldn’t agree more with you about Carter. He cost some of us a whole lot of money by canceling the grain sale to Russia in 1980 for, of all things, their invading Afghanistan. People should be reminded that he was a governor, too.
Mark, my thought with the question was how could Obama not have known what a damning statement that was. If he truly was better at all these things than his reports, it reveals someone weak in hiring, or afraid of contention with peers or better. Either is revealing of managerial incompetence.
He did once have effective staff even if some of us didn’t like them, but they have gone on to other pursuits (as they say).
Ok.
Re: MikeN (Nov 7 11:26),
That’s the quote I had in mind when I started writing my comment, but I couldn’t find it with a quick search.
On a more controversial note, I would still like to see his undergraduate transcripts at both Occidental and Columbia. It’s still amazing to me that those are not public. When you vote for President, you’re hiring a CEO. Try applying for any decent job, much less a CEO, without providing your academic transcripts.
MikeN,
I hadn’t seen that quotation (#132582), and it’s truly stunning.
Perhaps this is similar to Weil’s Law of university hiring: “First rate people hire other first rate people. Second rate people hire third rate people. Third rate people hire fifth rate people.”
It might be good to develop the provenance of that quote. I find it unimaginable that anyone in a position like Obama’s would say it. Think it maybe, but never say it.
I offer this story in support of suspecting the reliability of reported utterances of a political figure not held in universal high regard.
Dan Quayle was George I’s VP. He often said things in public that exposed him to ridicule. He apparently lacked the ability to run prospective verbalizations past a mental screen to filter them for trouble. He was by no means the idiot he was thought by many to be.
And he did not say everything that was ascribed to him.
He traveled to someplace in Central America and gave a speech which was reported to have included the wish that he had studied latin in school that he might better appreciate latin america.
He never said it. the story was cooked up by a guy on Sen. Lautenberg’s staff IIRC and was soon being retold all over the world. It is true that it was the sort of thing Quayle could have said but in this case he didn’t. There was a witch hunt and my acquaintance was fired. And yes, there is some integrity in Washington – not much, but some.
So I think we need to discover whether DeWitt’s quote is real.
And no slight of DeWitt certainly. It does sound like Obama, but maybe a bit too much.
Re: j ferguson (Nov 7 14:29),
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/us/politics/10obama.html?_r=0
Fourth paragraph. There are many other sources. I haven’t looked, but I’d bet it’s on YouTube.
I don’t know of any recording on YouTube, but you can find the audio here.
He was also reported to have said something similar by Jake Tapper of ABC News on July 25, 2007.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3413377&page=1
Need I say more? Again, I’d like to see his undergraduate transcript to see exactly what courses he took in International Relations. The scuttlebutt is that it was mainly one seminar in his senior year.
I guess John McCain’s 5 years as a POW in North Vietnam didn’t count as living overseas.
Thanks guys for finding support for it. I’m still utterly astonished that an adult would ever say such a thing.
Obama, we hardly knew you.
J Ferguson,
“Obama, we hardly knew you.”
.
After 6 years of “my way or the highway”, I think we do kind of know him; a pure PITA. Jimmy and Obama, neck and neck for worst president in 60 years. In any case, the country will be better off once he is (finally) gone.
Re: j ferguson (Nov 7 19:13),
I suspect that if you ran that statement by someone of strong leftish persuasion, they wouldn’t see a problem. Obviously the MSM didn’t think it was a negative. They probably agreed with him.
Well he certainly fooled me, at least in 2008. I can well remember that Jeff ID had his number at the time and as subsequently revealed had a very accurate grasp of the guy’s shortcomings – and it wasn’t only via disliking his politics.
Given that choice in a presidential election is usually between two people, would anyone else who reads here ever vote for an opposition candidate?
If so, then there can probably be a discussion on how to avoid another hiring error like this one, but if not, I can’t see any point in pursuing this, although I’d really like to.
I probably interviewed 1,000 people over my years behind the plow and hired some 200. I made mistakes although I did get better with age (same as cheese). Almost always the problems which the hire later exhibited had been seen during interviewing, but put out of my mind with some theory that I would be able to live with them or work around them.
I was usually wrong about this, but not always. I found i could work around personality defects a lot better than technical weaknesses, and in fact used to pride myself on having some real nuts in my employ who were so creative that the challenge of dealing with them was well worth the effort.
But this sort of thing doesn’t apply to presidents. And you can’t take them out to a bar, get therm sloshed and then listen as they recite all the reasons why you shouldn’t hire them, like how they are cleverly rigging their expense accounts at their current jobs.
It’s also clear that MSM doesn’t report everything – like the examples above, particularly DeWitt’s first quote, probably because their reporters didn’t recognize if for what it was, a remarkable revelation of terminal incompetence.
If you always vote your politics, then you can’t really get into these sorts of choices, but if you don’t, then i think you really need to figure out how to recognize trouble on its way.
Re: j ferguson (Nov 8 09:54),
Warning signs to me off the top of my head are:
1. Age under 55
2. No executive experience
3. Referred to as being very smart.
3a. Thinks he’s always the smartest guy in the room
Further on point 2: Being married to an executive is not executive experience. That’s much like living for some time in a foreign country in your youth does not make you an expert in international relations. Apparently an undergraduate degree from Columbia in international relations doesn’t either.
Unfortunately, Obama was the average journalist’s wet dream of a candidate precisely because he does hit all the points above, so any negatives were always going to be swept under the rug. Even now many of them refuse to admit there’s a problem.
DeWitt,
3a is the killer. If it’s true, he’s in the wrong room. If it isn’t, he’s deluded.
Re: j ferguson (Nov 8 12:26),
The ancient Greeks had a word for 3a, hubris. In the tragic plays, hubris was always punished severely by the gods. The problem with that was that there was always a lot of collateral damage in the process.
We’ve certainly enjoyed the collateral damage.
“Dan Quayle was George I’s VP. He often said things in public that exposed him to ridicule. He apparently lacked the ability to run prospective verbalizations past a mental screen to filter them for trouble. He was by no means the idiot he was thought by many to be.” Indeed. An essential ingredient for success in today’s politics is never to say anything, ever. Ever, even years before you went into politics so you won’t show up having said something really dumb in high school or such.
How many of us never say anything dumb?