I have been silent for awhile as I really felt a need to watch, consider and to paraphrase the Fonze, “get the drift.” I am not really there yet. The picture is mixed there is no clear cut direction other than a continuation of the Presidents campaign rhetoric. The President and his spokesmen are still using vitriol about the Bush years as a crutch for the predicament we and the rest of the world are in. The more robust left leaning members of his party still clamor to open “Bush” investigations and hold trials not dissimilar in tone to the “off with their heads” of the French revolution.
Yet, when you look at the decisions and orders the president has made to right the perceived wrongs they leave themselves great wiggle room to stay the course. The president has called for the closing of the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, yet no one wants their citizens back and turning them lose is out of the question noting that significant numbers of repatriated prisoners have gone right back to “jihad.”
Vice President Biden, in his ever grating manner, reinforces the point that we are getting out of Iraq yet it was the tenacity of Bush, after following bad advice and exercising poor judgment, that brought on the surge that led to last weeks very meaningful elections in that country.
Alas, there will be no victory in Iraq and Iraq will not be a shining example of democracy that lights the Middle East in our time, or maybe any time, but they may indeed be able to resist falling under the umbrella of Iran. The troop surge and time has allowed for this to happen.
The new presidents appointments and his creative layering of authority were first applauded and now are being denigrated. He has routinely sent up the usual “name” candidates and they routinely arrived up with “inadvertent” personal tax problems and/or all sorts of other underlying questions such as why so many people paying or gifting large amounts of money to the nominees or their spouses. This is not only a curse of the Democrats as neither of the major party luminaries seem able to stand reasonable scrutiny. Unfortunately the power that our power seeking elected class covets includes a disdain for playing by any set of rules that causes then to restrain their appetites.
As to the layering of authority, President Obama is populating the White House and the west wing with heavy hitters that can get his ear before the cabinet secretary’s can even weigh in. Who will rule Treasury, Geithner or his ex – boss Summers. Will special envoy Mitchell and very special representative Holbrooke hold sway over Hillary Clinton? Such egos will not be contained.
The President has also clearly stated that torture is out -- but what is torture? Leon Panetta, set to take over the CIA, has allowed at his hearing that he has to give consideration to some strenuous methods of interrogation. It seems that water boarding, a very uncomfortable but relatively harmless technique (unless the subject has a heart condition), is now clearly defined as torture and if one is willing to say it is torture they are considered good guys and just need to think of another as yet unlabeled way to gain vital intelligence
And then we come to the economy.
All are perplexed and despite the helter - skelter spraying of money at banks and quasi banks the slow down and pain continues. The stock market responds to every effort to solve the problem even when on the same day they receive news of further faltering deterioation. On Friday of last week, as it was announced that there was a further loss of some 600,000 jobs in January, the market rallied strongly on the news that the vaunted stimulus bill was about to be approved but minus about a $100 billion of nonsense that it originally included.
The whole framework of the stimulus effort rests on the theory that we must promote economic growth to the level that we have seen in the past twenty years or so. Economists point out that only with this type of sustained growth can we pay off the debts that this crash is layering on our citizens and future generations. Yet it was the leveraging of earnings and capital beyond the norms of history that got us into this mess. Our financial institutions, our government and a very large percentage of our citizens were and or are way over leveraged. If acceptable economic health can only be achieved by continuing to live on such leverage we are indeed in trouble and no stimulus so conceived can give lasting relief. Indeed, even partial success of such a stimulus will be fueling a worse catastrophe for the future.
But I am not against a stimulus. Things must be tried. To sit and await an accelerating collapse is unthinkable. But the money must be pointed at jobs and infrastructure improvements. Politically philosophical meandering, as we go through mandatory deleveraging, that can only take place over time, will not work. We must spend wisely for all, to have hope for any.
I sympathize with President Obama who, this weekend, has gone off with his family for a breather at Camp David. But the campaign is over, Bush is gone, he has to get real and stay real.
Get my drift?
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