From Jim Winter's Edged in Blue:
I’m not one of those who believes that Obama will solve all our problems, that beer will spout from every public fountain, and unicorns will magically appear** under his administration. I simply think we have the best chance of repairing our relations in the world - and only paranoid moron thinks we don’t need the world - and squelching this red state/blue state bullshit that’s poisoned the nation for the past 7 years.
**Because everyone knows this Administration has diverted millions in unicorn research to Halliburton.
I suppose. Really, though, for me I've always been more comfortable with technocrats in the White House, rather than rhetorical geniuses. Although not a fan of Republicans, I always felt George H.W. Bush was a competent bureaucrat.
ReplyDeleteRonald Reagan, who to Republicans was and remains the Second Coming of Christ, he was probably a rhetorical genius, but totally inept as an administrator.
Jimmy Carter was quite the idealist, but nobody points their fingers at his administration as being competent.
Bill Clinton? Hard call. Certainly he's gifted politically, but his political style was supposedly a bit anarchic, although I thought the first 6 years of his presidency was fine. It was the last 2 years of debacle that were a problem.
And George W. and Cheney. Are they competent? I'm not sure. They're sure as hell not inspiring. My biggest problem with both of them is a complete unwillingness to admit they might have made a mistake and then try to fix it. Instead, having made a decision, they'll ride that train right off the broken trestle into the whirlpool below, saying, "But we were on the right track" even as they hit the waves below.
That's my biggest worry about Obama. That he SOUNDS good, but that he's not really saying how he's going to do what he wants to do. As a fan of the boring technocrats, at least Hillary Clinton seems to have a plan, even though she's not terribly inspiring.
And besides, I'm sort of a healthcare wonk and I think Clinton's healthcare plan is good, whereas Obama's seems sort of half-assed.
Actually, Mark, Obama has laid out his proposals, at least as explicitly as anyone else, on his website.
ReplyDeleteAs for what happens when you get specific in your stump speech, see this from E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post:
At one campaign stop last week, as Hillary Clinton droned on learnedly about health care, family and medical leave, and global warming, a colleague in the press section leaned over to dismiss her for offering nothing but "a laundry list of wonkery."
Same as it ever was...heads Republicans win, tails Democrats lose.
Oh, I understand. When any candidate gets too specific during a campaign, we shut down--hell, I do, too. It's the old saw about campaigning in poetry and administrating in prose, blah, blah, blah.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I do think Obama is inspiring. But part of my psychological makeup doesn't trust charisma and looks for the competence. I think Hillary Clinton is very hard working and competent. Obama may be as well, but it's harder to tell. It's not the feeling I get off him.