Eugene Robinson

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Obama’s Press Conference at 60+ days and other Presidential Matters

How’s he doing?  I thought the press conference last night showed a more subdued President Obama.   David Biespiel said on Politico’s Arena

Overall: Professor in chief. I saw the news conference on CNN from my hotel room. Will cable TV present every Obama news conference as if it’s the last night of Yalta? I disagree with the interpretation that these night time press conferences should be for dramatic events only. Meeting with the press monthly on prime time is good for democracy–whether the climate is dramatic or not. 

I tend to agree with him.  I don’t think the President is at his best with press conferences – he seems to do better with town hall meetings – but they are informative.  Maybe he should think about a prime time town hall meeting.

Thomas Mann from Brookings said on Politico’s Arena

What struck me about last night’s press conference was how the President managed both to maintain his signature leadership style — cool, intelligent, knowledgeable, and reasonable — and to forcefully advocate his position that his economic recovery program and his budget are inextricably linked. He also signaled clearly, especially in his closing remarks, that he fully understands the obstacles he faces and that some of his priorities will take years to accomplish. It appears he will continue to aim high with an ambitious agenda in spite of the clamor of critics for cutting back on his objectives. In a world in which an exclusive focus on short-term gains has dominated behavior in government and in the private sector, Obama is planning an eight-year program of governance that aspires to grapple seriously with long-term challenges.

Which leads me to talk about the Republican opposition.  Several Republicans posted on the Arena their disappointment that there was no real opposition agenda.  I believe that the President has also pointed out that there is no alternative budget so there can be a real discussion.

Eugene Robinson wrote in today’s Washington Post

Some listeners thought they heard flexibility or even retreat on the president’s ambitious agenda of health care, energy and education. I heard the opposite — a single-minded focus on these three initiatives, which Obama maintains are vital if the economy is to be put on sound footing. His strategy is to let Congress work out the details, but he was clear that he expects all of the Big Three to be reflected in the budget. One thing we’ll learn about him, the president said, is that he’s persistent. I’m going to take him at his word.

If you recall, Barack Obama stuck to a consistant message throughout his campaign.  He never let himself get sidetracked to drawn into debates he didn’t want to have.  I think last night showed he is still the same person, that what we saw during the campaign is what we got as a President.

One negative note to my evaluation of his first 60 days.  I am still worried about some of his appointments, particularly in the economic area.  As I have said before I am very very skeptical about Larry Summers in particular.  Christopher Hayes gave this piece of advice back in January and I think it is still relevant.

But as the Obama administration continues to fill thousands of government positions, they’d do well to heed the words of a wise man who once said that “tallying up your years in Washington is no substitute for judgment.” That was President Obama, whose primary campaign was largely predicated on the principle that having gotten something crucial, like the Iraq War, right when other people got it wrong was of such overwhelming importance that voters should elevate someone who’d been a state senator just a few years earlier to the highest office in the land over a competitor with years in Washington under her belt.

The voters agreed, and I continue to think they got it right. Maybe the president should go back and read some of his old speeches the next time there’s an opening in his administration.

And not to beat a maybe dead horse:  where is a job for Howard Dean?

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Some Thoughts on President Obama’s First Month

I realize I’ve been neglecting my blog recently, but my excuse is that I had the flu last week.  I know that having a flu shot is supposed to prevent this, but as the nurse practitioner said, “It probably made a 5 to 7 day event into a 3 to 5 day one.”  Didn’t make me feel better, but at least I only missed 3 days of work.  Have to be there to help the City of Boston spend the stimulus bucks, you know.

So, how is the new President – and he is new even though it seems forever already – doing?  As Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post on February 17

This is a presidency on steroids. Barack Obama’s executive actions alone would be enough for any new administration’s first month: decreeing an end to torture and the Guantanamo prison, extending health insurance to more children, reversing Bush-era policies on family planning. That the White House also managed to push through Congress a spending bill of unprecedented size and scope — designed both to provide an economic stimulus and reorder the nation’s priorities — is little short of astonishing.

I do wish that the Recovery Act (aka Stimulus Bill) had fewer tax cuts and more infrastruture, education, and arts money, but as Chris Hayes wrote in The Nation

Whatever its shortcomings, there is a lot of good stuff in the bill. As just one example: my parents were visiting this weekend and the whole time my dad, who works in public health in poor neighborhoods, was receiving promising updates on  his blackberry about just how much potential funding there would be for some of their programs.

As I said, there is money to spend.  So what of the Republican argument that taking the money means that there will be the expectation that programs – which the states can’t afford – will continue after the two years of the Recovery Act?  The main point of contention seems to be extention of unemployment benefits.  I’m afraid I don’t undertand the argument.  Hopefully in two years, other parts of the Recovery Act will have created jobs and there will no longer be a need to have massive unemployment benefits.

I have to admit that I worry about the Obama administration’s reluctance to consider prosecuting Bush administration officials.  I worry that we will somehow backslide on things like extraordinary rendition and the right of the prisoners to come to trial.  But then I am reassured by articles like Alexander Zaitchik’s recent post on AlterNet titled 5 Great Progressive Moves by Obama You Might Have Missed.  Zaitchik lists high speed rail funding, arms control, review of faith-based initiatives, broadband, and a reform minded drug czar.

Beyond all these concrete actions is political savvy.  I believe that Obama’s getting out of Washington to sell the Recovery Act and explain it to ordinary people in a setting where people were not pre-screened for their political views, was a smart move and may have saved it as Congress saw the reactions of those in the audience.  While it didn’t get any Republican votes, I think it helped with some of the Blue Dog Democrats.  We also saw his attempts to be bipartisan which were rebuffed by the Republicans.  As Chris Hayes points out

On the politics side of the ledger, Ben Smith notes Obama’s emphasis on the tax cuts in the bill. I’m not necessarily a fan, though politically it’s true that every single Republican member of congress can now be accused of “Voting against the biggest tax cut in history” come next election.” Clearly, this hasn’t escaped the White House’s notice.

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Voting for Obama

Bob and I got up this morning and left the house earlier than we usually do.  There was a line at the voting place.  It was like a gathering of neighbors, 99% of whom were voting for Obama.  It was really a thrill.  I haven’t stood in a line like that to vote since the first Clinton election when my Republican precinct in Richmond went Democratic.

…In my gut, I know there’s a chance that the first African American to make a serious run for the presidency will lose. But that is precisely what’s new and, in a sense, unsettling: I’m talking about possibility, not inevitability.

For African Americans, at least those of us old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement, this is nothing short of mind-blowing. It’s disorienting, and it makes me see this nation in a different light.

I’m with Eugene Robinson (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/03/AR2008110302660.html?hpid=opinionsbox1)