Here is Joe Klein ( or should we say, "Anonymous") on Obama and his "hard choices." http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1909308,00.html
Obama is a "c"onservative??? Can you say - DELUSIONAL?
Read on. By the way Mr. Kissinger, how is that detente thing going? That worked really well - chess player.
Just for laughs, click on who Time blames for the financial crisis. There are 2 people to blame - Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Without them, Franklin Raines isn't relevant. Neither is Countrywide Mortgage and all the others.
Time is losing readership? Really - why?
"Barack Obama has been President for six months now, and we are
beginning to learn a few things about how he does business. The most
surprising of these is that he is a vehement traditionalist, a small-c
conservative, despite his opponents' best efforts to paint him as a
radical. In foreign policy, this has meant a return to traditional
diplomatic devices — treaties, alliances, negotiation, a global
strategic vision — after the ad hoc, go-it-alone bellicosity of his
predecessor. No less a high priest than Henry Kissinger recently called
Obama a "chess player," which is high praise in the world of diplomacy.
In domestic policy, however, it has meant an undue respect for the
institution of Congress, a sclerotic body badly in need of creative
leadership. This is leading Obama into trouble.
It is likely to be an ugly summer of sausage-grinding in
Washington. Obama's two biggest domestic-policy proposals — health-care
reform and alternative energy — will be pulverized and reshaped by the
Senate. The end products may be unsightly and counterproductive, if
passed. A third initiative — a relatively modest regulatory reform of
the financial system — is being chewed to dust by the termite lobbyists
of the banking industry. A fourth initiative — the effort to buy off
the banking system's "toxic" assets — is languishing, near comatose,
because of the bankers' intransigence. (See who's who in Barack Obama's White House.)
The fact is, Obama may be blowing a major opportunity for reform with
his domestic-policy diffidence. He came to office faced with an
unprecedented economic crisis, and he focused on it successfully during
his first 100 days, giving two excellent speeches about the need for a
stimulus plan and general economic reform. He has lost that focus as
his other initiatives have come online; he has failed to speak with
precision or clarity about the bills wandering through Congress. He has
failed to make clear what needs to be in those bills — and what can't
be — if he is going to sign them. He also needs to update the public on
his stimulus plan, especially now that his Vice President inadvertently
dissed it. And he needs to make a direct assault on the greedheads who
created the Ponzi economy and are now trying to gut his plan to make
them do business honestly. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.)"
