I will not lessen the uncharacteristic pith of this OP with blather.
I expect that his first attempt at pushing anything healthcare related through will blow up spectacularly through involving the wrong people or just some other underheadedness.
I’m willing to be proven wrong however.
And either way, I don’t think one major mistake will sink the whole idea of UHC like it did in Clinton’s day.
I do not expect to see any unforced errors. He’s a very careful and deliberate decision maker. I don’t think we’ll see anything overreaching or reckless. If there are any mistakes, they will be reactive – event driven – and events are unpredictable. My guess is that he might be perceived as TOO slow and deliberate in reacting to some kind of crisis or event.
Obviously, it’s unrealistic to expect that he’ll never make mistakes, but I don’t think it’s a given that his mistakes will have to be major blunders either. I think he has it in him to be a pretty even keeled President without dramatic fuck ups.
I’m not sure we’re on the same page; are you saying that such an attempt will fail through something the senator or his aides will do? Because, otherwise, it’s not a mistake on his part.
I’m saying he will pick people so ill-suited to the task that nothing will be done.
He needs to stay away from Teresa Ghilarducci.
I predict that he will anticipate too much cooperation from his fellow Democrats in Congress.
Her, I assume. May I assume that thisis the reason? From the linked article:
Links are very helpful.
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Expecting Nancy Pelosi to be competent. (And I say this as a strong Democrat.)
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Trusting the Pentagon. "Don’t worry about it Sir. We can hit that terrorist safe house with absolute precision, not hurt any non-combantants, and we know for a fact the bad guy is there right this second. Furthermore, it’ll look like one of their own bombs went off. The local officials won’t suspect us at all. " Next day: “Oops.”
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Expecting any of the bailouts/loans to all those companies to be paid back.
Easy. Somebody he appoints won’t be confirmed due to something scandalous. Maybe that’s not major enough, though.
How about this? His economic recovery proposals will be seized upon by the “he’s a socialist who wants to raise your taxes/take your guns/make you have an abortion, etc.” crowd and he’ll have to waste precious time backpedalling from it, losing huge amounts of momentum and consensus in the process. This will happen before the first daffodils poke up.
Has he done anything in the past 20 months that would indicate he’s inclined to pick the wrong person for a job? I’m not being snarky, I really don’t know.
Not a supporter of his, but I expect that the first gaffe will come from a cabinet member or a appointed position.
declan
I’ve been wondering how this will play out, actually. He ran as a moderate and a compromiser…but most of the Democrats in Congress didn’t. So I’m guessing that one of two things will happen. Either one, he will be revealed as someone who isn’t the compromiser he promised to be, or two, he will have a major uphill battle with Congress. I’m kind of guessing it’s the latter, but on the other hand, if it is, I’m kind of surprised he is that naive.
He hasn’t, but I am very fearful he will throw Hillary a bone and put her to work on it again. As I despise everything Hillary Clinton-connected, this would be a major good to me (and probably to Republicans that would vote on any UHC bills as well).
Basically, I’m worried he’ll go for a flashy pick when he doesn’t have to and it’ll blow up in his face.
I think he may have already made it, by chosing Rahm Immanuel for his Chief of Staff. I don’t think it sends the unifying message to the other team that he has been promoting since the start of his campaign. I like that he is being forceful and aggressive, but I hope he will make good on his promise to listen to the other side.
Some sort of scandal from the travel department.
I think he will overestimate the amount of goodwill in congress and it will blow up in his face. He’ll expect them all to get along swimmingly with his good intentions, and congress will vote toward something more self-serving. I know, that’s not very specific.
I always pictured Obama’s wordview to be akin to Captain Carrot in the discword books (thinking everyone is a great person deep down, if only a bit misunderstood). Of course on the reverse side of that, everyone generally went along with what Captain Carrot said, because they wanted to believe that he was right and they really were great people, even if they weren’t.
Thus proving Carrot’s point. What makes a person good is what he does, not what he believes.
I also think his first mistake will be a military one. I just read Newsweek’s campaign issue and what struck me about Obama’s campaign was that Obama was one of its smartest members.
Obama was the only one that knew what to do with Reverend Wright. Obama was the one that made the call to not over react to Palin. Obama told his staff not to protect him from any dirty campaign tricks, and to come to him and ask him before they do anything risky. Obama also told his staff to challenge Hillary on the issue of siting down with Iran without any preconditions. His staff was ready to backpedal when Obama told them that Hillary’s attack was ridiculous and they shouldn’t be afraid to fight back.
So Obama was able to keep his campaign running smoothly because he knew a thing or two about campaigning. He does not know as much on military matters. One can hope that he recognizes as much and won’t need a “Bay of Pigs” disaster to teach him not to trust his advisers (Kennedy got a whole new group of advisers by the time of the Cuban missile crisis.)
I think he has given more thought to domestic policy matters than military issues. He might make some serious mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The goodwill of Congress is going to last as long as the Obama movement lasts. As long as Obama can command the grassroots movement he built up in his campaign, he will command Congress.
The problem is that the Obama movement is not based around any issue or philosophy. It is only based on Obama. Whether or not he can keep the movement together remains to be seen.
He will pick somebody for a post who has some scandal in his/her background. Think Zoe Baird, that kind of thing.
His first budget, when passed thru Congress, will (I suspect) bear only a passing resemblance to what he submits. But that won’t be for a while.
IOW, about twenty minutes past eight AM, January 22, 2009.