Most environmentally responsible use of Air Force One by any President in 2009.
Well, he scored mostly 8-8.5, but the damn East German judge (who’s country doesn’t even exist anymore) gave him a 4.2! Oh well…
-XT
Another B+. He should have told Daschle to fall on his sword long before he did, he didn’t have Geithner get all his ducks in a row before unveiling a banking plan, and he gave up too much in negotiations over the stimulus bill. He nominated a guy for Commerce who would not have fit in and Obama had to ruffle some feathers to keep him from his goal of politicizing the census. But he got the stimulus bill passed and he promised to close Gitmo.
Obama’s move to court bipartisan support and failing may have been crazy like a fox. Now the Republicans have no ownership of the stimulus and any credit that comes if it works will go to the Democrats. In addition, Obama gets the moral high ground for having tried to extend his hand across the aisle. Between Cantor and his bailout-grubbing wife, nutcase Bachmann, Rash Limpballs, McCain’s trotting out his tired old plan, and Joe the Unlicensed Tax Dodger giving us a piece of his limited mind, the Republicans are looking more Whiggish by the day.
I’d prefer not to use a raving lunatic’s opinion as a standard for rating progress.
Personally, I’d rate him a solid B+, maybe an A-. It hasn’t been a wholesale uprootal of all policies Bush related, simply because they were Bush related, which I was a little worried about. Instead he’s acted moderately. Militarily, he’s continued missle strikes into Pakistan, he’s reviewing Gitmo with caution, and it looks like he atleast respects the Generals’ advice on withdrawal from Iraq, even if he doesn’t plan on following it.
As far as the economy, he’s doing what he can. Ultimately, a lot of it (the pork) was in the hands of Congress, he couldn’t really buck his own party if he wanted to get anything done. Again, his housing proposal looks pretty familiar. Proof, I guess, that if you can strip names away from policies, things can appear more reasonable.
According to an article I read in the paper today, his campaign promise is written "As Obama removes our combat brigades from Iraq, he will send at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan…"Cite
This doesn’t say he intended to move from one to the other specifically. Is there another speech or conversation where he stated that that I missed?
The Geithner thing really hit me where it hurts. I can’t beleive that putz somehow got the idea that it would be acceptable to go in front of the entire world, at the moment where everyone in the entire world was looking to the White House for some reassurance that the banks would be fixed, and bite his lip and go “My plan is… going to come real soon!”
As much as I have lost my faith in Alan Greenspan’s wisdom, he understood that when you are talking to the world of finance, when your every word might very well launch a million financial decisions and effect billions, you absolutely cannot afford to seem uncertain, over your head, or really anything less than fully in control, with a plan that will work.
That’s true in normal times. That’s a million times more important in times like these, where panic and uncertainty and pessimism rule.
So you know what, Geithner, you nincompoop? You already failed. Even if you didn’t have the plan totally ready yet, your job was to show up to that press conference, look the camera in the eye, and say "We have a plan, and it will work. Here it is. " and if necessary, BS.
But make us beleive it.