All Posts Tagged With: "president"

While I have no regrets about my vote and support for the current president I am thoroughly disgusted by the “do as I say, not as I do” that Obama has demonstrated with his appointments of former lobbyists in direct contradiction to his much touted ethics order. Hypocrisy grates on me more than most other irritants. I will call Obama on it just like I called out the previous administration and others on it. Campbell Brown is spot on with her commentary on the matter:

Unfortunately, we are again asking the president to explain why exactly he announced, with great fanfare, new ethics rules if he had no intention of abiding by them.

The Obama administration is yet again asking for a waiver to its very own rules about hiring lobbyists.

This time, it is the new treasury secretary, Tim Geithner. He wants a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs to be his top aide at the Treasury Department.

My view is simple: Mr. President, if you want to hire former lobbyists because you think they are the best people to do the job, then hire former lobbyists. Just don’t hold a big news conference first to tell us how your administration is going to be so different from previous administrations in that you won’t be hiring lobbyists.

Don’t make your disdain for lobbyists and your pledges that they won’t wield influence in your administration a centerpiece of your campaign.

It’s the hypocrisy and the double-talk that makes so many of us so cynical. Do what you think is best for the country. Just be straight with us about how you’re going to do it.

Republicans are taking a stand, says Josh Marshall:

RNC members decide they no longer like President Bush, just in time for his no longer being president anymore.

In his first weekly address since being sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, President Barack Obama discussed how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan will jump-start the economy.

Obama to GOP: ‘I won’

President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning - but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. “I won,” Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.

From President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address:

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

Fried Green Onions laments:

This executive order plague by W Bush and the planned executive order blitz by Obama seems to be legislative usurpation.

What is congress been doing? Setting on their hands.

Has the death of the Republic already happened and I am the last to know.

Well, the reality is that George W. Bush is actually below the median. In fact, according to the Executive Orders Disposition Tables Index, which lists all the presidents since Herbert Hoover, only three presidents — Bush 41, Ford and Kennedy — had fewer executive orders. Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, Johnson, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt and Hoover all had more — and some alot more. Here are how those presidents rank from most to least:

• Franklin D. Roosevelt — 3,467 executive orders issued
• Herbert Hoover — 1,011 executive orders issued
• Harry S. Truman — 894 executive orders issued
• Dwight D. Eisenhower — 482 executive orders issued
• Ronald Reagan — 381 executive orders issued
• William J. Clinton — 364 executive orders issued
• Richard Nixon — 346 executive orders issued
• Lyndon B. Johnson — 324 executive orders issued
• Jimmy Carter — 320 executive orders issued
• George W. Bush — 289 executive orders issued
• John F. Kennedy — 214 executive orders issued
• Gerald R. Ford — 169 executive orders issued
• George H.W. Bush — 166 executive orders issued

The Economist assesses the legacy of George W. Bush:

HE LEAVES the White House as one of the least popular and most divisive presidents in American history. At home, his approval rating has been stuck in the 20s for months; abroad, George Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America’s reputation since the second world war. The American economy is in deep recession, brought on by a crisis that forced Mr Bush to preside over huge and unpopular bail-outs.

America is embroiled in two wars, one of which Mr Bush launched against the tide of world opinion. The Bush family name, once among the most illustrious in American political life, is now so tainted that Jeb, George’s younger brother, recently decided not to run for the Senate from Florida. A Bush relative describes family gatherings as “funeral wakes”.

Few people would have predicted this litany of disasters when Mr Bush ran for the presidency in 2000…

Mr Bush relied heavily on a small inner core of advisers. The most important of these was Dick Cheney, who quickly became the most powerful vice-president in American history. Mr Cheney used his mastery of bureaucracy to fill the administration with his protégés and to control the flow of information to the president. He pushed Mr Bush forcefully to the right on everything from global warming to the invasion of Iraq; he also fought ruthlessly to expand the power of the executive branch, which he thought had been dangerously restricted since Watergate.

The two other decisive figures were Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s longtime political guru, and Donald Rumsfeld, his defence secretary. Mr Rove was obsessed by pursuing his dream of a rolling Republican realignment, subordinating everything to party politics. Mr Rumsfeld regarded the Iraq war not, like his boss, as an exercise in democracy-building, but as an opportunity to test the model of an “agile military” that he was pioneering at the Pentagon.

The fruit of all this can be seen in the three most notable characteristics of the Bush presidency: partisanship, politicisation and incompetence. Mr Bush was the most partisan president in living memory. He was content to be president of half the country—a leader who fused his roles of head of state and leader of his party. He devoted his presidency to feeding the Republican coalition that elected him. [Bold emphasis mine.]

Read their full assessment here. They’ve hit the nail on the head (in my humble opinion).

Hugh Hewitt makes some great points worth considering:

In that question is the new president’s greatest political danger. He’s about to oversee the spending of an unthinkable $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars ($350 billion in the second half of the bank bailout, and at least $700 million in the stimulus package.)  Even if growth returns as expected in the second half of 2009, voters in 2010 and beyond will be wondering, and Republicans will be asking: “Where did it go?  What did it buy?  What do we have to show for it?”

If President Obama oversees the payout of more than a trillion bucks and cannot point to anything but statistics to show for it in two years, he’ll have a political nightmare on his hands, and he’ll deserve it.  The enormous size of the stimulus is a never-before-seen-in-American-history splurge, and the Democrats thus far show no sign of treating it as other than a vast payout to their friends.

If President Obama was to demand the funding for and enabling legislation to kick start the construction of the dozens of new nuclear power plants this country needs, as well as the wind turbines envisioned by T. Boone Pickens and the grid expansion everyone knows is necessary, not only would he be creating thousands and thousands of great jobs, he’d be powering the U.S. up for a second American century.

I agree, except that it won’t just be Republicans asking “”Where did it go?  What did it buy?  What do we have to show for it?” Every taxpayer who’s paying attention will all be asking those same questions, regardless of their political identification.

If we’re going to infuse trillions of taxpayers’ dollars into the economy by way of astronomical deficits, then it better be for worthwhile investments into long-lasting projects that not only infuse capital into our economy but also addresses some of our nation’s long-term fundamental needs — like infrastructure and energy. As Hewitt noted, the nation’s power grid needs some serious work, including beefing up its security. Roads and bridges across the country, including right here in Oklahoma, are in desperate need of repair, rebuilding and new construction to replace the aging, outdated and obsolete structures designed for an era long past with much less traffic loads. And the nation certainly needs massive investment in innovation and infrastructure building for alternative energy sources, whether for our cars or for our commercial and private energy needs.

This can’t be a political pork feast with the most senior members of Congress getting the best chunks for their districts at the disadvantage of the country as a whole. The party in power needs to exercise its power with prudence and not with greed. I know that’s a lot to ask, but let’s just try it once since our nation literally sits at a precarious precipice. This not the time for politics and grandstanding but for meaningful and effective bipartisan solutions.

I’ve got a suggestion of my own. If in two years there is nothing to show for all this massive spending, we fire all of them — all 535 members of Congress — with a four-year ban before they can run for that office again. So, if they can’t set aside their political posturing and grandstanding and come together to diligently and honestly work on solutions for this country, then they are terminated for failure to perform. The stakes are too high for business as usual on Capitol Hill.

In two years (and again in four years), I will ask this Congress and this new president, “what do we have to show for it?” There better be some good answers. We certainly haven’t had must to show from the last big stimulus package nor from the economic policies of the last eight years. It’s certainly time for serious change and it’s most definitely time for complete accountability.

Rasmussen Reports:

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of Americans say Bush is one of the five worst presidents in U.S. history, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just six percent (6%) say he was one of the five best, and 34% place him somewhere in between.