Fire and Imagination
By Bob Herbert
NY Times OP-Ed: August 13, 2010
The Obama administration seems to be feeling sorry for itself. Robert Gibbs,
the president's press secretary, is perturbed that Mr. Obama is not getting
more hosannas from liberals.
Spare me. The country is a mess. The economy is horrendous, and millions of
American families are running out of ammunition in their fight against
destitution. Steadily increasing numbers of middle-class families, who never
thought they'd be seeking charity, have been showing up at food pantries.
The war in Afghanistan, with its dreadful human toll and debilitating drain
on the nation's financial resources, is proceeding as poorly as ever. As The
Times reported on Friday, an ambitious operation that was supposed to
showcase the progress of the Afghan Army turned into a tragic, humiliating
debacle.
And while schools are hemorrhaging resources because of budget meltdowns,
and teachers are losing jobs, and libraries are finding it more and more
difficult to remain open, American youngsters are falling further behind
their peers in other developed countries in their graduation rates from
colleges and universities.
This would be a good time for the Obama crowd to put aside its concern about
the absence of giddiness among liberals and re-examine what it might do to
improve what is fast becoming a depressing state of affairs.
It's not just liberals who are gloomy. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll
this week found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe the country is on the
wrong track and a majority disapproves of President Obama's handling of the
economy. Nearly two-thirds expect the economy to get worse still.
Mr. Obama's problem - and the nation's - is that in the midst of the
terrible economic turmoil that the country was in when he took office, he
did not make full employment, meaning job creation in both the short and the
long term, the nation's absolute highest priority.
Besides responding to the nation's greatest need, job creation would have
been the one issue most likely to bolster Mr. Obama's efforts to bring
people of different political persuasions together. In the early months of
2009, with job losses soaring past a half-million a month and the country
desperate for bold, creative leadership, the president had an opportunity to
rally the nation behind an enormous "rebuild America" effort.
Such an effort, properly conceived, would have put millions to work
overhauling the nation's infrastructure, rebuilding our ports and
transportation facilities to 21st-century standards, establishing a
Manhattan Project-like quest for a brave new world of clean energy, and so
on.
We were going to spend staggering amounts of money in any event. There was
every reason to use those enormous amounts of public dollars to leverage
private capital, as well, for investment in projects and research that the
country desperately needs and that would provide enormous benefits for many
decades. Think of the returns the nation reaped from its investments in the
interstate highway system, the Land Grant colleges, rural electrification,
the Erie and Panama canals, the transcontinental railroad, the technology
that led to the Internet, the Apollo program, the G.I. bill.
The problem with the U.S. economy today, as it was during the Great
Depression, is the absence of sufficient demand for goods and services.
Consumers, struggling with sky-high unemployment and staggering debt loads,
are tapped out. The economy cannot be made healthy again, and there is no
chance of doing anything substantial about budget deficits, as long as so
many millions of people are left with essentially no purchasing power. Jobs
are the only real answer.
President Obama missed his opportunity early last year to rally the public
behind a call for shared sacrifice and a great national mission to rebuild
the United States in a way that would create employment for millions and
establish a gleaming new industrial platform for the great advances of the
21st century.
It would have taken fire and imagination, but the public was poised to
respond to bold leadership. If the Republicans had balked, and they would
have, the president had the option of taking his case to the people, as
Truman did in his great underdog campaign of 1948.
During the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt explained to the public the
difference between wasteful spending and sound government investments. "You
cannot borrow your way out of debt," he said, "but you can invest your way
into a sounder future."
Now, with so much money already spent and Republicans expected to gain seats
in the Congressional elections, the president finds himself with a much
weaker hand, even if he were inclined to play it boldly.
What that will mean in the real world of ordinary Americans is that even if
there is a fretful recovery from the Great Recession, millions will be left
out of it. Hope has morphed into widespread gloom as widespread economic
suffering becomes the new normal in America.
***
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/10/obama-vs-obama-on-afghani_n_676836.html
Obama vs. Obama on Endless Wars: Who Wins?
Huffington Post August 10, 2010
Back in early 2007, when the Bush administration was insisting that its
military intervention in a faraway land was not open-ended, Senator Barack
Obama wasn't buying it.
So the freshman from Illinois used then-secretary of state Condoleeza Rice's
appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as an opportunity
to raise some probing questions about the exit strategy from Iraq. Senator
Obama was particularly skeptical about the administration's alleged
"benchmarks" for success. He wanted to know exactly what they were -- and
what would happen if they weren't met. And he wanted to know the answer to
this question: "At what point do we say: 'Enough'?"
Three and a half years later, that's an excellent question for President
Obama, about Afghanistan. But he doesn't have an answer.
In this video, Huffington Post Video Editor Ben Craw interweaves edited
clips of Senator Obama questioning Rice about Iraq
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/02/obamas-questions-for-obam_n_376390.html
January 2007 with comments President Obama has made about his own
Afghan exit strategy in a speech
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-a-New-Strategy-for-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan/
March 2009, an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes"
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/18/60minutes/main4873938.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody>in
March 2009, an address to the nation
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan
December 2009, remarks to the troops
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-troops>in
Afghanistan in March, an interview with ABC
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/george-stephanopoulos-interview-president-obama-transcript/story?id=10321834&page=1
and an appearance on ABC's "The
View"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/29/obama-the-view-interview_n_663678.html
in July. Who do you think gets the best of this exchange?
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGB_jQziUBU
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