Reply #8: Every Democratic President in my lifetime has disappointed me in some measure. [View All]

[Jackpine Radical]

And I was born during the reign of King Franklin and Queen Eleanor.

You expect that of Presidents. They just aren't going to do everything to your satisfaction. I still have high hopes that Obama will be a far better President than any of his predecessors since FDR, but I don't expect him to do everything to suit me. And I reserve the right to squeal, tantrum and pout when he does not. There has never been a President, at least a Democratic President, who didn't need his feet kept to the fire by the very ones who voted for him.

Yeah, I'm unhappy with the appearance of several major policy thrusts right now, particularly the apparent shuffling off of single-payer health care and the apparent giveaways of taxpayer money to the super-rich. However, I also recognize that, in the case of the health care proposal, we don't know anything about what sort of plan is shaping up, and Obama has something of a track record f feinting toward his opponents and then, if they don't cooperate to the extent he wants, veering away from them and essentially doing what he wants. The stimulus package and the case of the Recalcitrant Republicans is an example; the current GM situation is maybe another. So he could end up putting out a health care plan that is much better than it now looks.

Likewise the bailout of the American financial empire. The fact of the matter is that I am not an economist, I don't fully understand the ramifications of everything that Obama and his acvisers have to be considering, and anyway there may still be a feint-toward-the-enemy move in there somewhere.

I am glad that the Keynesians are back in force--Stiglitz, Krugman, Roubini, Galbraith--and I have the sense (following Robert Reich's analysis) that the Obamites are Keynesians at heart. But there is a vast world of difference between being an academic (or even applied) economist and being a politician who has to balance off many different factors, economic and otherwise, in arriving at a policy for a nation. The economists only have to deal with one part of reality--a part that doesn't include the political realities, or the need to sometimes make moves that appear to be 90 or even 180 degrees from the place where you want to end up.

So I know where I want to go with health care in grand terms, and I know that ultimately I want the common people to have a greater share in the wealth they produce, and I want to have a clean, thermally stable, and healthy environment. But sometimes you just got to trust they guy you hired to do the job for you. You need to keep reminding him of the outcome you want, but you have to let him turn the knobs and levers to get you there.