Friday, January 22, 2010
Ballad of a Tin-Eared President
If you listen to the pundits, the only problem facing the Obama presidency is his focus on health care in place of a populist desire to see jobs created. The president seems to be following the sage advice by giving speeches on his jobs programs in hard-hit Ohio today. If we listen to the mainstream media, the shift in strategy will soothe people's economic fears and slow down the anti-Democrat train that picked up steam with big Republican wins in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts.
The formula for saving a floundering presidency seems to be the Bill Clinton model; after getting hammered in an off-year election, move from the left to the center and pre-empt popular Republican ideas like welfare reform. While I was no Clinton fan, I admire his shrewdness as a politician. Bill Clinton ultimately made decisions based on how they affected the chances he (and later Al Gore) would be elected. Barack Obama is far more ideological; he uses rhetoric to try and sell his ideas, but there's been no evidence he'd abandon them.
One of Bill Clinton's saving graces was his attitude towards American business. He raised taxes in his first term, but he was not, on the whole, a committed opponent of American free enterprise. Barack Obama does not trust the free market to create jobs. Big businesses are cash cow to be raided in the form of additional taxes to support his social programs. "Stimulus" and environmental legislation are the prefered vehicles this administration has used for job creation and retention.
In the short term, the president's gamble might pay off. The illusion that he cares about turning the tide of rising unemployment may stop the bleeding that Democrats have been bracing for in 2010. But the president's plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire, coupled with his plans for new taxes on large banks, are a recipe for a double-dip recession in 2011-2012. Assuming Democrats hold onto the House and Senate this fall, voters will justifiably blame the president and Democrat congress in 2012 for the ongoing unemployment misery.
Barack Obama cannot fix the economy because he is Barack Obama; a partisan leftist ideologue who may alter his rhetoric, but he'll never acquiesce to the tax cuts that banks, large businesses and even individual Americans will need to grow a stagnant economy.
The formula for saving a floundering presidency seems to be the Bill Clinton model; after getting hammered in an off-year election, move from the left to the center and pre-empt popular Republican ideas like welfare reform. While I was no Clinton fan, I admire his shrewdness as a politician. Bill Clinton ultimately made decisions based on how they affected the chances he (and later Al Gore) would be elected. Barack Obama is far more ideological; he uses rhetoric to try and sell his ideas, but there's been no evidence he'd abandon them.
One of Bill Clinton's saving graces was his attitude towards American business. He raised taxes in his first term, but he was not, on the whole, a committed opponent of American free enterprise. Barack Obama does not trust the free market to create jobs. Big businesses are cash cow to be raided in the form of additional taxes to support his social programs. "Stimulus" and environmental legislation are the prefered vehicles this administration has used for job creation and retention.
In the short term, the president's gamble might pay off. The illusion that he cares about turning the tide of rising unemployment may stop the bleeding that Democrats have been bracing for in 2010. But the president's plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire, coupled with his plans for new taxes on large banks, are a recipe for a double-dip recession in 2011-2012. Assuming Democrats hold onto the House and Senate this fall, voters will justifiably blame the president and Democrat congress in 2012 for the ongoing unemployment misery.
Barack Obama cannot fix the economy because he is Barack Obama; a partisan leftist ideologue who may alter his rhetoric, but he'll never acquiesce to the tax cuts that banks, large businesses and even individual Americans will need to grow a stagnant economy.
Friday, January 15, 2010
The Battle for Late Night
Late night talk shows are supposed to be funny, but NBC's handling of its late-night talent (plus Jimmy Fallon, to whom the word "talent" rarely applies) is becoming sad and even tragic. Back in early 2004 when NBC announced Conan O'Brien's ascencion to The Tonight Show, I had a hard time seeing how the arrangement would work. How would audiences react to Conan O'Brien's zaniness on the flagship, long-running late-night show? To a lesser degree, what would Jay leno be doing on an NBC prime-time show?
It turns out that my fears were a bit misplaced. While I'm not a huge Conan fan (aside from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog,) I think he's done a fine job hosting The Tonight Show. It's been toned down just enough to appeal to his new time slot's wider audience, while still remaining faithful to everything he had done in his old time slot.
My concern should have been with Leno. Bear in mind that I love Jay Leno's jokes and his equal-opportunity skewering of all our politicians. But his decision to host a slightly-tweaked version of his former show during a prime-time slot was not a winner. Let's face it: a late-night show with late-night ratings still can't generate the ratings needed to compete in prime-time. Had Jay elected to host a variety show or a half-hour of stand-up comedy every night, the situation might have been better. But Jay loved his talk show format too much to give it up or change it substantially.
Now NBC is engaged in a battle of comedy titans and will likely let Conan walk with a huge payoff while returning Jay to The Tonight Show. It would be nice if NBC could fire Jimmy Fallon and return to the status quo, but that dog won't hunt. Conan knows that he's an A-list talk show host, and he shouldn't settle for anything less than the time slot he currently enjoys. Like many fans of late-night talk, I'm disappointed that Jay didn't re-tool his show into something that would actually be competitive during prime-time (even if he had to move his show's start up by an hour or two.)
NBC has been done in by its depth of talent. It wanted to keep Conan happy while preventing Jay from jumping ship to another network. Its desire to stop its talent from defecting to its competitors has created so much bad blood among the fans that NBC's late-night ratings may never recover from this debacle.
It turns out that my fears were a bit misplaced. While I'm not a huge Conan fan (aside from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog,) I think he's done a fine job hosting The Tonight Show. It's been toned down just enough to appeal to his new time slot's wider audience, while still remaining faithful to everything he had done in his old time slot.
My concern should have been with Leno. Bear in mind that I love Jay Leno's jokes and his equal-opportunity skewering of all our politicians. But his decision to host a slightly-tweaked version of his former show during a prime-time slot was not a winner. Let's face it: a late-night show with late-night ratings still can't generate the ratings needed to compete in prime-time. Had Jay elected to host a variety show or a half-hour of stand-up comedy every night, the situation might have been better. But Jay loved his talk show format too much to give it up or change it substantially.
Now NBC is engaged in a battle of comedy titans and will likely let Conan walk with a huge payoff while returning Jay to The Tonight Show. It would be nice if NBC could fire Jimmy Fallon and return to the status quo, but that dog won't hunt. Conan knows that he's an A-list talk show host, and he shouldn't settle for anything less than the time slot he currently enjoys. Like many fans of late-night talk, I'm disappointed that Jay didn't re-tool his show into something that would actually be competitive during prime-time (even if he had to move his show's start up by an hour or two.)
NBC has been done in by its depth of talent. It wanted to keep Conan happy while preventing Jay from jumping ship to another network. Its desire to stop its talent from defecting to its competitors has created so much bad blood among the fans that NBC's late-night ratings may never recover from this debacle.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Items of Interest
The Man of Steele
RNC Chairman Michael Steele is making some Republicans steamed with ill-timed comments, particularly on his party's chances of winning back Congress. It strikes me as odd that the RNC chairman is having plenty of foot-in-mouth moments, while the DNC chairman has been fairly silent. When control of the White House was in Republican hands, it seemed like the DNC chairmen (first Terry McAuliffe, then Howard Dean) were making outrageous statements to the media and giving their partison firebrands more red-meat to chew on. The RNC chairmen (like Ken Mehlman & Marc Racicot) were very tight-lipped, quietly raising money behind the scenes.
The job of the party chairman, first and foremost, is to serve as fundraiser-in-chief. Michael Steele's comments haven't been serving the purpose of firing up the Republican base into pouring boatloads of money into the Republican party. Instead, Republican donors are giving money to Conservative issue-based organizations (like "Conservatives for Patients Rights" and other opponents of ObamaCare.) And perhaps the idea of parties as major fundraising organizations is drawing to a close. After all the "Tea Party" movement has not truly embraced the Republican party, because the Tea Party protestors know that Republicans have a history of paying lip-service to small-government conservatism, then discarding those ideals when it becomes convenient.
But the bigger problem that Michael Steele sees, and one I agree with, is the slim chances the Republicans have for winning back either house of Congress in 2010. There are too few seats in play, and not enough viable candidates to chase them. Moreover, there is no central leader for the Republican cause and no unified vision for using small-government principles to help America out of its recession. The silver lining is that a Democrat-controlled Congress gives Republicans a bogeyman to run against in 2012 when President Obama seeks re-election.
I Hope It's Sunny on Planet Obama
The president's stumbles on the road to health care "reform" and his sinking poll numbers point to a growing disconnect between the President and the people. As Peggy Noonan astutely pointed out, the President seems to be narrowly focused on health insurance while the rest of the nation would rather see answers to the problems of 10% employment and economic recession. For President Obama, I think the health care debate has always been a personal crusade. After all, his mother was saddled in medical debts by the time she succumbed to cancer. Those sad circumstances might embolden Obama to fight harder, but there are times when we need to realize we've been emotionally compromised. Like a man who kills in a fit of rage, our passions can overwhelm our best judgments. The debate over health care is one of insurance, rather than the quality of care that can separate patients between life and death. While medical debts affect too many Americans, the high unemployment numbers are a greater danger to so many more.
President Obama needs to awaken from his fantasy where he controls the debate over the country's future. Instead, the debate over the country's future controls the president. But this wouldn't be the first time a fantasy has overtaken the president. His deflating poll numbers are tied to shattered illusions he surrounded himself with. Liberals believed Obama would redistribute the wealth, pay the heating bills for the poor, and withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. Eventually they realized that there's a difference between being a president and a miracle-worker. Some centrists and conservatives created the fantasy where Obama was a pragmatic centrist, forging consensus and seeking to find common ground. (Even I held out hope that this would be the case after he was elected.) But the opponents of his far-left agenda are realizing that Obama is attempting everything he claimed he'd do during his candidacy. There's no doubt that Barack Obama's campaign courted the fantasies. Now he's rolling in the shards of glass from the toppled house of mirrors.
All is not lost for the Obama presidency. ObamaCare will likely pass, before the president moves on to the Card Check bill, Education, Cap & Trade, and his other core issues. The question is whether he can successfully move to the center as Bill Clinton did after the disastrous 1994 elections, or whether he stays the same starry-eyed leftist that he's been for his entire life in politics. Losing seats to the Republicans this November will likely be a wakeup call that American voters will no longer be fooled by vague notions of hope and change.
RNC Chairman Michael Steele is making some Republicans steamed with ill-timed comments, particularly on his party's chances of winning back Congress. It strikes me as odd that the RNC chairman is having plenty of foot-in-mouth moments, while the DNC chairman has been fairly silent. When control of the White House was in Republican hands, it seemed like the DNC chairmen (first Terry McAuliffe, then Howard Dean) were making outrageous statements to the media and giving their partison firebrands more red-meat to chew on. The RNC chairmen (like Ken Mehlman & Marc Racicot) were very tight-lipped, quietly raising money behind the scenes.
The job of the party chairman, first and foremost, is to serve as fundraiser-in-chief. Michael Steele's comments haven't been serving the purpose of firing up the Republican base into pouring boatloads of money into the Republican party. Instead, Republican donors are giving money to Conservative issue-based organizations (like "Conservatives for Patients Rights" and other opponents of ObamaCare.) And perhaps the idea of parties as major fundraising organizations is drawing to a close. After all the "Tea Party" movement has not truly embraced the Republican party, because the Tea Party protestors know that Republicans have a history of paying lip-service to small-government conservatism, then discarding those ideals when it becomes convenient.
But the bigger problem that Michael Steele sees, and one I agree with, is the slim chances the Republicans have for winning back either house of Congress in 2010. There are too few seats in play, and not enough viable candidates to chase them. Moreover, there is no central leader for the Republican cause and no unified vision for using small-government principles to help America out of its recession. The silver lining is that a Democrat-controlled Congress gives Republicans a bogeyman to run against in 2012 when President Obama seeks re-election.
I Hope It's Sunny on Planet Obama
The president's stumbles on the road to health care "reform" and his sinking poll numbers point to a growing disconnect between the President and the people. As Peggy Noonan astutely pointed out, the President seems to be narrowly focused on health insurance while the rest of the nation would rather see answers to the problems of 10% employment and economic recession. For President Obama, I think the health care debate has always been a personal crusade. After all, his mother was saddled in medical debts by the time she succumbed to cancer. Those sad circumstances might embolden Obama to fight harder, but there are times when we need to realize we've been emotionally compromised. Like a man who kills in a fit of rage, our passions can overwhelm our best judgments. The debate over health care is one of insurance, rather than the quality of care that can separate patients between life and death. While medical debts affect too many Americans, the high unemployment numbers are a greater danger to so many more.
President Obama needs to awaken from his fantasy where he controls the debate over the country's future. Instead, the debate over the country's future controls the president. But this wouldn't be the first time a fantasy has overtaken the president. His deflating poll numbers are tied to shattered illusions he surrounded himself with. Liberals believed Obama would redistribute the wealth, pay the heating bills for the poor, and withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. Eventually they realized that there's a difference between being a president and a miracle-worker. Some centrists and conservatives created the fantasy where Obama was a pragmatic centrist, forging consensus and seeking to find common ground. (Even I held out hope that this would be the case after he was elected.) But the opponents of his far-left agenda are realizing that Obama is attempting everything he claimed he'd do during his candidacy. There's no doubt that Barack Obama's campaign courted the fantasies. Now he's rolling in the shards of glass from the toppled house of mirrors.
All is not lost for the Obama presidency. ObamaCare will likely pass, before the president moves on to the Card Check bill, Education, Cap & Trade, and his other core issues. The question is whether he can successfully move to the center as Bill Clinton did after the disastrous 1994 elections, or whether he stays the same starry-eyed leftist that he's been for his entire life in politics. Losing seats to the Republicans this November will likely be a wakeup call that American voters will no longer be fooled by vague notions of hope and change.
