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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 4:54 pm Post subject: Obama: can he be trusted to lead the US? |
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Is Obama as much of a straight talker as he claims?
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A conversation about candidates who don't exactly say what they mean would not be complete, though, without examining Obama's own campaign-trail history of not saying exactly what he means. For months, he has told audiences in nearly every speech that he is the kind of candidate who is going to tell voters what they should hear, not what they want to hear. This gets applause and makes Obama look politically courageous for risking voter anger for the sake of the truth. The problem is, he doesn't really do the actual truth-telling much. I've not seen every Obama speech, of course, but I've seen a lot of them, and I've never heard him say anything that might make his audience shift in their seats out of discomfort. Mostly he tells voters what they do want to hear, both with his infectious message of hope and his belittling of the Bush administration.
I have, a few times, heard Obama say things that might make voters mildly uncomfortable. He told a questioner that his energy policies would cause a temporary increase in electric bills, for example. But then he quickly assured the man that costs would go down soon thereafter. I've also heard him, a couple of times in front of large black audiences, call for the African-American community to stop devaluing education and ask black men to take better care of the children they father. This gets applause.
At times, he has also called for merit pay for teachers, which the teachers' union didn't like; and he has said he won't mindlessly slash defense spending. These represent a kind of bravery in his otherwise pretty standard set of Democratic policy views, but these are one-offs. They are not mentioned that often, and they are certainly not central elements of his standard pitch. This isn't the limit of what voters honestly need to hear or of brave stands a candidate could take.
Hillary Clinton doesn't say much of anything to make audiences uncomfortable, but then she doesn't promise she's going to in every speech, either. Obama's problem may be that he's falling short of his own standard of previous courage as demonstrated in the honesty of his first book, his politically courageous call for civility among liberal bloggers, and his speech about religion and politics for which he was walloped by members of his party.
When I asked his aides for examples from the campaign that I might have missed of Obama's self-touted truth-telling trait, I got one that just didn't fit at all. Obama told Iowans that "ethanol was neither the perfect nor permanent solution to our energy problems." This is exceedingly mild. If Obama really shifted his long-standing support for ethanol (he represents the second-largest ethanol-producing state), the message was too subtle for Iowans. "He's got a track record of supporting ethanol," Todd Church, the plant manager who showed Obama around the largest ethanol plant in the state, told the Financial Times. "That's important here. You can't fool people in Iowa."
As proof of his truth-telling, Obama also often cites�and has made an ad about�his May 2007 speech in front of Detroit executives in which he called for higher efficiency standards. Obama rightly points out that a less brave politician would have given the speech in front of the Sierra Club. The moment certainly shows a kind of bravery, but the Detroit speech isn't an example of telling rank-and-file voters a hard truth, as Obama claims it is; it's an example of speaking truth to corporate power, which is a standard successful Democratic applause line. He ultimately received a standing ovation after the speech, and outside of Michigan it no doubt delighted a Democratic electorate full of Prius drivers who are more concerned about climate change than the fate of GM and Ford.
Calling for higher efficiency standards might have angered the autoworkers union except that it actually supported the most recent hike. Obama seemed to be nervous enough about the UAW reaction, though, that he dashed by the whole issue in a single sentence when courting Iowa's UAW before the caucus.
The point is not that Obama has never taken a brave position. The issue is that as a candidate he talks about telling hard truths far more than he actually does so. To claim regularly that he's going to tell audiences what they need to hear and not what they want to hear, and then to skirt delivering on that promise consistently is, to use a favorite Obama word, audacious. |
Slate is backing Obama, so the article above was very mild.
Samuelson examines the promises they can't keep
(Bold is mine)
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Our children face a future of rising taxes, squeezed -- and perhaps falling -- public services and aging -- perhaps deteriorating -- public infrastructure (roads, sewers, transit systems). Today's young workers and children are about to be engulfed by a massive income transfer from young to old that will perversely make it harder for them to afford their own children.
No major candidate of either party proposes to do much about this, even though the facts are well known.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- three programs that go overwhelmingly to older Americans -- already represent more than 40 percent of federal spending. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office projects that these programs could easily grow to about 70 percent of the budget by 2030. Without implausibly large deficits, the only way to preserve most other government programs would be huge tax increases (about 40 percent from today's levels). Avoiding the tax increases would require draconian cuts in other programs (about 60 percent). Workers and young families, not retirees, would bear the brunt of either higher taxes or degraded public services.
Similar pressures, though less ferocious, exist at the state and local levels. Schools, police, libraries and parks will be squeezed by the need to pay benefits for retired government workers. A study by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that states have promised retired workers $2.7 trillion in pension, health care and other benefits during the next three decades. Only about $2 trillion has been set aside; the rest would come from annual budgets.
Medicaid, a joint federal-state program with states paying about 40 percent of the costs, represents another drain; about two-thirds of its spending stems from the aged and disabled. Roads, water and mass transit may also be shortchanged. States and localities pay about three-quarters of their costs.
But facing these facts would expose candidates to three daunting problems.
First: Lightening the burden on the young requires cutting retirement benefits for the old -- raising eligibility ages, being less generous to richer retirees and making beneficiaries pay more for Medicare. Simply increasing taxes or cutting other programs won't work. The problem is not just closing the budget deficit.
Second: We can't wait. Ideally, prospective retirees would have received several decades' warning, but we've delayed too long. We need to cut benefits for baby boomers and even some existing retirees. They are the source of mounting costs.
Third: Even if retirement benefits were cut, pressures for higher taxes and lower public services would not disappear. Social Security and Medicare are part of the nation's social fabric. Although individuals' benefits can be responsibly trimmed, the growth in the elderly population (a doubling by 2030) and rapidly rising health-care costs would still expand total spending. The increases would simply be smaller.
A moral cloud hangs over our candidates. Just how much today's federal policies, favoring the old over the young and the past over the future, should be altered ought to be a central issue of the campaign. But knowing the unpopular political implications, our candidates have lapsed into calculated quiet.
They pay lip service to children but ignore the actual programs that will shape their future. The hypocrisy is especially striking in Obama. He courts the young, promises "straight talk" and offers himself as the agent of "change." But his conspicuous omissions constitute "crooked talk" and silently endorse the status quo.
The insidious nature of this problem is that because the spending increases for the elderly occur gradually, the pressures on taxes and other government programs will also intensify gradually. A crucial moment to clarify the stakes and compel politicians to make choices probably won't occur until it's too late.
The longer we delay -- and we've done so now for several decades, because the strains created by an aging society have been obvious that long -- the more likely that eventual "solutions" will be unfair to both young and old. To acknowledge that and to come to grips with it would constitute genuine "change." |
I don't buy into the hope. Here's a candidate who doesn't talk straight about:
a) the damage the war on drugs is doing to America, especially to the black community
b) the toll Iraq is taking on our troops and our country, choosing instead to focus smugly on the fact that he did not back the war (his withdrawal plan is not different from Clinton's)
c) the seriousness of the economic plight this nation faces, and how to balance programs that aid the middle-class and the poor with our fiscal exposure
Obama's omissions are revealing. |
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mistermasan
Joined: 20 Sep 2007
Location: 10+ yrs on Dave's ESL cafe
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:00 pm Post subject: |
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yeah, because illinois is a beacon of prosperity in the rustbelt. just ask the 10,000 people who applied for jobs a promised new wal-mart. happy days are here again...
he has done so much for illinois during his tenure here that we just must share him with the rest of the nation.
my property tax has tripled in two years. whatever they are doing, it sure ain't working. |
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