Just when I was semi-defending Obama's erstwhile praise for Reagan (or was it just an acknowledgement of Reagan's political skills?) to DTOM
on the Wright thread, Obama makes a very similar rhetorical swerve to the right on Fox News. Clear echoes of his praise for how Ronald Reagan promised to restore "dynamism" and "entrepeneurship" after the "excesses" of the 60s and 70s. Cant help think he must just mean it.
Quote:Obama stops the clock on Fox
Politico
Barack Obama finally appeared on "Fox News Sunday," stopping the "Obama Watch" clock at 772 days and change. And, believe it or not, it was a friendly exchange, touching on familiar themes.
[..] Obama pushed back against "top-down, command-and-control" regulation that was popular with the left in the ?'60s and ?'70s. He credited the GOP with pushing market-oriented solutions and cited his support of a cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions.
"I think that the Republican Party and people who thought about the markets came up with the notion that, you know, what if you simply set some guidelines, some rules and incentives for businesses, let them figure out how they're going to, for example, reduce pollution. It's a smarter way of doing it," he said.
On education, Obama said "we should be experimenting with charter schools" and "should be experimenting with different ways of compensating teachers." Both positions run counter to those strongly backed by teachers unions, a core segment of the Democratic Party base. [..]
nimh < not happy.
The teacher compensation issue I can see, and I also just dont know enough about it. The putdown he now repeats of the alleged old left overreach of the 60s and 70s, on the other hand, I think is inappropriate. I mean, it's the US left we're talking about, it's not like the government ever went more than a little left of center anyway. If those were 'excesses' I dont expect much from what an Obama administration would be.
But it's also just strategically counterproductive. If you're going to attempt something as huge as universal health care coverage yourself (as, whatever you think of his plan, Obama says he will), is it really such a smart move to first go on air to legitimise these small-government talking points, about how evil and enormous the state intervention policies of yore were? How are you going to push for progressive policies with a renewed role for government oversight, if you've first yourself done your bit in cementing this notion that government=bad, market=good? Isnt that mining your own path?
But it's the second para that's just egregious. "[W]hat if you simply set some guidelines, some rules and incentives for businesses, let them figure out how they're going to reduce pollution"? Is he serious?
After eight years of the Bush admin gutting objective government oversight of business in general, and the way the EPA, specifically, was turned into a politicized, self-sabotaging mockery, actively discouraged to fulfill its regulatory and oversight role on environmental pollution; Obama thinks it's a swell idea to validate the "let business figure it out" approach? To echo that hey, yeah, the "smarter way" of protecting the environment is actually just to, you know, set some guidelines and incentives and leave the rest up to business? What, because that has proven to be so effective in combating climate change?
Argh. I much prefer Obama over Hillary for many reasons, but this is just stupid, substantively and strategically. If you want to seriously attempt to do something about climate change, for example, against what will be deeply entrenched Republican and corporate resistance, the last thing you should do is to hand them their arguments in advance already.
I mean, I know he was probably just pandering to the Fox audience. But even that doesnt make sense to me. He has a lead among indies already anyway; his weakness in these primaries has been among loyal Democrats. How are they going to appreciate this?
Later on in the Fox interview, Obama said:
Quote:"There are a lot of liberal commentators who think I'm too accommodating"
Well, hell yeah. <grumpy>
</rant>
