Today is Yesterdays Tomorrow for President Obama
The Inauguration was exciting and broadly covered in every detail by the media. It sometimes felt like an awards show. I wondered where the red carpet was with interviews taking place concerning dress design. The predictable comments on talk shows took place almost immediately after the last words of the Inauguration speech echoed down the mall.
The conservative shows belittled the speech as no more than an extension of the campaign speeches. The liberal( progressive ) shows were fawning in their praise and some can’t stop raving about Bush transgressions (Thom Hartmann) and seem not to yet realize that Bush is in Texas.
Harry Reed gave foreshadowing of his cooperative bent by announcing hours before the inauguration that “Obama is not his boss” (?) as an answer to an innocuous question. Nancy Pelosi reportedly threw a fit when she heard that Leon Panetta got the CIA job without her concurrence. What a start!
The President has a task that requires more than a great speech to correct. If the radio talk shows are any indication of how long the traditional grace period given to a new president will last, his time is already nearly up.
The President seemingly has a great emotional control of temper and it looks like it will be tested early and often. The adoring crowds will need to be satisfied quickly because we have become a nation making judgments on emotion rather than information. The first executive orders included one that ordered Guantanamo closed within one year. This was clearly a move to keep a segment of supporters in their stage of euphoria for a bit more time. How the closing takes place and what will be done with the prisoners is not clear. I think that there will be a number of such purely political decisions early on, that are designed to keep the adoration at a high level. We can live with that for a time if the hard work is being done to deal with the economy in a sensible fashion. The haste of shoveling billions out to failing enterprises seems to continue to leave the questions needing transparency unanswered.
An executive order is needed at once for Treasury and all parties involved to divulge where the first $350,000,000,000 of TARP money went and how it was used
Closing of Gitmo and the gay issues (don’t ask- don’t tell) in the military need to be resolved but a rushing to give political answers with a repeat of the obvious Clinton animus for our military must be avoided. General James L. Jones U.S.M.C. Ret. as the President’s National Security Advisor can be helpful in these areas needing answers. Hopefully The President will listen to his thoughts while Rohm Emanuel gets the legislative troops to resolve their narrow political aims in closed door discussions while the nations’ economic issues important to all Americans are being addressed openly.
