Obama plants a flag in the time period of Bush's presidency:Obama went out today and said the economic situation is bad. He forecast substantial unemployment and big deficits. It was gloomy news all around.
Part of the address was to get people thinking about his plan for recovery, but another aspect is that by saying what's going to happen
now, before he's inaugurated, Obama is packing future bad news into the conceptual framework of Bush's presidency. To the extent that it works, it lessens the blame he'd otherwise get with a two year recession.
This guy's a good politician.
posted by Quiddity at 1/08/2009 10:57:00 PM
Extremely good point, Quiddity.
Also by giving a "bad times" speech now, he clears some room in his inaugural address so he needn't address it so much then.
To pick numbers out of a hat, if he hadn't given this speech then the inaugural address would have to be 10 percent economic doom and gloom. With this speech, he can drop that to five percent or less. (Numbers totally arbitrary.)
That may make the inaugural address much better than it otherwise would be.
"This guy's a good politician." Right, and his cautious centrism will make him a very bad president once the gloss fades and hope is redefined as hype.
Do you see him going after the military budget or saying Wall Street needs to be overhauled?
Anon: Probably not, or at least not in the near future (of the next 2 year). I'm not happy about that, but think there is a limit to what can be accomplished given the current situation.
