brooks/obama: a testing time

I've mentioned before that the Brooks/Obama relationship forms a compelling sub-plot of this administration.

TNR have a piece about how they met and got to know each other ("The Courtship"). It started with a pant-crease:

That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.”

David says Barack's people don't mind when he criticises them in his columns:

“It’s never, ‘You’re a complete asshole.’ My line is, the Clinton people would tell you you’re a complete and total asshole. The Obama people say, ‘We love you. You’re a great guy. It’s sad you’re a complete and total asshole.’ They’re always very mature about it.”

Well, today's column will offer the strongest possible test of this equable relationship:

Obama’s challenge was to push his agenda through a Democratic-controlled government while retaining the affection of the 39 percent of Americans in the middle.

The administration hasn’t been able to pull it off. From the stimulus to health care, it has joined itself at the hip to the liberal leadership in Congress. The White House has failed to veto measures, like the pork-laden omnibus spending bill, that would have demonstrated independence and fiscal restraint. By force of circumstances and by design, the president has promoted one policy after another that increases spending and centralizes power in Washington.

The result is the Obama slide, the most important feature of the current moment... All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs, but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast.

Comments

[peter]

The purpose of the stimulus bill was to stimulate the economy by spending money right across the USA. How else could you help the local economy in Peoria, without spending money in Peoria, on projects right in Peoria? Who better to select these projects than the local congressional representatives in Peoria? Of course the stimulus bill was pork-laden, that was its very point. Brooks certainly makes it challenging for anyone wishing to be an admirer of his intellect with a criticism such as this.

[Marbury]

Well, I presume by "pork" he's referring to projects that have nothing to do with kickstarting demand or creating jobs and everything to do with buying off interest groups, winning votes, and funding vanity projects.

[ejoch]

Yes, Brooks is hardly alone in claiming a large proportion of the 'stimulus' bill will stimulate nothing at all. Simply spending money in a particular region doesn't qualify as a pump-primer. Better not to spend the money at all than waste it like that - an argument often being made now in relation to the huge remaining portion still unspent. (I can't remember the % unspent but it's an amazing figure. )

[peter]

"Better not to spend the money at all than waste it like that"

Well, no, ejoch! This misses the point of the stimulus. The point is to replace some of the drop-off in demand of consumers and companies hit by the depression. So "wasting it" is precisely what is needed! Government needs to spend money, to employ people, to make things, to maintain things, etc, because we the people are not spending.

[Tom]

"There's something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up." Barack Obama

Mr. Brooks needs a change of pants.