The Obama Two Step?

While there's no way to ascertain for sure whether Barack Obama's disastrous economic policies are malevolent or incompetent, I found it interesting that yesterday he went out of his way to deny being a socialist (by pleading that he thought it was all a joke):

"It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question," he told reporters, who had interviewed the president aboard Air Force One on Friday.

Opening the unusual presidential call to reporters by saying that there was "just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter," he said it wasn't he who started the federal government's intervention into the nation's financial system.

"I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn't on my watch. And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement -- the prescription drug plan -- without a source of funding. And so I think it's important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word 'socialist' around can't say the same."

Blame the Republicans? For socialism? If that isn't the final insult, I don't know what is.

To add to my puzzlement, today I see a piece from Clive Crook, titled "Why Obama's left leaning is no tactical feint":

On this page last week I argued that Barack Obama's first budget showed him to be more of a left-leaning liberal than I and many others - sceptics and admirers alike - had previously supposed. People I respect have accused me of going off the deep end about this, or of neglecting Mr Obama's tactical finesse, or both.

Mr Obama is calling for little that he did not promise in the campaign, I am reminded, so he cannot be accused of springing a surprise. I welcome many of the budget's main elements, notably healthcare reform and the cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, and the president made it clear all along that he wished to reverse the Bush tax cuts for the high paid. So the revelation that Mr Obama is a progressive liberal must arise from the proposal to curb high earners' income-tax deductions. That was a surprise, but a small matter: hence the charge that I am getting carried away.

Alternatively, I am told, Mr Obama is playing a shrewder game. Like any good negotiator, he has adopted a maximalist opening position. He expects to be walked back from it, ending up where he wanted to be in the first place, with a more centrist plan than the one he pitched.

Well, if he is playing a "shrewder game," he hides it well. However, regardless of whether any of this is deliberate or incompetent, one thing is certain: Barack Obama is a shrewd enough politician to know how to use whatever mess results to his political advantage. And if he can position himself to the "right" of the "socialist" Republicans, it will have the effect of making his conservative critics look ridiculous. What the latter ought to worry about is that if he really did manage to perform a policy shift to the right (along the lines of actual Reaganomics), it might just lift the economy out of the doldrums -- with Obama getting all the credit.

So perhaps we'll see a new dance routine:

A feint to the left, then a feint to the right.

The neat thing about way the dance works, is that it really doesn't matter which way is malevolent and which way is incompetent, because each side considers the other to be both.

(Besides, malevolence can be incompetent, just as incompetence can be malevolent!)

posted by Eric on 03.10.09 at 11:19 AM





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Comments

If it quacks like a duck...

Mrs. du Toit   ·  March 10, 2009 12:03 PM

And if he can position himself to the "right" of the "socialist" Republicans, it will have the effect of making his conservative critics look ridiculous.

If by "position" you mean "lie and lie and lie some more to try to spin away the biggest spending spree in the history of money as a continuation of Republican policies, calling them the socialists because of Bush", then I think you may have a point.

Bush, with his NCLB and prescription drug crap, spent money on things the government should not be involved in, and ran what appear now to be minor-league deficits. For Obama to claim that Bush started it, therefore it is Republicans who are to blame, is typical Obama deceit.

Loren Heal   ·  March 10, 2009 12:38 PM

I do not understand the number of commentators -- and reasonably intelligent people I know -- who are convinced a politician is being shrewd, or clever, or brilliant, simply by talking out of both sides of his or her mouth. Why is "brilliant" to claim to be conservative when implementing left/liberal policies? I always thought that was a sign of disingenuousness or, bluntly, lying, rather than an oversized brain. But I didn't go to Harvard or Columbia.

Rhodium Heart   ·  March 10, 2009 12:51 PM

I believe that dance is called the Okie Doke Hokey Poke.

Phelps   ·  March 10, 2009 01:56 PM

If Obama's right wing policies fail people will be clamoring for real socialism.

M. Simon   ·  March 10, 2009 06:44 PM

If Obama objects to TARP and the prescription drug plan, as his remarks are intended to imply, why doesn't he ask Congress to repeal them?

Bob Smith   ·  March 10, 2009 07:24 PM

If Obama objects to TARP and the prescription drug plan, as his remarks are intended to imply, why doesn't he ask Congress to repeal them?

Bob Smith   ·  March 10, 2009 07:25 PM

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