Has Obama Found His Inner Populist?
(CBS)
That was the theme of Wednesday's press conference at the White House where press secretary Robert Gibbs was pressed repeatedly by reporters about President Obama's state of mind following the massacre in Massachusetts.
Was he getting worked up? Can you give the public some kind of clue that there's a heart beating beneath Mr. Obama's Spock-like personna?
"When does President Obama get angry?" a reporter asked. "I mean, it seems like that might be part of the disconnect. He always offers such a sort of calm and cool and cerebral approach to some of these things. Is there any --is there any sort of thought to needing to show a little bit more of that anger himself?"
Truthfully, I thought the inquisition into Mr. Obama's temperament was silly. Who wants a manic commander-in-chief at the helm? But then ABC aired its interview with the president exuding his usual cool demeanor. Considering the magnitude of the defeat his party - and its agenda - had just suffered, maybe a little too cool for comfort. But in the intervening 24 hours Mr. Obama managed to discover his inner populist.
The president brought down the hammer in pointed remarks aimed at the banking community. It was time to choose, he said. Going forward, he warned, you either can engage in commercial banking or in proprietary trading - but no longer both. Just to make sure nobody missed the passion behind his words, Mr. Obama threw a hard jab at what he termed "an army of industry lobbyists from Wall Street descending on Capitol Hill to try and block basic and common-sense rules of the road that would protect our economy and the American people."
The president topped it off with this Bush-like bring-it-on invitation to any interests seeking to block his plans for financial reform.
"So if these folks want a fight, it's a fight I'm ready to have," he said. "And my resolve is only strengthened when I see a return to old practices at some of the very firms fighting reform; and when I see soaring profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms claiming that they can't lend more to small business, they can't keep credit card rates low, they can't pay a fee to refund taxpayers for the bailout without passing on the cost to shareholders or customers -- that's the claims they're making. It's exactly this kind of irresponsibility that makes clear reform is necessary."
The message hit its desired target. Poor Larry Kudlow of CNBC came very close to suffering an embolism on the air as he railed against the unjustness of the president's proposal. His capitalist comrades on Wall Street were just as shaken up with the Dow finishing the day down more than 213 points.
But after months of getting nowhere with the bankers and their powerful lobbyists - capped off by this prime time buck-passing earlier this month by Wall Street's most powerful CEOs - this slow-to-anger president has had enough. Easy to understand why his mood is not so great these days, what with the setback to his healthcare plans - let alone the rest of his agenda - now that the Democrats no longer can block a Republican veto in the United States Senate. Considering what most of the country thinks about bankers these days, here was chance to score easy points by taking on evil-doers in wing tips.
He wasn't done. When the Supreme Court ruled against limits on campaign contributions by corporations and unions, Obama again struck an irritated pose. In a statement sent out under his imprimatur, the president said the (conservative-controlled )court had "given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics."
Whoever is writing the president's speeches these days did a great job of studying (and ripping off) the tea baggers' own rhetoric by painting this as struggle pitting the little guy-versus big, powerful interests. Again, Mr. Obama:
"It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington--while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates."
Maybe this is what the public wants to see. Taking the measure of the zeitgeist is always a fool's errand, but right now Barack Obama oversees a very pissed off nation. Frankly, there's some play-acting going on. By temperament, the man is not a populist. But if he keeps this up, it could prove to be smart politics. At the very least, I suppose, it won't give the 4th Estate further reason to speculate whether this president has a political identity.
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NOTHING.
I wonder how annoying Nancy Pelosi realizes she looks smiling and laughing every time you see her while college grads like most of my friends and family, sharp people with degrees fight with others over a job opening stocking shelves? I wonder when we hear about Obama's many vacation trips overseas, how the President is helping all the poor countries in the world to our borrowed money, most of these people who hate and want to kill us, just how out of touch with unemployed, struggling, Americans he realizes he is. Do Harry Reid and the Democrats in DC realize how detached from reality they are while they fight so hard for a health care plan they insist we all need so bad, so they can legally force us to pay for it with our food and mortgage money, while our incomes shrink or even worse for many disappear completely?
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Very well written, up to this point..... you had me, then you went wacky off the deep end....but thank you for your comments, very insightful
It's been a GREAT week.
Massachusetts elected a Republican to Ted Kennedy's seat.
The Dems lost their 60 Seat Super majority in the Senate.
Obamacare as we know it is dead.
The Supremes ruled in favor of Free Speech in Campaigns.
It's been a Wonderful Week.
We should all be celebrating!!!!
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I feel great too......if you haven't noticed, Flaming Liberals like lakota are going ballistic !! desperately trying to type rebuttals to reverse the massive tide of THE PEOPLE.....it's funny to watch.
It has been a great week, and shows that god works in mysterious ways.
"Voting Republican will not solve a thing, after all they are the ones who got us here to begin with, but kind of sucks pretty bad when the alternative party has no clue how to fix and change it all?"
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Yep.....damned if you do and damned if you don't, but the memory of the American people is short, and history revision runs rampant.
We have the best government money can buy with special interests pushing Washington in a direction that only helps them -- not WE THE PEOPLE -- and lobbyists writing legislation for the bought-and-paid-for politicians with little regard for the American people.
We have huge challenges on the horizon with $107 Trillion in unfunded future liabilities mainly due to Medicare and spiraling health care costs, which means that ideological rhetoric needs to be pushed aside, obstructionism and legislative gridlock needs to end, and we need our congresscritters to finally work together to solve our many problems through new ideas and solutions that will work in the global economy.
It looks like everywhere we turn, average Americans are being screwed, by Politicians, by Corporate America, by Insurance Companies, by Tiger Woods, it's a never ending assault on our dreams. Meanwhile, the powers that be, sit back smoking Cuban Montecristo No. 3 and sipping Havana Club Anejo Reserva rum, laughing at us plebs bickering among ourselves. Sad
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Yes, it is truly sad. But what is worse, is that some fail to see this!
Partisan politics will certainly continue to only get worse, and the voice of WE THE PEOPLE will be drowned out.
"What you need to do is to look at outcomes of treatment. I'll give you a few examples here."
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Nice cherry picking of what you wanted to prove....that the U.S.'s huge expenditures in catching cancer early has paid off, but you failed to show how well the U.S. does in colon or rectal cancers. Next time, try providing a citation or link, and give us all a complete rundown -- not just cherry picking some over others. Actually, from this BBC article, it appears that those darn socialized countries like Australia, Canada, France and Japan are right up there with the U.S. as far as cancer survival rates!
Huge gap in world cancer survival
The US, Australia, Canada, France and Japan had the highest five-year survival rates, while Algeria had the worst, Lancet Oncology reported.
The study showed the US had the highest five-year survival rates for breast cancer at 83.9% and prostate cancer at 91.9%.
Japan came out best for male colon and rectal cancers, at 63% and 58.2% respectively, while France fared best for women with those cancers at 60.1% and 63.9%.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7510121.stm
Of all the diseases that medicine claims to be able to treat, the only treatment I trust less than cancer is depression.
What if chemotherapy does nothing at all to help cancer survival? There have even been arguments claiming that chemo does more harm than good. Then the nation where people get full and complete medical treatment would show up as no better than a nation where people don't get the full treatment available.
What IS known to work is early detection (because the only way to really beat cancer is to cut it out before it spreads). Therefore, I would imagine the question of whether your populace is affluent, educated, etc. would be the single most important determinant.
Any comparison of medical treatments has to cover more than just one disease.
Unfortunately, this scenario will continue to play out until our idiotic congresscritters see the need to reward small businesses that create jobs, and not listen to corporate interests for once!
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by Mortar_29:
Business is business. All businesses create jobs.
You want the jobs to stay? Then dont have the government saddle business wit hall osrts of stupid regulations, taxes, etc that cost them money.
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No, business is not business, since BIG BIZ pays corporate tax rates and many times none of those, whereas SMALL BIZ pays individual tax rates and certainly gets nowhere near the same huge tax breaks. The bush tax cuts gave BIG BIZ tax breaks to offshore jobs which is wrong.
Typical conservative ideology crying for the greedy BIG BIZ being so saddled by government regulations -- many that protect our citizens. If you want to save BIG BIZ some big money for a change, then push for SP-UHC, since the average cost per family is $14,000 per year, and BIG BIZ is at a complete disadvantage in the global economy compared to the rest of the entire industrialized world. That's what has been killing the auto industry -- huge health care and pension costs of employees and retirees, where health care is $1,500 per auto.
Fact is, SMALL BIZ creates far more jobs than BIG BIZ, plus they have no need to offshore those "liveable wage" jobs, so let's push our congresscritters to expand tax breaks immediately to SMALL BIZ!
Lakota, also, you use that "37th in the world" stat, but have no idea what it means. We are between 37th and 40th in the world in LIFE EXPECTANCY."
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Nice cherry-picking on the breast cancer statistics, and besides. why do you ASS-U-ME I don't know what the WHO ranking of 37th means? When ranked with the other 18 highest industrialized nations in the world, the U.S. came in dead last at 19th. Only the delusional would make excuses for our very poor health care system, which does rank #1 in cost by over double! You seem very short of the facts, in order to convolute the reality of the situation.
BTW, One of the most important measures of health is life expectancy at birth. According to the CIA World Factbook the United States ranks 50th in life expectancy out of 224 countries.
On level of overall health system performance, the U.S. is ranked 37th, but on level of health performance, we are ranked 72nd.
On fairness in financial contribution, the U.S. ranks 55th.
The U.S. ranks 180th in infant mortality rate at 6.26 deaths/1,000; whereas Cuba is better at 5.82 deaths/1,000 live births, and France is at 3.33 deaths/1,000 live births -- twice as good as the U.S.
GEEZ.....at life expectancy, the U.S. is ranked 50th, whereas those darn French socialists are ranked 9th -- right behind Canada and Australia!
Sorry, it seems as if YOU don't know what you're talking about!
I do not understand the point of the article though, the President has always been a leftist populist as far as I am concerned. I don't say that to be antagonistic, it just rings true that Obama has at least attempted to do all the things he promised he would do while on the campaign trail, and all his promises were aimed at the political left or progressive wing of political ideology. His policy positions never appealed to me, but neither did McCain's, so I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It has been a very lonely place to be a conservative the last 20 years (although I just started identifying political leanings for myself the last 10). By today's definition JFK would have been a conservative, compared to the current Democratic leadership, and don't get me started on the Republican failures. It looks like everywhere we turn, average Americans are being screwed, by Politicians, by Corporate America, by Insurance Companies, by Tiger Woods, it's a never ending assault on our dreams. Meanwhile, the powers that be, sit back smoking Cuban Montecristo No. 3 and sipping Havana Club Anejo Reserva rum, laughing at us plebs bickering among ourselves. Sad
"The individuals working for the Corporations have all protections under our Constitution, but the Corporation as an entity doesn't"
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In the United States, corporations were recognized as having rights to contract, and to have those contracts honored the same as contracts entered into by natural persons, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward Corporations were recognized as persons for purposes of the 14th Amendment in an 1886 Supreme Court Case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394.
The laws of the United States hold that a legal entity (like a corporation or non-profit organization) shall be treated under the law as a person except when otherwise noted. This rule of construction is specified in 1 U.S.C. ?1, which states:
In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise-- the words "person" and "whoever" include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.
In 2008, Blackwater sued the City of San Diego to force the city to issue them a certificate of occupancy for its training facility in Otay Mesa before the plan went through the city's public review process. "U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff ruled in Blackwater's favor. Blackwater is a person and has a right to due process under the law and would suffer significant damage due to not being able to start on its $400 million Navy contract."
On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court issued a ruling affirming and expanding corporate rights to free speech in elections. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a 5-4 majority invalidated many restrictions on corporate spending to influence elections.