“Can Barack Obama turn things around?” asks Harold Evans in the Telegraph.
The most galling thing for Obama is that his campaign vision of a less polarised America has turned out to be a daydream. The fright-wing of the Republican party has become more virulent than ever. Instead of joining with him in essential reforms, he has been demonised as a Hitler, an enemy of the American Constitution, and the Wingnut “birther movement” screamed that he is not even an American citizen. It is a tribute to Obama’s resilience that he has kept his cool in the face of this hysteria. He remains personally likeable to most Americans (something that could not have been said for the moralising Carter or the abrasive Bush), but the fervour of the movement that elected the first black president has abated.
Oh those mean old wingnuts! Clearly Bush never had to put up with anything like that!
But if the current economic mess in the USA sprang from a Big State Republican’s policies operating with a congress full of his enemies, why even ask the question if an even Bigger State Democrat can ‘turn things around’ by digging the same holes deeper?
As for Obama being “the smartest guy in the room”… really? He took the failed policies of his predecessor and doubled up the bet… is that really the sign of intelligence or original thinking?
And whilst I may have thought Bush was dismal, I do not recall him publicly stamping his feet at all the Hitler analogies being made about him and I also never got the impression he was ‘abrasive’… just habitually wrong. Rather like Obama actually. Only a bit whiter.
My comment to them:
growing the gov’t isn’t reform
The government needs to be culled, it corrupts everything it touches.
It has grown beyond repair and it will not be reduced and pulled back.
There needs to be a libertarian revolution.
The US Government, specifically the House and Senate financial subcommittees, directed massive resources into ordinary and subprime lending by implicitly guaranteeing the actions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Democrats discovered an amazing and deadly fact, that they could direct almost any amount of money where they wanted in the housing market without nasty arguments about publicly appropriating the money in the budget.
Fannie and Freddie could borrow any amount of money off-budget, out of public view. Institutions would lend them the money because they expected the US Government to make good in any default. They were correct; the government is making good through the bailouts.
The House Financial Services Committee had many opportunities to stop Fannie and Freddie from expanding its support for subprime lending. It is false that they did not know what was happening. This was not a lack of regulation, because that entire committee was a regulator, and they encouraged and even required Fannie and Freddie to relax their standards for buying subprime loans.
FanFred set the standards for the mortgage market. Mortgage lenders made risky loans to people with poor credit ratings, according to the standards for the loans FanFred would buy. FanFred’s decreasing credit standards of course produced decreasing credit standards by retail mortgage lenders. FanFred knowingly took on all of the risk when they bought these loans.
Bush and the Republicans tried a few times to limit the powers of FanFred, but were stopped by the Democratic controlled House Financial Services Committee. Republicans did not have a House majority until 2007, when it became too late.
People are too general to assign Bush all of the blame for what happened under his administration. The deserved blame is that he did not complain loudly and publicly about what the Democrats were doing. That was difficult, when the press considered the House actions to be great for the economy and a program to help the poor buy houses.
We Guarantee It: Don’t Stop
Cause of the Financial Crisis: Left vs Right
his campaign vision of a less polarised America
Yes, Obama’s vision of a less polarized America was the same as
Mussolini’s vision of a less polarized Italy,
Pol Pot’s vision of a less polarized Cambodia,
and so on…
Heh. Less polarized – “everyone do what I say and we’ll get along splendidly.”
Andrew gets it mostly right.
However the GOP lost control of both houses in 2006, More important the Dems were able to filibuster any GOP attempt at bringing Fan & Fed under normal banking regulations.
Indeed one of the first things Obama did when elected to the Senate in 2004 was to prevent the Bush administration from reforming Fan & Fred.
Bush should be faulted for not pushing hard enough on this and making it into a huge national issue. Instead he tried to reform Social Security which turned out to be a mission No Shit For Real impossible.
I find this line defense particularly stupefying, grating, and insulting–that B.O. would be doing just great if it weren’t for the mean ol’ conservatives saying hurtful things. Sorry, that is NOT how B.O. was advertised to us. He was/is supposed to be the great unifier, the bridger of divides and the healer of wounds. He was going to bring the mullahs and the despots into line through empathy, charm and wisdom. And now his own defenders are saying he’s too pathetic and weak to handle the likes of Beck and Coulter? Which is it? Statesman of the Ages or The World’s Biggest Empty Suit? History is already providing to us the correct answer.
To Taylor,
You are correct. Republicans had a House majority for 12 years ending with 2006, and a majority in all branches plus the presidency for 4 years ending with 2006. I stand corrected.
The Republicans supported liberal housing policy when in the majority, and the Democrats took it farther and faster when they gained House and Senate majorities in 2007. There was never a majority of members in any branch that wanted to curb the easy lending housing policy. The Republicans asked some questions and requested changes in oversight, but didn’t push the matter into public news.
Andrew: Republicans had a (narrow) majority in the House before 2007 (not after). They still did nothing to rein in Fannie and Freddie.
Some Republicans did push for investigation and reform. But House Speaker Hastert (R-IL) shifted jurisdiction over F&F to the committee of Mike Oxley (R-OH), better known as the co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (and heavy beneficiary of F&F fundraising). Barney Frank was the ranking Democrat.
There was pressure from the mortgage companies and Wall Streeters trading mortgage-backed-securities, who wanted their party to keep going. Plus a lot of Republicans believed in the purported mission of F&F to facilitate home ownership by the middle class and working class. They imagined that this was succeeding, and transforming proletarian Democrats into bourgeois Republicans.
The Democrats. of course, were dead set against any constraints on F&F.
” . . and the Wingnut “birther movement” screamed that he is not even an American citizen . . “
That issue never was fully clarified, was it?
Nor his weathermen friends.
Or his pastor of 20 years, Jeremiaih Wright, claiming the US got its come-uppance on 11/9/01.
When the balance shifted totally to one side of the US “ship of state” I did seriously wonder how long it could be carried by history before tipping over.
honestly I am not sure who is the more embarrassing. the swooning fans who worship Obama as a modern day messiah or the ‘tea party’ simpletons who view him as a Kenyan communist out to destroy America.
Tea Partiers and Birthers are distinct, although there may be a little overlap. The Tea Party is mainly concerned with unrestrained government growth. Obama is of interest to the movement only as a proponent of such growth.
bronkertine, the “tea party simpletons” are a lot closer to the truth, and in general a lot more intelligent and better informed, than Obama’s mindless myrmidons. You would know that if you had ever attended any of their rallies.
I think the only “simpleton” around here is you.
Mr Harold Evans is simply refusing to engage with the specific charges made.
These charges are as follows:
That the American Progressive movement from the start of the 20th century favoured ever more govermment control – not just ever more taxes, government spending and economic regulations (although all that was UNCONSTITUTIONAL as Mr Evans would know if he ever bothered to read the United States Constitution, for example the Tenth Amendment), but also was anti civil liberties and pro totalitarian.
Indeed that leading American Progressives were supportive BOTH of the rise of Fascism (and National Socialism – including eugenics) and the rise of Marxism.
This is why (contrary to the “Economist” as well as Mr Evans and the rest of the “mainstream” media) it is not a “contradiction” to point out the links between the Progressive movement both to the Fascists AND to the Communists.
“But that is just history”.
Not at all – modern Progressives (and they use the word about themselves) have not broken with the historical Progressives.
Quite the contrary – all the leading supporters of Barack Obama (and Barack Obama HIMSELF) not only call themselves Progressives but hold up early 20th century Progressives (such as President Wilson) as wonderful heroic people.
“But you do not stop there – you people even accuse Barack Obama of being a Marxist, not just a Progressive”.
Again Mr Harold Evans refuses to engage with the evidence.
Not only has Barack Obama appointed people to office WHO OPENLY CALL THEMSELVES MARXISTS, but there is also the evidence of his own life.
Not just the pro Soviet socialism of both his parents (he can hardly be blamed for that – although the daily three hour indoctrination sessions that his mother conducted for Barack as a young child should not be ignored) – but his own personal choices.
For example, the conferences he attended (such as the many Marxist conferences in New York when he was a postgrad at Columbia) the associations he made (over his entire life) and so on.
Sorry but just calling anyone who makes a specific charge, either against the Progressive movement in general or Barack Obama in particular, the “fright-wing” will not do.
Evidence has been presented Mr Evans – either refute it or accept it, but stop playing games.
As for the policies of Barack Obama…..
Wild spending on a scale that even the ignorant George Walker Bush would have blinked at.
The general line of policy seems to fit in with the adaptation that Pierro Straffa and Maurice Dobb made to Keynesianism in order to make the nonMarxist (but still wildly damaging) policies of Keynes more useful for Marxism.
Also the general line of policy seems to fit with the “Cloward and Piven” method of increasing the number of people who depend on government – in order to both bankrupt the economy and undermine “capitalist” Civil Society.
Do you even know who Cloward was and Piven is, Mr Evans?
And (to move to another section of argument) do you have clue who the Frankfurt School (in America renamed the School of Social Research) of cultural Marxism are? Clue they invented the concepts now know as “Political Correctness” or “idenity politics”.
Do you know anything about Frank Mashall Davis and Saul Alinsky and the other collectivist influences on the thought of Barack Obama?
Or are you, Mr Harold Evans, simply a silly old man who knows nothing about Barack Obama or the Progressive movement in the United States – but insists on writing about American politics anyway?
Hey come on guys, haven’t you heard that the Doomsday Clock has been moved back to six minutes to midnight on account of the Big O? Apparently the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Board have decided that there have been “signs of collaboration between the major world players in dealing with nuclear security and climate stabilisation.” Obama was apparently praised for causing “a change in the US governments towards international affairs.”
Who are we to doubt the wisdom of such an illustrious group of people who couldn’t possibly be the slightest bit politically-motivated?