*Three Washington Post Columnists, Three Negative Assessments: *Richard
Cohen sees many problems in Washington --- and blames them on Nancy
Pelosi
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/23/AR2009032302137.html>.
It is still early, not even two-thirds of the way through the
vaunted 100 days, and we are all admonished not to make judgments or
dire predictions. Yet enough has been done so that, without fear
that history will someday mock me, I can state that Nancy Pelosi is
off to one hell of a start. The president, alas, is a different story.
The tale of two political figures was written one day last week when
Pelosi went down into the well of the House and pitched the bill to
heavily tax the bad people at AIG who received big bonuses. Using
the tax code to exact punishment for political reasons is both bad
policy and bad law -- why not put gun-shop owners and cigarette
manufacturers in the 100 percent bracket? -- but it hurtled through
Pelosi's branch of the government with nary a hearing and few
discouraging words, and only the mildest suggestion from the
president that the bill was really a dumb idea.
And that's not the only dumb idea Pelosi has pushed through the House.
Anne Applebaum thinks the efforts to "reset"
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/23/AR2009032302138.html>
relations with other nations, notably Russia, are foolish.
I do realize that these are early days. The traditional, deadly
struggle between the State Department and the National Security
Council for influence is only just getting underway, and the
president has other things on his mind. But the gift of a "reset
button," however translated, was a not a good beginning. If this
administration thinks it can transform America's relationships with
Russia or anyone else with the flick of a switch and a change of
rhetoric, it is living in a virtual reality, not a real one.
Virtual realities can be fun, but there are almost always penalties for
acting as if we lived in one --- especially in foreign affairs.
George Will doesn't limit his criticism to Pelosi, or to Hillary Clinton
and the State Department. Instead, he argues that both the
administration and the Democratically-controlled Congress are ignoring
our laws and the Constitution
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/23/AR2009032302140.html>
This is but a partial list of recent lawlessness, situational
constitutionalism and institutional derangement. Such political
malfeasance is pertinent to the financial meltdown as the
administration, desperately seeking confidence, tries to stabilize
the economy by vastly enlarging government's role in it.
(Cohen and Applebaum voted for Obama, Will did not.)
Put together, these three assessments are devastating, even though Cohen
has not caught on yet to the fact that Obama is not a reformer, and
never has been one. Applebaum has the best description of the
underlying fault; Clinton, Obama, and Pelosi are not living in the real
world, a world in which nations have histories that can not be reset,
constitutions and laws that can not be ignored, and financial problems
that can not be solved simply by giving more power to the federal
officials who did so much to create those problems.
One final, sobering thought: We are accustomed to discounting "campaign
rhetoric", accustomed to assuming that politicians do not believe much
of what they say during a campaign. But we must, from time to time,
consider the possibility, however unpleasant, that campaigners believe
much of what they say. Clinton, Obama, and Pelosi may have believed the
attacks they made on George W. Bush, who they depicted as both
misinformed and misguided. That would explain why they seem to think
that they can simply replace Bush and "reset" things to make them right.
(Jimmy Carter seemed to have a similar misunderstanding when he took
office in 1977. During his years as president, he learned he was wrong
about some things, for instance, the Soviet threat. But the nation and
the world paid a high price for his lessons. )
- 9:08 AM, 24 March 2009
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