Daniel Gross on Obama’s speech:
President Obama’s Oval Office speech about the Gulf oil spill was almost enough to make you miss President George W. Bush. Maybe not the actual presidency of George W. Bush, but at least the platonic ideal of the presidency of George W. Bush—the MBA president, the chief executive as CEO.
A few weeks ago Atrios wrote:
There was something truly weird about the relationship between the DC press and the Bush administration that I never could quite understand. It’s like he was their president somehow, the one they grew up with before he regenerated into that weird guy with the funny name. And they keep rooting for his return. I don’t think the press is especially hostile to Obama, though they inevitably run with whatever right wing talking point comes through the puke funnel that day, but Bush…he was the one, their first boyfriend or something.
At the time, I thought he and others were overdoing it about the media love for Dubya. But missing the “the Platonic ideal” of the “MBA president”, dear FSM, it is a schoolgirl crush.
dmsilev
Here’s the thing about Platonic Ideals: They don’t exist in the real world.
And in Bush’s case, Potemkin Village is probably the better analogy.
dms
Rosalita
Guess they never got over the aircraft carrier image…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This is like saying, “I want a McDonald’s cheeseburger. Not an actual McDonald’s cheeseburger, a thin greasy slab of amonia-soaked beef with a dubious slice of a nearly-dairy-based-food-byproduct on a compressed piece of processed wheat, but a platonic ideal of a McDonald’s cheeseburger: A third of a pound of fresh ground kobe beef, grilled to perfection under a melted slice of cheddar with fresh red onion and fancy mustard on a toasted kaiser roll…”
That ain’t a McDonald’s cheeseburger you want, Sparky. Is there something decideriveness in Gross’s article? A longing to invade and conquer Dutchland to steal their gusher corking technologery?
tomvox1
Gross’s opening paragraph is probably the stupidest thing I have ever read.
Here is the stupidest thing I have ever heard:
Can you possibly guess who said it? Hint: it’s a noted energy expert.
Zifnab
Hey, the country voted for “Platonic Idea of a President” in 2000 and 2004. I’d even argue the MUP was the platonic idea of a President for 2008 (while McCain played the platonic idea of your crazy red neck grampa). It’s nothing new to embrace the idea of a man when you’re walking to the ballot box. So I can forgive the press a bit of fawning idiocy.
What I can’t forgive is in the age of economic recession created by a bunch of venial, short-sighted, idiot MBA graduates and Golden Parachute CEOs, someone seriously suggesting we need a CEO running the country. Might as well staple a Goldman / BP 2012 bumper sticker to your forehead.
Brian J
I can see this. After all, who doesn’t miss a man that has no real accomplishments on his record aside from cashing in on the process of building a stadium with taxpayer money and who can’t be bothered to learn the nuances of a situation? Isn’t it much better to have someone like that guy–Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, I think– who was playing bridge in Detroit the weekend his company collapsed?
I was under the impression that BP was handling a lot of this process because, despite numerous problems with the way they handled safety, they had the technological expertise on staff. The fact that they haven’t been able to stop it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are incompetent when it comes to this. Does Gross disagree with that? If so, whom does he propose take over the process? I really, really don’t get criticism like this, yet we keep seeing it.
some other guy
Did GWB ever actually succeed in business? Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t every company he was involved in crash and burn? If nothing else, his 8 years as CEO of America, Inc., were an unmitigated disaster!
Even right-wingers are trying to label the spill as “Obama’s Katrina” precisely because they want people to link it to Bush’s absolutely awful disaster management.
Apologies to Sarah Palin’s children, but Daniel Gross is a fucking retard.
Zifnab
@tomvox1: Why is this such a crazy stupid idea?
Brian J
@Zifnab:
Isn’t he acting exactly like a CEO or some other type of boss, as opposed to, say, a preacher? He’s trying to gather the facts, keep everyone calm, and think for the long term. What exact powers do they think business experience gives someone? The ability to snap one’s fingers and fix problems instantly?
Tokyokie
Having a schoolgirl crush on W is like wanting to make out with the boss’s dimwitted son.
Davis X. Machina
How many times have you heard the phrase ‘run the government like a business’ in the last month? In the last year? In the last thirty years?
It’s been rendered completely impervious to actual facts — right up there with “The Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility”, which hasn’t been true for a generation, at least, and a host of others.
People love stories. People will choose a good, familiar story, well told, and a crust of bread, over a banquet and a strange new world every time.
That’s the impulse that makes nationalism work, that keeps a Mugabe in power, that is responsible for there still being any GOP at all.
fucen tarmal
for a platonic president, gwb sure fucked us good /rimshot
Brian J
@tomvox1:
If she becomes president, I might actually find people who need my organs and figure out a way to end my life gracefully. I like to think of myself as fairly mentally tough, but I am not sure I could stand her for four years. Or a year and a half to two years, if her last job is an indication of anything.
cleek
his adventures in business gave him a nice personal fortune. so, yes… ?
kay
I think the whole MBA-CEO model is discredited, considering what happened with banks and lenders and now an oil company.
I hope he doesn’t run government like a business, looking at how we’re running businesses like a business.
He might not want to try to revive Bush’s scam, at this juncture. We’re past that.
IndieTarheel
If any of them watched Dr. Who, they’d know that once he changes, he ain’t changing back.
Morbo
“All I want out of life is to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit. That’s why I’ve decided to transfer to Business School.”
jayjaybear
The only problem with GWB as a platonic president is that the “ideal” had about as much substance as the shadow on the cave wall.
NonyNony
@Brian J:
I heard the CEO from Exxon throw BP under the bus during the Congressional hearings yesterday. Apparently according to him BP did a lot of bad stuff and it should never have happened. And the cleanup would be going much more smoothly if this were Exxon’s accident anyway.
When pressed about the fact that his company’s deep-well accident recovery plan is exactly the same as BP’s plan – we’re talking “compiled by the same PR firm that did BP’s plan” level of “exactly the same” here – he just shrugged and said that it’s the plan required by MMS and the Coast Guard. Apparently it has no bearing on reality, it’s just a checkbox to get by those pesky laws about having a contingency plan in the case of an accident.
I have no confidence that the folks at BP know what they’re doing with this. Not because they employ bad engineers – I think their engineers are probably just as good as anyone else’s – but because their executives were not taking the risks seriously and their cronies in MMS were letting them get away with murder (aided and abetted by the clueless crooks in Congress who have been watering down safety regulations for the oil industry forever). And now their engineers are trying to work a miracle without having a fucking clue as to what they’re supposed to do because no one bothered to do the heavy lifting of research before the crisis hit. That BP probably IS in the best position to deal with this is actually a sad and sorry state of affairs.
tomvox1
@Zifnab:
It’s not but the Feds have already requested said foreign assistance:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/13/AR2010061304232.html
They’ve already returned those phone calls, if you will, so once again, the Grifter is completely full of shit and talking out of her neckhole.
kay
@Davis X. Machina:
I agree. I think that’s a huge part of the problem. We decided to apply a business model to everything.
What’s amazing is we’re still trying, despite the fact that it was a “business model” at BP that is directly responsible for the problem occurring.
I was just listening to news radio, and the reader was upset that EPA and Coast Guard “red tape” were stalling individual efforts in the Louisiana marshes. In other words, regulations are stifling innovation.
We can’t quit this fantasy.
fucen tarmal
the ceo president also fails at the basic notion of what a ceo does.
i mean do they want a businessman who is on top of every element of the business?
do they want a person who carries the vision, but does not particularly mire themselves in the details?
it seems to me they are saying they want obama to be more detached from the clean-up, the fin ref, hcr, et al, at the same time they are calling him out for not being involved enough….
a ceo, in the sense that bush styled himself is the opposite of what they want obama to do.
Brian J
@kay:
I think the idea of a CEO is nice. If what we can gather from fantasy and theory is right, this person is supposed to be, to borrow a cliche, cool, calm, collected, smart, efficient, and dominated not by short-term but by long-term thinking. (There are surely plenty of executives who are like that, just not enough to crowd out the ones who aren’t.) Obama has been acting like the CEO are we supposed to want, whereas Bush acted like the CEO we end up getting for one reason or another. It’s a testament to the obliviousness of some in the media that they don’t realize this.
Davis X. Machina
You will recall from Plato that there were prizes for the denizens of the cave best at guessing the customary sequences of shadows, and at associating the shadows with the sounds that they appear to make. And that ‘Socrates’ says that those in the cave would turn on, and kill, any intruder who attempted to set them free.
It’s hard to believe Plato didn’t have cable.
some other guy
@cleek:
Okay, so the question should have been: did any business ever actually succeed under GWB?
I’m sure Daniel Gross’s answer would be, “well, I’m not talking about Bush, per se. I’m talking about a GOOD CEO.” So why bring up Bush in the first place, unless you’re just a troll? Well, congrats, Daniel. It worked. And we all hate you. * shakes fist at monitor *
Tonybrown74
@Rosalita:
Remembering that slobberfest makes me want to puke!
I have never seen a bunch of straight men drool over another man’s crotch so blatantly in all my 36 years.
mr. whipple
Who does Mr. Gross have in mind?
someguy
I thought the speech kicked ass. The way to fix the spill and punish BP is to pass cap & trade and to raise taxes. That way, we can stuff the leak with tax dollars (cutting out the middle men now peddling junk shots and what not) and we can set BP up with some free assets to trade on the new carbon cap market. That’ll show those fuckers not to mess with the environment.
Jeffro
@kay:
GREAT point, and double-ditto for education, too. Diane Ravitch’s book is awesome on this.
Along similar lines (about the BP spill, not education), here’s Robert Reich over at Salon:
That second sentence really sums it up.
kay
@Jeffro:
I’ll read it. I have been listening for years to our local superintendents and principals try to adopt this phony “CEO language”, for public consumption and apply “market principles” to first graders.
It depresses the hell out of me. I don’t know why we’d even want to apply the same model to everything.
Rosalita
@Tonybrown74:
You know what (and I am not making this up) the local Napa Auto parts store set up a little garden/memorial area in the corner of their parking lot that faces the street. They have a fucking statue of GWB, in the harness… makes me want to puke driving to work every damn day.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Obama is such a failure. Hillary would have soaked up that oil spill with a gazillion Blue Dresses. Bush would have brought it in Dead of Alive, with President John McCain dispatching Vice President Sarah Palin and a thousand Crude Death Panels .
When will our national Obama national nightmare end.
A Firebaggers lament.
Bill Section 147
He was cute and funny, had the nicest car in town, and treated them special…as long as they wore their cute cheerleader outfits. It was probably the first time most of them had been part of a Fraternity that was built around drinks and social activities. For eight years everyone got to try to join and anyone who failed Rush was outside the circle and has not returned.
The current media coverage is presented by those who survived or rose during the era of toady/crony journalism. To break away now would require you to admit all of that was a lie. Katrina was cathartic for some but epiphanies are hard to come by when you are fat and happy.
Rosalita
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Nah, they might have decided to bomb it
jibeaux
Gah. Look, I don’t ask much. Coffee with cream and sugar, six and a half hours of sleep and a little more on the weekends, the occasional night of not cooking, and a fourth estate without obvious and projected daddy issues and some sort of interest in writing about issues that people need to pay attention to, such as that the past 12 months have been the hottest 12 months ever. Apparently I’m dreaming too big here.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Obama is such a failure.
Lamar Alexander says he should have announced a mini Manhattan Project. Earns points for ironic contraindication. Loses points for hypocritical dumbfuckery.
Mitch McConnell denounces a new tax on oil companies to clean up their messes, momentarily flashing an upper lip.
And The Confluence contemplates mass ritual suicide. Just not today.
When will our Obama national nightmare end?
A wingnut’s whine
arguingwithsignposts
CEO as president? Carly Fiorina, bitchez.
ETA: The MBA credential is also bullshit. Megan McArdle has an MBA too. And Glenn Reynolds is a law professor, and Ron Paul is an MD.
Credentials don’t mean jack shit if you’re an asshole.
Violet
Their relationship with W. is like a sick, immature relationship where they pretend that W. is Daddy and is going to make everything okay. And W. put on flight suits, cut brush, and said tough he-man phrases like “dead or alive,” thus fulfilling the press’ and pundits’ every Hollywood Daddy twisted fantasy.
Obama expects that people are going to act like adults and conducts his relationships accordingly. The Village press doesn’t like that. They want Daddy. When they don’t get it, they pout and find fault with whoever should (in their minds) be Daddy, but isn’t acting the part. Thus Obama isn’t “tough enough.”
mr. whipple
@Rosalita:
No.way.
Take a pic and send it to Rumproast or TBogg.
Linda Featheringill
@someguy:
I thought the speech kicked ass, too.
And it was an honest speech. The reality of what we are facing is dark, depressing, and much too complex for the poor, beknighted humans to control.
We are in trouble in the Gulf. And this “trouble” might reach proportions that make individual political trajectories inconsequential.
Yes, I am worried.
Tonybrown74
@Rosalita:
Ugh! I had the misfortune of watching Hardball that day, and to see Tweety slobber all over that image of Dubya walking across the deck of that aircraft carrier was just shameful. I was EMBARRASSED for him.
I would love to ask all the straight women and gay men out there: was there ever a sexual appeal to GWB? As a gay man, I never saw it (and I’m trying to be objective here).
Kryptik
@Brian J:
Funny, sounds like you’re talking about the Platonic Ideal of a CEO. Whereas Bush seems to represent the actual practice of a CEO Presidency (as in, applications of real CEOs to a real Presidency): do everything you can to give you and your friends on the board power and money, shift blame when shit inevitably goes bad, and get out with a golden parachute, content that your money and influence with the ‘right people’ more than make up your shit-stained public image.
Honestly, the Obama administration IS failing…but not because of any particular thing he does. He’s had missteps and faults, yes, impossible to ignore that. But it’s kind of hard not to fail when it seems like you have a good 70% of the media and Washington firmly against making any changes to the crap that got us in the mess in the first place. When that many people are content swimming in sewage even after admitting their swimming in raw shit (after entirely too much pressing and confrontation), it’s hard to get crap done to actually fix anything.
And it’s funny how the only people attributing messianic powers and capability are the people mocking and wondering why Obama hasn’t fixed everything yet singlehandedly.
Ash Can
@Tonybrown74: Whoever said they were straight?
ETA: Personally, as a straight female, I saw nothing attractive about him. His looks alone did nothing for me. Additionally and more important, handsome is as handsome does. And he didn’t, so he wasn’t.
lamh31
Personally, I find it interesting that so many of those who practically demanded that Obama give a oval office address, or some other primetime address to the people of the Gulf (i.e. Olbermann, Maddow, Tweety, KOS, etc) are all now saying that it woulda been betta if there was no speech at all! FTW!!
It’s things like that they make you realize that no matter what the Prez woulda said last night people who are already PO’d about the gov’t response were gonna be disappointed.
Also, anyone else already tired of Olbermann and Tweety’s “countdown” of the days since the spill, as if the spill response somehow compares to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!
I’m kinda sick of the lot of them
BTW, I spoke to my fam too, and they actually thought the speech was fine. They just wanted to hear that the Prez was aware of the Gulf coast resident’s worry, and contrary to Rachel Maddow’s panning of the “prayer and blessings” portion of the speech, my aunt really appreciated that part. It’s what she made a point of agreeing with.
jwb
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: No way, McCain would have nuked it, and then cried hoocoodanode when he ended up with a far bigger mess on his hands.
ETA: @Rosalita: Nevermind.
ed_finnerty
Atrios is hilarious on a regular basis
Is ‘Puke Funnel’ original with him
Sheila
Watching the commentary on MSNBC after Obama’s speech was the incentive I needed to give up watching all mainstream media “news” shows except Stewart and Colbert (laughter the best medicine). I walked out during E. J. Dionne’s rant about how Obama should have donned his Commander in Chief mantle during his speech and used war metaphors. With a media like this, who needs terrorists to bring us down?
Kryptik
Honestly, I’m just still trying to figure out what people want Obama to do, tangibly. What federal agencies are equipped to handle a spill THIS bad? And organization, nationally or internationally, is equipped for that matter? There’s a lot of crap to be said about what lead up to this, particularly with the MMS, and that’s wholly valid as it contributed precisely to the mess. But what can really be done with so many experts and engineers have no fucking idea what can, tangibly, be done now?
It’s not helping when you have jackoffs in Congress trying to shirk financial responsibility away from BP and onto the nation as a whole, as well as saying ‘We can’t stop drilling NOW, people will die of heatstroke if we do!’. Oh….and simultaneously saying that Obama is in Big Oil’s pocket.
Honestly, the whole thing is a lose-lose situation for everyone except the GOP, and that fucking irritates me.
John PM
I would think that the actual presidency of GWB, combined with the financial problems of the last two years, would be enough to destroy the “Platonic” ideal of an MBA president. I also have to question whether the author actually knows what Platonic means. I continue to hold to my belief that MBA actually stands for Master of Bullshit Artistry.
Objective Observer
Primary him, firebaggers. Find someone and do it. Greenwald, Kucinich, Hillary, whatever. I double dog dare you.
AhabTRuler
If Obama’s Presidency is failing it’s because we don’t want solutions, we just want someone to hold our hands as we circle the drain.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@lamh31: He announces the government is taking over the BP claims process forcing them to deposit a huge cash amount to an escrow account for the payouts.
He takes it to the nation as a whole and long term habitual obstruction to developing alternative energy sources, and reminds everybody about the massive R and D money in the stimulus he passed to get it started. Something no one gives him credit for, especially other liberals.
He maintains a moratorium that is very controversial — to not proceed with future drilling until assured these blowouts can be prevented, or quickly mitigated.
And most of all, he gets in the face of average Americans with subtle digs on general complacency on the public’s part to focus on getting off fossil fuels, with implicit subliminal jabs — that this is what you get when electing wingnuts who want the status quo.
He talks about immediate plans the Executive Branch can implement of specific alt. energy projects, as a start.
He doesn’t lie that capping the well sooner is within his power and our current state of technology to achieve. He doesn’t do gratuitous slamming of BP, other than cooly stating proactive steps to see they step up to the plate and financially address the human economic suffering their actions have caused.
What I see on the blogs and cable teevee makes me want to puke, and confirms to me that Obama cannot possibly do the right thing in wanker eyes, no matter what the fuck he does.
norbizness
I do remember him bringing his CEO skillz to bear on the Presidency, when he asked his Daddy’s friends for $4 trillion to cover all the debt he was piling on to enrich bloated plutocrats and conduct endless war.
slag
@kay:
It’s not even a business model we’re applying to everything. It’s the “Platonic ideal” of a business model. Who has ever worked in business on any level and believes that businesses have broken the mold on maximizing efficiency and being guided by cold, hard calculation? Red tape exists all over businesses too. A business of any size couldn’t possibly function without it.
Comrade Dread
Fuck you.
Allison W.
Obama didn’t give the speech that the media and political bloggers wrote for him, he gave a speech that those outside of the bubble needed to hear. We’ve all complained that the media isn’t doing its job informing the public, right?
Rosalita
@mr. whipple:
I shit you not. And yeah, I oughta send a pic over to TBogg
policomic
@Davis X. Machina: I always want to ask the people who think government should be “run like a business” where in the hell they work. Every “business” that has ever employed me, or anybody I know, is rife with incompetence, backstabbing, and sociopathic behavior. There’s a reason people cut out Dilbert comic strips; there’s a reason Office Space became a cult hit, and The Office strikes a nerve. Most businesses are terribly run. When a big firm does collapse (or narrowly avoids collapse, due to some form of government bailout, as happened recently with the auto industry, and repeatedly with the airlines), the press postmortem nearly always reveals that the whole thing was a house of cards, and the real miracle was that the collapse didn’t come a lot sooner. Business is dominated by short-term thinking; those who rise up the corporate ladder are generally the most selfish and ruthless, who are liable to care more about their bonuses and golden parachutes than the soundness of their companies. It’s a terrible, terrible model to emulate.
sukabi
I think they loved him because he actually made some of them feel competent…. just like the not so pretty girls will hang out with a fat girl or two because it makes them look better…. they got the “gee, I’m not as big a fuckup as everyone thinks — look at that guy, MBA, CEO and still can’t walk and chew gum at the same time….
sukabi
@policomic: I’d have to agree… most of the businesses I’ve worked in have been run by folks that shouldn’t be trusted to change a light bulb by themselves…
gil mann
No it wasn’t.
What’s the deal with writing about murderous business-school grads in the second-person, anyway?
EDIT: I’m thinking of Less Than Zero, aren’t I? Ah well, that title fits Bush on about a dozen levels anyway.
Tonybrown74
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
General, don’t you realize that he was supposed to grab himself, shake it in front of the camera and tell BP what it can do with, “These nuts??”
And then you watch all the [supposedly] straight male talking heads spooge all over their anchor desks …
And I guess all the [straight] female talking heads (all two of them) are supposed to flash their tata’s or something …
Johnny B
Clearly, the DC press corps had (and has) a mancrush on Bush. But I don’t think it has anything to do with Bush, his background, or his effectiveness as a leader.
They long for a benevolent Daddy dictator who will run the entire government from the Oval Office without the messiness of dealing with Congress or the Courts. What they love about Bush is that he demonstrated a likeminded hatred towards democracy. It’s their love of an autocrat, rather than their love of Bush, that makes me shudder.
If Bush had “abolished” Congress and the Courts after 9-11, nearly every Villager would have leaped at the opportunity to say things like, “The President has taken decisive action in this crisis, and should be applauded. The American people agree because they know we live in a post-9-11 world.”
None of this should be a surprise. Any good oligarchy inevitably must devolve into a dictatorship. You can’t create an economic system where only the top 5% receive all the rewards and not expect those same privileged people to obsess over the prospect that the dirty plebes are going to steal their stuff.
Cacti
The MBA President…
Who was legacy-admitted to the Ivy League…
And given “Gentleman’s C’s” for his academic endeavors.
Kryptik
The most upsetting thing about the whole fucking clustermess is that….there really are so many things that could be validly laid at the Obama administration’s feet for not doing. There’s all too much he could be validly criticized for…
….and yet, this is what’s destroying him. This is what, from my sad point of view, guaranteed a Republican president in 2012. Something that he really does have so little control over doing and little capability to stop (as does just about everyone since even experts close to the stuff have admitted to be utterly stumped as to what to do at this point). This is what has turned everyone against the administration. And it’s the one that overshadows the fact that Republicans are still trying to have their cake and eat it too, trying to limit any culpability BP has while stonewalling any attempts to invest in other energy at the expense of MORE DRILLING! MORE OFFSHORE DRILLING OR AMERICANS WILL DIIIIIIIIIEEE!!
GOd, fucking fucking fucking fucking hell, I hate this country sometimes, I hate it so much because we can fucking never get the right goddamn priorities.
Cacti
@slag:
I believe the Dubya administration was very much a business model applied to the Presidency.
The model of: the old boss’s idiot son gets Daddy’s job handed to him on a silver platter.
Who hasn’t seen this one happen?
JMY
The president is about to speak to the press…let’s see how this works out…
policomic
@Johnny B: Yes, yes, yes. Tragically on target.
Terrell
@some other guy: @some other guy:
No need to apologize; she had no problem whatsoever when Rush Limbaugh used the word.
SiubhanDuinne
@Rosalita:
Touchdown Dubya? Maybe it’ll get struck by lightning and burn to a kwisp.
SiubhanDuinne
@arguingwithsignposts:
This. A thousand times, this.
JasonF
Here’s a modest proposal: what would happen if President Obama, in the interests of the country and putting aside all partisanship, asked reknowned energy expert Sarah Palin to spearhead the efforts in the Gulf of Mexico?
debbie
@arguingwithsignposts:
It’s MBAs (and business schools in general) who have ruined this country. It’s bad enough that they seem to have stopped teaching ethics, but their overfetishizing nickel-and-dime accounting as the answer to everything has destroyed any number of industries. I watched them destroy publishing in the 1980s, and now I’m seeing it occur in the corner-cutting mentality of big oil.
Slugger
I’m late to this thread. To me these statements about GWB refer to the fact that he is one of the rightful owners of this country by virtue of his birth. The rest of us are here to be of service to his people. When one of us starts aiming for a position for which we are unsuited because of our low birth then we are required to produce our long form birth certificate or prove that we are not ” too elite ” to be Real Americans like Kagan.
licensed to kill time
@JasonF:
In case you missed it, here’s what Betty Cracker at Rumproast imagined might happen, on that very question.
Hal
I’m just so completely over and done with Politics.
I will always be a bleeding heart Liberal Dem, but goddamn, progressives are fucking irritating.
Yet again we get ready to hit the great reset button in the sky, revert to Bush era Republican control, and wait patiently for the next “Truly Progressive President” (trademark pending).
No, let’s not build from Obama, and elect a succession of Democrats who might actually be progressively, well, Progressive. Let’s just elect one every 20 or 30 years, for maybe two terms if we are lucky, then revert back to Repub control for the next 4 to 6 elections.
It’s easier that way, living in a fantasy realm with President Maddow, Vice President Greenwald, SOS Stewart, and SOT Krugman. Much easier…
kay
@Hal:
Funny post. Don’t despair, though. Most people probably want him to 1. plug the hole, 2. clean up the mess, and 3. get us paid for damages.
They’ve put yet another containment-collection system in, so they’re working on number 1, he’s got 20,000 people working on number 2, and it looks like he might have 20 billion dollars toward number 3.
Mike G
Reporters are corporate employees, mostly selected for their butt-kissing skills, corporate political-game-playing, shallowness and obedience to heirarchy. Bush played on their conditioned deference to their corporate managers by appropriating the archetype of an in-charge CEO (even when he was obviously not) and the press corpse lazily bought into it. They crave simple, clear storylines, no matter how much bullshit they are.
TuiMel
@Tonybrown74:
My friend’s (conservative) sister climaxed at the site of Dubya in a flight suit. She also thought (thinks?) The Grifter is all that and a side of pickles. She could not understand why any woman who believed in shattering glass ceilings would not be an instant supporter of La Palin. So, yes, there are females out there who were every bit as titillated as Tweety was. It aggravates me simply to recall her POV.
BC
Heard someone on NPR this a.m. complaining that Obama and Salazar had not cleaned up MMS – but never actually getting into the nitty gritty details, such as civil service laws that keep career personnel in their jobs unless you can prove they are incompetent. Salazar should have cleaned house! she raged – but Salazar cannot clean house, there are processes that must be followed if you are going to remove career federal employees. Salazar is cleaning house now by restructuring MMS – that is, he is making the new MMS an agency with no employees that will be staffed all over again and the employees there will have to go through the application process to get the new jobs. But there was no indication in January 2009 that MMS would have to be completely restructured in order to have a functioning regulatory agency. Any try would have led to charges of politicizing the civil service. Obama’s problem really is that he thought the oil companies and the regulatory agencies actually had put some thought into the worst case scenario and that it wasn’t just so much boilerplate that didn’t mean shit when put in practice. But now all the oil companies admit that their response to worst case scenarios hasn’t really been thought through and that they just wrote something up to placate the regulators.
Hawes
Daniel Gross is one of the only reasons to read Slate (the other being Fred Kaplan).
That being said…
What…The…Fuck…?
Bush the MBA, the Delegator in Chief….
Who in their right fucking mind misses that?
Sm*t Cl*de
almost enough to make you miss […] the platonic ideal of the presidency of George W. Bush
So basically this pundit is saying that he had a dipstick fantasy of what the Bush presidency was going to be like, which proved to be completely the contrary of real-world events, but he is still so enamoured of this fantasy that he is going to use it as the yardstick for judging later presidents.
Why would anyone own up to being so stupid 9 years ago and so stupid now? Puzzled, I am.
redoubt
@policomic: Hell I work for the government. (Aside: I used to tell people I was self-employed; I’m a taxpayer too. Surprising how many people miss that.) The Bush Administration forced a bunch of MBAs on our agency, and we’re still undoing the damage a year and a half later.
@BC: This, and only because of a Presidential Memorandum that they can do it in the first place (we’ve only wanted something like this for a hundred years).