State of the Presidency

Before I read or listen to any commentary (and stay up way too late doing so), let me get my own thoughts down untainted.

1. Obama rocked it. ROCKED it. It was a trophy winning oratory. I don't think he's a superhero or "the one" but I do think he's even smarter than we realize. I think that while we're all hyperventilating over one thing or another, he's a few chess moves ahead of us. Not a bad quality for a leader. Not bad at all.

2. For me, with one exception, he made the case. He make his priority agenda clear to anyone even half listening: energy, health care, and education. He connected each of them to the stability of our economy, the one thing that he knows is on everyone's mind. Everytime he asked the congress to bring him a bill, he gave them the respect they deserve and gave millions of Americans a gentle civics lesson. (The president can say "I want to do this" all he wants, but congress has to enact the laws. Something Bush's laundry list State of the Unions never seemed to acknowledge.) He didn't let us off the hook -- imploring us to be better parents, better neighbors, better citizens. He refrained from name calling or finger pointing, but rightly observed that he did not create the deficit we're saddled with. And he refrained from the kind of "you're with us or against us" rhetoric that leads to ... we all know what that leads to.

3. The one exception? TARP, or financial stabilization, or whatever they're calling it now. And this could be entirely due to my own ignorance on the subject. I would welcome any research that would help me understand it better. The reason I'm skeptical -- or rather, still skeptical even after Obama acknowledged that we're all skeptical -- is this idea that the banking crisis is about a lack of credit. That if we can get banks lending again, we'll be back on track. At the risk of sounding like the people who deny global warming whenever it snows ... I walked into a Best Buy on Sunday, and within 10 minutes was approved for $4600 in credit, and for 36 months with no interest at that. I wisely decided not to use all of it, just to purchase the TV I'd budgeted for, but there it was. Credit. No problem. Few questions asked. My FICO is good, but it's not perfect. So what's the story? Is the problem with the banks frozen credit, or is it solvency? If it's frozen credit, why are banks still spending money to advertise their home mortgage products?

4. Bobby Jindal: If this is the best they've got ... well it's nice to see the shoe on the other foot after all those years that progressives couldn't muster anything better than Mondale and Dukakis. Don't get me wrong, he seems like a nice enough guy. But he's lousy at reading cue cards, and even lousier at sounding like he means it. Even when telling his personal stories. By the way, can anyone find a single hospital in today's Louisiana that will allow someone to negotiate a payment plan for delivering a baby? Never mind, it's beside the point. The point is that his argument against health care reform -- "we believe medical decisions should be made by patients and doctors, not bureaucrats" -- was neither a refutation of anything Obama proposed nor a rational statement, given the fact that millions of Americans have their medical decisions made by insurance company bureaucrats everyday. The point is that the only thing he could call out to complain about in the stimulous bill was $300 million for adding fuel efficient cars to the government fleet -- never mind that it represents only .03% of the bill's spending, and less than 14% of the regular annual budget for car purchases, and that if, as he suggests, we'll soon be seeing $4 gas again, hybrids will save the government a bundle in fuel costs. Never mind all that. Americans can do anything, after all. Oh, wait. Obama already said that. And he said it much better, and with more conviction.