Maureen Dowd's "Sleeping Barry Awakes": Actually, He's Been Busy Gazing Into the Magic Mirror

I don't like politicians. Some 30 years ago, I was invited by a dear friend to a luncheon at his home with a group of young Democratic congressmen and their families. Perhaps it was expected that I could provide insights involving a certain Middle East trouble spot with which I had become intimately acquainted. I remember in particular the behavior of one representative, who couldn't give me the time of day, and I observed to myself that this man, who was deeply in love with himself, was going places. Sure enough, today he is a powerful senior senator from a populous state.

With every passing day I feel more like an anachronism: My values are not in keeping with the times, and my efforts to effect change on a minimalistic level, even as they affect hiring practices by government bodies, are best described as quixotic. I cancelled my Facebook page, I can't spend more than 10 minutes in a shopping center without losing my sense of decorum, and my irreverence and impatience grow by the hour.

I liked Maureen Dowd's New York Times "Sleeping Barry Awakes" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/opinion/sunday/dowd-sleeping-barry-awakes.html), in which she portrays government for what it is:

"Congressional Republicans, heeding polls indicating that their all-out assault on President Obama was risky, finally tempered their public comments after the jobs speech on Thursday and stopped acting like big jerks.

Obama, heeding plummeting polls and beseeching voices from his despairing base, finally deigned to get tough.

In the capital of political tactics, it was just another fine day of faking it.

. . . .

So while the country has grown ever more scared, miserable, broke and broken, the president has too often been absent, quiet, ambivalent, impenetrable and inscrutable.

. . . .

It’s still impossible to sum up what Obama’s presidency is about right now, except saving his own job."

But why be so hard on Obama? Is he really any different from anyone else on Capitol Hill? Sure he promised answers, but it demanded an incredible level of stupidity and frustration to believe that a charismatic community organizer with no decision-making or executive skills could deliver on his promises.

The new Obama jobs plan? Show it to me on paper. How does it differ from the stimulus plan, almost twice as expensive, that was passed soon after Obama took office in 2009? As observed in an earlier blog entry, it's like pouring gasoline on a dying fire: without additional timber, the flames expire that much sooner.

Where was the candid discussion in Obama's speech concerning the problems that got us into our current mess? No mention of American reliance upon expensive foreign oil. No mention that America is being forced to compete with countries, e.g. China and Pakistan, whose products are manufactured by slave labor. No mention of the predatory financial practices that are destroying investment in innovative businesses. No mention of the chaos that has been fostered across the globe by the unchecked conduct of Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Erdogan. No mention of the war in Afghanistan, whose escalation by Obama is bleeding the US dry.

Obama wants "to see folks in South Korea driving Fords and Chevys and Chryslers"? Well, no one is going to buy Fords and Chevys and Chryslers in South Korea unless they offer competitive advantages over their competition. The question then is how to induce American industry to build a better car that is going to leave the competition in the dust. One possible answer: Reward those US companies which are able to obtain better fleet mileage with tax credits.

Education? Reward those schools that are better able to motivate their students with grants.

Higher education? Subsidize advanced degrees in fields, e.g. engineering, which are needed to promote long-term growth.

And bring back the uptick rule to prevent predatory hedge funds from destroying promising hi-tech firms in their infancy (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2011/08/paul-krugman-hijacked-crisis-paul-heres.html).

It can all be done, but a leader is needed in the White House, not a narcissist. Where is such a leader to be found in either party? Regrettably, there is no prince or princess charming anywhere on the horizon ready to rescue the nation.