"It would have been so clarifying to have an independent voice calling out Mitt Romney for running a campaign that consists of decrying the last three and a half years of the Obama presidency, while offering to reinstate the very same failed policies that made the eight years of George W. Bush a disaster that President Obama has spent most of his time cleaning up."
Obama has been cleaning up the failed policies of George Bush? Oh, really. And what about that horrific involvement in Afghanistan, bleeding America white, that Obama saw fit to escalate? Tell us, Tom, how Obama has spent the past three and a half years cleaning up that Central Asian mess.
An ever so modest man, Friedman next offers Obama a winning economic policy, intended to demonstrate at this late stage of the game that the President has "a credible, detailed recovery plan":
"Call it the Obama Plan; it should combine a near-term stimulus on job-creating infrastructure, a phase-in, as the economy improves, of 'something that resembles the 10-year Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan — which would pay for the stimulus 15-20 times over' and a specific plan to 'bend the health care cost-curve downward.' Obama has already offered the first; he still has not risen to the second and the third would be an easy extension of his own health care plan."
Ah, yes, the Obama Plan. After three years of running trillion dollar deficits and with unemployment stuck over 8%, Obama should tell the American electorate on the eve of the election that he has taken the advice of Tom Friedman and has finally gotten his act together: We need "something" resembling Simpson-Bowles, and here's my simple-as-pie solution to reduce the costs of my unpopular health care legislation.
According to Friedman, present such a program, and "people would see a real choice: a tough-minded-but-centrist plan with real bipartisan support." Yeah, House and Senate Republicans are just waiting to throw their lot in with such sugary fluff.
Friedman has just hit rock bottom.
The Republicans have been dedicated, by their own admission, to denying Obama re-election and have acted at all times in their own self-interest and not the interests of the American people. They now have a candidate who has no principles and will say and do anything to be elected. No president could be successful in the presence of such un patriotic people.
ReplyDelete