Overwhelmed
Thursday 25 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized
John Geraghty at The National Review on Obama’s seeming inability to govern with anything resembling competence:
Obamacare’s implementation is a “train wreck,” in the words of retiring Montana Democrat Sen. Max Baucus.
The president’s gun control proposals are rejected, because he can’t persuade Red State senators in either party that they would really be of any use in preventing gun violence.
The great news is that the Boston bombers were killed and apprehended quickly, but Boston’s ordeal left serious questions about the government’s ability to keep an eye on those deemed dangerous, and how carefully it scrutinizes those who seek to become American citizens.
[. . .]
Of course, the “shovel-ready jobs” of the stimulus didn’t really live up to the promises, as Obama himself admitted.
And the web site meant to detail how every dime of stimulus spending ended up full of bad data and nonexistent congressional districts.
And that as of June 2012, three and a half years after the stimulus passed, nearly $8 billion was still waiting to be awarded or sitting in agency accounts.
And the entire green jobs initiative clearly hasn’t quite lived up to the hype, including the president’s infamous pledge that “companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.” Now another one of the administration’s high-profile loan recipients, Fisker Automotive, is contemplating bankruptcy; the company hasn’t built a car since July.
[. . .]
When federal program after federal program fails to generate the desired result, it’s not crazy talk to become at least a little skeptical of the latest pledges and promises and idealistic visions.
But Democrats often speak as if the Right’s skepticism of the government’s problem-solving ability is driven by some sort of abstract ideological theory. It’s not. It’s usually built upon hard experiences; human behavior isn’t predictable, particularly their interactions with the government. Unintended consequences pile up like a car crash. The pattern is depressingly predictable: Someone in government comes up with some laudable goal, and announces some new program. After the press conference, when the cameras and microphones are away, implementing the idea proves more complicated than the press conference announcement made it seem. Deadlines get missed. Costs turn out much higher than expected. Bureaucratic inertia begins to exert the gravitational pull of a black hole.
Perhaps it is the nature of the modern presidency of the occupant of the Oval Office to glide from photo-op to photo-op, and never spend too much time getting entangled in the messy work of actually making his policies live up to his promises. Certainly that’s the pattern for this president; even in this non-campaign year, the schedule is heavy with a campaign-style rally on gun control initiatives here, a DCCC fundraiser there, then off to a tour of a national laboratory. He flits from issue to issue; to judge from his remarks and his schedule, the health care issue is resolved and our health care system’s problems are fixed. Maybe White House Press Secretary Jay Carney will get a question about the health care exchanges or electronic health care records system, which he’ll defuse with another defensive, meandering word salad.
Implementing Obamacare? Hey, that’s for somebody else to worry about.
If only he would leave operating the government for someone else to worry about perhaps we would be better off.
2013-04-25 » madlibertarianguy