Mr Co-President? Obama upstages Bush on economy

[ducks]

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36698520081125?sp=true

dude needs to remimber he told people President Bush was still President tell he swears in on the Bible

[ducks]

CHICAGO (Reuters) - There may be only one U.S. president at a time, but you wouldn't know it by watching Barack Obama this week.

The Democratic president-elect, who kept a low profile for three weeks after his White House win, has swung into action with a series of economic pronouncements and cabinet selections that have overshadowed President George W. Bush.

[Wild Cobra]

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36698520081125?sp=true

dude needs to remimber he told people President Bush was still President tell he swears in on the Bible

Reminds me of Granny calling Jefferson Davis the president.

I think two days ago, I noted that he was working with congress for legislation to sign. If it's that important, send it to president Bush rather than making it a political issue, and waiting on something they say is urgent.

Just more partisan politics.

[Creepn]

Bush gladly gave him permission.

[Tully365]

There's no winning with the Obama-bashers. If he says nothing, there are complaints that he isn't acting presidential and isn't up to the task of dealing with the financial crisis. If he utters a single sentence about future economic plans, he's "upstaging" Bush.

At this point, a mummy with an abacus would upstage Bush on the economy.

[Wild Cobra]

There's no winning with the Obama-bashers. If he says nothing, there are complaints that he isn't acting presidential and isn't up to the task of dealing with the financial crisis. If he utters a single sentence about future economic plans, he's "upstaging" Bush.

At this point, a mummy with an abacus would upstage Bush on the economy.

I personally hope I'm wrong about president Obama. I hope he does a better job.

OMG...

I'm chanting HOPE now!

[balli]

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36698520081125?sp=true

dude needs to remimber he told people President Bush was still President tell he swears in on the Bible

Die.

[Tully365]

I personally hope I'm wrong about president Obama. I hope he does a better job.

OMG...

I'm chanting HOPE now!

Ah, criticism. Funny how the great Reagan Optimism has dissolved into modern day conservatives mocking the very idea of Hope. So Carter was right to talk about "malaise" afterall?

[Winehole23]

Ah, criticism. Funny how the great Reagan Optimism has dissolved into modern day conservatives mocking the very idea of Hope. So Carter was right to talk about "malaise" afterall?Tangential, but Carter never used the word "malaise." He was talking about energy independence as the moral equivalent of war, about heedless consumerism as a spiritual problem and the need for national sacrifice.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPePpMxJaA&eurl=http://oneutah.org/2008/08/18/remember-jimmy-carters-malaise-speech/

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2008/sep/08/00018/

[TheProfessor]

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36698520081125?sp=true

dude needs to remimber he told people President Bush was still President tell he swears in on the Bible

If financial markets are clamoring for more leadership, Obama got the message.

"There is a leadership vacuum. If Obama doesn't fill it, more panic will result in (the) short run, and the problem will become greater by the time he officially takes office," said Stephen Wayne, professor of government at Georgetown University.

"It is still Bush's power to act now, but Obama's obligation to tell jittery Americans what he plans to do."


"It is not normal that a president-elect would get involved in this way, but these are not normal times," he said, adding that Bush's credibility had eroded to the point that he was not taken seriously within the financial markets.

"The economy will not wait for the transition to be completed. That was a problem in 1932, and subsequently we moved the presidential inauguration from March to January. Now, we are finding out that January is not early enough."


Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, said he believed the actions by Obama and Bush had been orchestrated by both sides.

"President Bush is not blind, and he knows his popularity is extremely low," Sabato said.

"This is a full blown crisis, and neither president wants a complete meltdown. Therefore, the president with credibility, Barack Obama, is taking the lead with the quiet acquiescence of the Bush administration

Don't worry Ducks, I don't expect you to read your own articles or form rational thought.

[CubanMustGo]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20081126/us_time/08599186230700;_ylt=AgkbOphZMit5xFhsgLCzfLADW7oF

Bush's Last Days: The Lamest Duck

By JOE KLEIN Joe Klein – Wed Nov 26, 10:05 am ET

We have "only one President at a time," Barack Obama said in his debut press conference as President-elect. Normally, that would be a safe assumption - but we're learning not to assume anything as the charcoal-dreary economic winter approaches. By mid-November, with the financial crisis growing worse by the day, it had become obvious that one President was no longer enough (at least not the President we had). So, in the days before Thanksgiving, Obama began to move - if not to take charge outright, then at least to preview what things will be like when he does take over in January. He became a more public presence, taking questions from the press three days in a row. He named his economic team. He promised an enormous stimulus package that would somehow create 2.5 million new jobs, and began to maneuver the new Congress toward having the bill ready for him to sign - in a dramatic ceremony, no doubt - as soon as he assumes office.

That we have slightly more than one President for the moment is mostly a consequence of the extraordinary economic times. Even if George Washington were the incumbent, the markets would want to know what John Adams was planning to do after his Inauguration. And yet this final humiliation seems particularly appropriate for George W. Bush. At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, he has become the lamest of all possible ducks.

It is in the nature of mainstream journalism to attempt to be kind to Presidents when they are coming and going but to be fiercely skeptical in between. I've been feeling sorry for Bush lately, a feeling partly induced by recent fictional depictions of the President as an amiable lunkhead in Oliver Stone's W. and in Curtis Sittenfeld's terrific novel American Wife. There was a photo in the New York Times that seemed to sum up his current circumstance: Bush in Peru, dressed in an alpaca poncho, standing alone just after the photo op at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, with various Asian leaders departing the stage, none of them making eye contact with him. Bush has that forlorn what-the-hell-happened? expression on his face, the one that has marked his presidency at difficult times. You never want to see the President of the United States looking like that.

So I've been searching for valedictory encomiums. His position on immigration was admirable and courageous; he was right about the Dubai Ports deal and about free trade in general. He spoke well, in the abstract, about the importance of freedom. He is an impeccable classicist when it comes to baseball. And that just about does it for me. I'd add the bracing moment of Bush with the bullhorn in the ruins of the World Trade Center, but that was neutered in my memory by his ridiculous, preening appearance in a flight suit on the deck of the aircraft carrier beneath the "Mission Accomplished" sign. The flight-suit image is one of the two defining moments of the Bush failure. The other is the photo of Bush staring out the window of Air Force One, helplessly viewing the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. This is a presidency that has wobbled between those two poles - overweening arrogance and paralytic incompetence.

The latter has held sway these past few months as the economy has crumbled. It is too early to rate the performance of Bush's economic team, but we have more than enough evidence to say, definitively, that at a moment when there was a vast national need for reassurance, the President himself was a cipher. Yes, he's a lame duck with an Antarctic approval rating - but can you imagine Bill Clinton going so gently into the night? There are substantive gestures available to a President that do not involve the use of force or photo ops. For example, Bush could have boosted the public spirit - and the auto industry - by announcing that he was scrapping the entire federal automotive fleet, including the presidential limousine, and replacing it with hybrids made in Detroit. He could have jump-started - and he still could - the Obama plan by releasing funds for a green-jobs program to insulate public buildings. He could start funding the transit projects already approved by Congress.

In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make markets work. He never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and equity that was necessary to maintain the strong middle class required for both prosperity and democracy. He never considered the complexities of the cultures he was invading. He never understood that faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness. He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one.

[ducks]

Die.

you first

[byrontx]

A good article but omitting torture weakens it somewhat. Bush would like to slid gently into the night although I am sure there is some furious paper-shredding going on, but the real defining moment of his presidency will be if he gets indicted for war crimes.

Obama has to stand in the leadership vacuum. I am amazed that ducks and wc are trying to call him out on that.

[Ya Vez]

the obama bashers... that would be 48% of voters that voted against obama...

[Purple & Gold]

Is ducks a real person, or just somebody's genius troll?

[Winehole23]

Is ducks a real person, or just somebody's genius troll?The idea of ducks as the fine line b/w idiocy and genius is perverted, but its plausibility is obvious.

If ducks is -- as he often appears in his posts -- an unconscious parody of himself, he could be both a real person and a genius troll.

[Purple & Gold]

ducks and spursdynasty are spurstalk's 2 greatest posters. Both are genius in their own ways.