{"id":6936,"date":"2011-07-29T09:04:49","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T14:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=6936"},"modified":"2011-07-29T09:05:17","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T14:05:17","slug":"what-were-they-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/07\/29\/what-were-they-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"What Were They Thinking?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Were They Thinking?<\/strong><\/a> by Elizabeth Drew is the best piece I have read so far that explains what is going on in the President’s mind.\u00a0 It is very scary piece.<\/p>\n

First, this piece answered the question I posed in my previous post Pelosi: Boehner\u2019s Plan Is A Jobs Killer<\/a>, “Why do we hear from Boehner, McConnell, and little bit from Reid, but hardly ever anything from Pelosi?”<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Drew provides this insight,<\/p>\n

Finding a solution to reducing the deficit that was agreeable to Boehner, to Cantor, to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and to the President was no small task. The men, who had rudely and unwisely excluded Pelosi, now the minority leader, from their deliberations, could no longer avoid dealing with her. They\u2019d considered Pelosi a bit of a pain, insistent as she was on standing up for liberal principles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Drew goes on to explain many of the mysteries about Obama himself.<\/p>\n

The speech Obama gave on April 13 marked his conversion to fiscal centrism; to being the fiscally responsible Democrat. In that speech he stated that he wanted to reduce the debt by $4 trillion\u2014thus aligning himself with the Republicans\u2014but also asked for revenues to partly offset that reduction. It was all about reelection politics, designed to appeal to this same group of independents. \u201cAnd that\u2019s why,\u201d I was told by the person familiar with the White House deliberations, \u201che went bigger in the deficit reduction talks; bringing in Social Security is consistent with that slice of the electorate they\u2019re trying to reach.\u201d This person said, \u201cThere\u2019s a bit of bass-ackwardness to this; the deficit spending you\u2019d want to focus on right now is the jobs issue.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Drew also goes on to disparage the phrase I love to hate, “Winning the future.”<\/p>\n

But even more significant is the question of how our leaders, in particular the President, ended up with such misguided policies\u2014emphasizing budget- cutting over growth. The Republicans exploited the need to avoid an economic collapse that could result from not raising the debt limit by demanding that programs that Congress had agreed to should now be unagreed to.<\/p>\n

The President began the year with the unfortunate slogan \u201cWin the Future\u201d\u2014which emphatically meant growth and investment. He ended up in Republican territory, at least rhetorically accepting the highly flawed conception equating the federal government with a household: he and Goolsbee repeated the sampler-stitched maxim \u201cWe must live within our means,\u201d ignoring that at times the government simply must borrow in order to meet the people\u2019s needs, as is the case now, with high unemployment. It\u2019s no time for austerity. Instead, the government is borrowing in order to give tax cuts to the wealthy and pay for at least two wars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, kudos to MardyS<\/strong><\/a> for posting the link to this article on his Facebook page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Were They Thinking? by Elizabeth Drew is the best piece I have read so far that explains what is going on in the President’s mind.\u00a0 It is very scary piece. First, this piece answered the question I posed in my previous post Pelosi: Boehner\u2019s Plan Is A Jobs Killer, “Why do we hear from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6936"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6938,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6936\/revisions\/6938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}