SOTU tend to be laundry lists and only a fraction of what is mentioned actually happens.
What we can gather is tone and direction ...
(1) It felt LONG - I started listening while driving home from work. I stopped at Ralphs and got back into the car and listened some more. I got home and listened some more.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/01/the-state-of-our-union-is-long.html
(2) Did I hear nuclear energy, off-shore oil exploration, clean coal in addition to wind and solar? Good. Perhaps, there is a tack to the center of the political discussion here ...
For wonks ...
http://www.eia.doe.gov/
(3) The problem with the health care reform, according to President Obama, was we didn't explain it well enough. No, people didn't like it because they think the government will make a mess of it.
Items that could get worked on ...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/after-obamacare
http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/27/can-the-gop-clean-up-the-obama
(4) I'm tired of blame the banks. Fred Barnes put it this way:
True, they bear some blame. But there were other culprits, government ones. The trouble that started with a housing stampede prompted by the Federal Reserve’s low interest rates was compounded by the federal government’s pressure to provide loans for unworthy investors, and worsened by the packaging of these bad loans into securities marketed around the world. Banks erred, but so did government. But Obama chose to demonize banks. How can that help the economy?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/havent-we-heard
(5) President Obama decries the attack politics of Washington. President Obama attacks on national television the US Supreme Court with the US Supreme Court sitting right in front of him. Disagree with the Court? You are entitled too. But the in your face attack was the very thing he claims is what's wrong with DC.
Law Professor Blogger rounds up comments about this ...
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/92676/
Team Obama has to decide: Carter or Clinton?
President Carter was known for his intellect and as such tried to do too much and was too confident in the rightness of his views and eventually wound up an ineffective one-term president.
President Clinton recognized that he had to tack back to the center and regained the initiative and gained two-terms.
4 comments:
Responses to your points:
(2) I am all for energy exploration as long as it is done in an environmentally responsible way. Obama was avoiding it because of the anticipated opposition from the left. Why ruffle their feather for something lower on the priority list. This is just red meat for the right. A bipartisan gesture.
(3) As opposed to the mess already created by the private sector? Your assumption of the effectiveness of a proposal based on a cliche and not on the facts in the plan is a dangerous one.
The Weekly Standard proposals have a lot of holes in it:
- Risk Pool amounts to Federally subsidized private insurance. A program the insurance companies will surely want to abuse; "no money no coverage to the pre-existies"
- Limit malpractice damages will have no direct impact on the cost and access to health care. I don't think hospital will lower their prices if they pay less for insurance!
- Independent State health programs will only favor the smaller states with less overhead. The unequal distribution of health care will divide the country more to the haves and have nots.
The proposals from Reason.com also have their holes:
- Health Savings Account: This will only help people with jobs that provide health benefit. Growing number of Americans do not have jobs that do. People can put money into the accounts themselves but I doubt they will. They will then end up in the emergency room when they need accute care which is then paid for by everyone. Unless we give hospitals the right to refuse service to those who cannot pay. But do we want to be a country like that?
- Medicare Advantage is govt-paid private insurance for the seniors in lieu of Medicare. Obviously, the seniors are covered either way. The author's suggestion on expanding the program does not help a bit in providing access to health care for the uninsured nor reducing the cost. If you are for reducing the deficit, this could a program to cut.
- The idea of everybody paying for his/her own insurance is sound except that everyone has to do it, unless a hospital can refuse service to anyone who does not.
(4) The financial crisis would not have gotten to the size and magnitude it was if there were none of these leveraged-derivatives, i.e. mortgage-backed securities, etc. Without them, the worst could have been Fanny Mae/Freddy Mac collapsing, but not the entire banking industry. Who came up with these instruments? The banks and the insurance companies (i.e AIG)which insured them! And they turned around to pay their execs huge bonuses on the bailout money! I think Fred Barnes is either paid by the banks to write that or he has a warped sense of judgment.
(5) If anything the President should have learned by now is playing nice does not get you the ears of the people. If anyone doubt this, just looked at the examples set by Joe Wilson, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, Sarah Palin and the Townhall meeting crashers! The average person in this country seems only to respond to crude and rude remarks (may be only from their own party).
Thanks for the post! My sitemeter tells me people are visiting but I always wonder what they think.
Suffice to say, in politics, there is often little agreement so the best we can aim for is clarity on the differences. Whether one is on the political left, right or center, it is helpful to know what the premise is for those views.
And the comment above reflects the premises of those in the political left. Take a look again at the comments and you can see the following assumptions:
* The Federal government level program is prefered over the state level effort. Hence, an unwillingness to allow states to take a crack at health care reform first.
* A government program is preferred over allowing the people to make their own decisions. Hence, skepticism about HSA and other options that give the people more options.
* The left says they are against special interests but they almost never take on the trial lawyer because the left's supporters are not considered special interests. Hence, no interest in malpractice reform.
* The left attacks businesses (current "enemies" of the people are banks and insurance companies) and claim to support the common people. But the common people are employed by businesses.
I recognize that some industries require more regulations than others but demonizing them is unnecessary. The banks clearly deserve a lot of blame for the mess. But the government level policy of fostering more home ownership by lower income people forced banks to make loans to risky customers. From that foundation, a house of cards got built. So there is plenty of blame to go around.
The key difference between left, right and center is that the left believes more government involvement in more areas is better. While the center and the right think more government means less options for the people and should be undertaken with great caution.
I think solving the problems we face by implementing sensible policies is far more important than framing everything through the lens of the left-right politics. Personally, I don't care if the policies are deem left, right or center. We need more people to take this no-non-sense attitude in politics and in public for us to have a chance to tackling these big tasks. Pragmatism is what make this country strong. Ideological grandstanding will bring us the same demise as that befalls the Soviet Union.
My take on your analysis of my previous post(in the order they appeared in your comment):
* If there is a way to provide quality health care to all Americans equally through state programs, I am all ears. Bear in mind some practical considerations for a state-level solution:
- The financial strength of each state is different so funding will be different. Some state might not even have money for a program.
- Should a hospital in one state refuse a patient from another because his insurance is not as good or even worst that his state does not have insurance?
- People moves. How would, say, a Texan moving to Oregon affects the insurance pool in Oregon? A single person moving is probably not a big deal. If there are big differences in health coverage between states, a bigger migration will cause a problem.
* The HSA-only approach is only good if you believe health care is discretionary, in which case the whole health care debate is irrelevant. Everybody should then pay his own medical bill and doctors and hospitals should refuse service to those who cannot pay.
I am not sure what other options you are referring to.
* I am all for reform to curb frivolous lawsuits but one cannot remove malpractice lawsuits from our legal system. This is part of the checks-and-balances mechanism to keep the doctors honest.
* I think it is not so much blaming the banks for causing the collapse but calling them out for not restraining their greed (in distributing big bonuses) after being bailed out.
I think your characterization of the "center" is different from what is commonly understood. Centrism is more like taking ideas from both the left and the right, i.e. govt is sometimes good and sometimes bad.
Left, right and center in my mind is a continuum.
Left wants more government intervention.
Center wants less government intervention.
Right wants even less government intervention.
Thus, US politics is driven by which way the center swings.
I too am a pragmatist and would characterize myself as center-right as I am usually skeptical of the efficacy of government interventions.
If at all possible, I prefer more individual choice and responsibility because I think those usually work better and fosters more creativity and innovation. That is why I appreciate the libertarian critiques on specific issues. However, I am not a libertarian because I do think there are things the government needs to do and so my list of things the government should do is longer than a libertarians and shorter than what the left wants.
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