Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Waiting for leadership

These headlines today lay bare everything that was wrong with President Obama's SOTU address last night: "Federal deficit to hit $1.5 trillion in 2011" and "Medicare official doubts health care law savings."

There's a sizable chunk of the American populace (including me and my buddy Paul Ryan) who genuinely believe this country is heading towards a Greece-style debt meltdown. It was the animating force behind the Tea Party and the last election. Yet Obama gets in front of the country and starts talking about choo-choo trains and solar panels.

Here's some more commentary along the same lines:
Washington Post editorial: "A disappointing State of the Union address."
Peter Wehner on Contentions: "An irresponsible performance." "Obama spoke as if he were living in an alternate universe - one where a $14 trillion debt and a trillion dollar a year deficit don't exist."
Here's Matt Welch with "We don't do big things."...the only real policy issue in America right now is that we are on the verge of a fiscal catastrophe because we cannot afford the government we are paying for today, let alone the one we're promising for tomorrow."
Then there's Megan McArdle: "Our President spent over 5,000 words last night kind of noting, offhand, that we might have a problem, and then studiously avoiding proposing any serious solutions to the problem."

3 comments:

Nigel Tufnel said...

And the Left is mad at him too.

He's drawing fire from the two political forces whose mutual incompetence has screwed up more than can be detailed here and has saddled the government with mountainous debt.

It's a good sign.

Eric said...

Publius,

I quit my job at OFS.

Starting at JDSU on Monday.

More to follow,

Rail-Splitter

Publius said...

Cool, Rail-Splitter.

Please let me know your new coordinates.