The Obama Jolt
Slick Willie famously survived the debacle of his first two years and loss of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in '94 by bringing in Dick Morris and the "triangulation" strategy by which you support key Republican issues in order to govern. If people want Republicans and you want power, just govern as a Republican -- easy if you are Slick Willie and your only principle is power (well, that and oral sex isn't sex).
Now we have "Mr Change", Saint BO of the Left deciding that the markets losing 20% right after he is elected is less than a "vote of confidence", so he immediately rushes in to appoint a bunch of Clinton centrists to the economic posts in the cabinet and casts some doubt on whether or not his repeal of those AWFUL Bush tax cuts was factual, or just more campaign talk. The markets don't seem to think that taking money away from success (taxes on the wealthy) and giving it to the failed (bailouts) is all that good a business strategy. Go figure.
Triangulation right from the git go for BO? The right appears to be hopeful. It is of course a very workable strategy for BO--Slick Willie tacked right and got all the benefits of policies that worked better, plus, the media still hung with him, and he got support from the Republicans on those policies that they agreed with him on (NAFTA, Welfare Reform, reducing spending rate of growth, etc). Bush showed the failure of trying to tack left from the right -- Prescription Drug was hated by both the right and the left and it helped provide the kind of bad precedent that convinced Republicans in congress that they could spent worse than drunken sailors and still get re-elected.
It is still way too early for me to believe that BO is actually going to abandon his agenda of "change" and operate with policies that actually work, but his appointments and words since the election at least give some creedence to the idea that there actually IS some "hope"!
Slick Willie famously survived the debacle of his first two years and loss of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in '94 by bringing in Dick Morris and the "triangulation" strategy by which you support key Republican issues in order to govern. If people want Republicans and you want power, just govern as a Republican -- easy if you are Slick Willie and your only principle is power (well, that and oral sex isn't sex).
Now we have "Mr Change", Saint BO of the Left deciding that the markets losing 20% right after he is elected is less than a "vote of confidence", so he immediately rushes in to appoint a bunch of Clinton centrists to the economic posts in the cabinet and casts some doubt on whether or not his repeal of those AWFUL Bush tax cuts was factual, or just more campaign talk. The markets don't seem to think that taking money away from success (taxes on the wealthy) and giving it to the failed (bailouts) is all that good a business strategy. Go figure.
Triangulation right from the git go for BO? The right appears to be hopeful. It is of course a very workable strategy for BO--Slick Willie tacked right and got all the benefits of policies that worked better, plus, the media still hung with him, and he got support from the Republicans on those policies that they agreed with him on (NAFTA, Welfare Reform, reducing spending rate of growth, etc). Bush showed the failure of trying to tack left from the right -- Prescription Drug was hated by both the right and the left and it helped provide the kind of bad precedent that convinced Republicans in congress that they could spent worse than drunken sailors and still get re-elected.
It is still way too early for me to believe that BO is actually going to abandon his agenda of "change" and operate with policies that actually work, but his appointments and words since the election at least give some creedence to the idea that there actually IS some "hope"!
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