Obama pulls a Roosevelt before Congress
Saw BHO’s first address to congress. Man, the guy can really spin good speeches… Most of it was about the Great Recession. He sampled truelife stories to explain the basics of his economic philosophy: the banker who shared his million-dollar bonus with employees (unlike Wall Street croesuses), the Kansan community that rebuilt an ecotown after an hurricane had flattened it, the deep-south black girl from South Carolina who pleaded Congress to rebuild her dilapidated school. These morality tales represent the axes of his economic policy program: top-down generosity and philantropy, roll-up-your-sleeves green jobs, rebuilding the US public school system, whose academic standards are abysmally low. Most of it, I liked the fact he clearly said we face a historical bifurcation. The world will be remade in the next few years, economically and geopolitically, for good or ill. Too right. Problem is: will his policies drag the US out of the slump? Not until banks’ nationalizations and major social spending take place. The rhetoric is progressive, but Obama’s policies are still too moderate.