DOUBTS ABOUT OBAMA

I was a little worried that Obama repeated the wingnut mantra about a "crisis in Social Security" but I thought that might have been just an electoral ploy. A bit later, he was a bit odd on health care and I think that is a much more serious issue (and so does Alan Greenspan). Now I read that Obama has praised "66 things" Raygun and I am definitely worried. Matt Stoller of OpenLeft provides a partial transcript:

I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

I can't help but think Obama is referring to lots of us, the Dirty Fucking Hippies (©Atrios). On the other side, his recent stimulus proposal seems reasonable.


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