Thread: Obama Goes too Far and Falls too Short By Dick Morris

Obama Goes too Far and Falls too Short

By Dick Morris
February 17, 2010

One of my favorite quotes about politics comes from Henry Kissinger in his book Years of Upheaval, his memoir of the Ford Presidency:

"A statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his vision and his nation's experience. If his vision gets too far out ahead of his nation's experience, he will lose his mandate. But if he hues too close to the conventional, he will lose control over events."

Now, at once, we see both happening to President Obama.

His health care proposals obviously ran afoul of the first of Kissinger's warnings. By pushing for changes that conflicted with America's values, common sense, and experience, he lost his mandate. In that disastrous push for an elusive goal, he ruined his own presidency and his party. It may take decades for the Democratic Party to recover from his folly. Indeed, his push for health legislation, in the face of rapidly eroding public support, ranks with the War in Vietnam, Watergate, and, of course, Clinton's health care initiatives as the most costly to their respective political parties.

But now, as he faces threats from Iran, domestic terrorism, continually high unemployment, and the swollen deficit, he is also violating the second half of the Kissinger warning - his politics are too passive and too conventional and, as a result, losing control over events.

In the phase of presidential dithering in the aftermath of the Brown victory in Massachusetts, there is no clear presidential message, no coherent strategy and, even, no identifiable program. His budget cuts are far too tepid. His tax program nothing new. Obama's stimulus 2 package seems like the same old, same old.

His short lived bounce from the State of the Union speech is indicative of how limited a vision he has these days. It lasted a week and was never more than three points at its apogee.

And, as Kissinger would have predicted, he is losing control over events. Senator Evan Bayh's retirement, with its implied blast at Obama's policies, the increasing recklessness of Iran, and the seemingly intractable unemployment all provide evidence that President Obama is no longer dictating the national agenda.

As a result, the negatives he incurred by moving too far out ahead of the nation's experience are combining with those he is getting for being too conventional. He is experiencing both ends of the Kissinger prediction. Republicans and Independents are still in shock from his headlong rush into socialism while Democrats are increasingly restive and disillusioned by his failure to lead.

And...the entire country is worried at his passivity in the face of domestic terror threats and the rapidly growing Iranian momentum toward the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

While his job rating has remained relatively stead in recent months, hovering just below 50% of likely voters, his ratings in specific areas - like holding down spending, cutting the deficit, creating jobs, and managing the economy -- are all eroding, presaging further drops in his overall ratings.

Seemingly paralyzed by adversity, President Obama and his advisors are showing a lack of resilience in the face of reversals that is perhaps the inevitable outcome of his smooth rise to the top in 2008. Never tried by bad outcomes (as Hillary has doubtless been), he and they seem unable to regain momentum and appear to be just flailing without strategic or even tactical direction.

All this might be what happens when you elect a state senator whose US Senate career was consumed with his presidential campaign as president.

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/dmorri ... 0217.shtml

Millions wasted on census as head count approaches

By HOPE YEN
Associated Press
February 17, 2010

WASHINGTON (AP) - Were those pricey Super Bowl ads a waste? Maybe not, but paying $3 million to census employees who didn't do any work surely was.

The Census Bureau, a month away from its 2010 population count, has already wasted millions of dollars paying temporary employees who never did the work and others who overbilled for travel, according to excerpts of an audit obtained by The Associated Press.

On a positive note, federal investigators said it was appropriate for the Census Bureau to spend $133 million on its advertising campaign, including $2.5 million for Super Bowl spots that some Republicans derided as wasteful.

But the report Commerce Department inspector general Todd Zinser makes clear the government is at risk of wasting millions of additional dollars without tighter spending controls by the Census Bureau on its 1 million temporary workers.

"The costs were substantial," he wrote, imploring the agency to improve cost estimates so the national head count does not exceed its $15 billion price tag.

The findings highlight the difficult balancing act for the Census Bureau as it takes on the Herculean task of manually counting the nation's 300 million residents amid a backdrop of record levels of government debt.

Because the population count, done every 10 years, is used to distribute House seats and billions of dollars in federal aid, many states are pushing for all-out government efforts in outreach since there is little margin for error, particularly for minorities and the poor, who tend to be undercounted. At the same time, the national head count will be the most expensive ever, making it a particularly visible sign of rising government spending.

The federal hiring has been praised by the government for giving a lift to the nation's sagging employment rate, but investigators found it also brought waste.

The audit, scheduled to be released next week, examined the Census Bureau's address-canvassing operation last fall, in which--0,000 temporary workers walked block by block to update the government's mailing lists and maps.

The project finished ahead of schedule, but Census Bureau director Robert Groves acknowledged in October the costs had ballooned $88 million, or 25 percent, over the original estimate of $356 million. He promised to work to stop expenses from rising further and said he would reevaluate budget estimates for the entire census operation.

Groves has said he hopes to return tens of millions of dollars to government coffers by motivating more U.S. residents to mail in their form, which avoids costly follow-up visits by census takers. The bureau has said that if 1 percent of Super Bowl viewers change their minds and mail in their form, it will save taxpayers $25 million to $30 million in follow-up costs.

Most people will receive census forms in mid-March, and the Census Bureau is asking residents to return them by April. For those who fail to respond, the government will dispatch some 700,000 temporary workers to visit homes in May.

Among the audit findings:

--More than 10,000 census employees were paid more than $300 apiece to attend training for the massive address-canvassing effort, but they quit or were let go before they could perform any work. Cost: $3 million.

--Another 5,000 employees collected $300 for the same training but worked a single day or less. Cost $1.5 million.

--Twenty-three temporary census employees were paid for car mileage at 55 cents a mile, even though the number of miles they reported driving per hour exceeded the number of hours they actually worked.

--Another 581 employees who spent the majority of their time driving instead of conducting field work also received full mileage reimbursements, which investigators called questionable.

--Other temporary employees claimed nearly 3.9 million miles driven at the mileage reimbursement rate of 58.5 cents per mile, even though the federal rate had been reduced to 55 cents as of January 2009. The result: excess payments of roughly $136,000.

Census regional offices that had mileage costs exceeding their planned budgets included Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City and Seattle.

The Super Bowl advertising - which included a 30-second spot in the third quarter, two 30-second pregame spots and on-air mentions - was panned by media critics as weak and ineffective, and it was criticized as wasteful by Republicans including Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But the inspector general's report said the advertising was consistent with government goals of boosting participation in the count.

http://www.gopusa.com/news/2010/februar ... sus1.shtml