Policy 06/11/2009
Posted by rosshunter on June 10, 2009
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nadezhda04 I think that’s an excellent analysis, and I completely agree.
Lots of Obama supporters WISH he would do this or that, but the fact is the man has a wonderful feel for the realities of where he can spend his power and where he will only fritter it away. I think many of his supporters don’t appreciate this very well.
For this administration to take on the task of reforming the entire financial system in a real way would use up a lot of its power, irreplaceably. To tackle it on the scale that nadezhda04 summarizes would be a huge ambition, the size of an entire administration’s tenure. Not an unworthy ambition, but not Obama’s, not today. Someone else, some other time.
Obama has said all along that this is not his crisis, not his fight. I think we have to respect this reality. There’s only so much he can do, and that’s not a phrase, it’s a cold calculation.
After all, the U.S. President wields a very conditional and circumstantial kind of power, and it’s limited in quantity, as befits one of three branches of government.
Obama strikes me as one of the master politicians of this century. I think he has his capital calculated at all times to a fine degree, and always spends well within his budget, saving his full power for the killing blows – which we will see rarely, if at all. His power grows as he DOESN’T use it.
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