‘The Bus-Tour Presidency’
Excerpts from Politico
By Reince Priebus
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
“It is Day #2 of President Barack Obama’s Midwest jobs-talk bus tour — his latest attempt to salvage plunging poll numbers …
“For months Americans have been craving focused, action-oriented presidential leadership. Instead, they’ve received a series of early-August setbacks—an embarrassing credit downgrade, a roller-coaster stock market and stagnating job growth. Yet when the unemployed turn to the president for solutions, he offers only roadblocks.
"Look what Obama has done to job creators. Businesses want certainty, yet Obama offers tax-threats, onerous regulations, a heavy-handed Environmental Protection Agency, the burden of Obamacare, and a vindictive National Labor Relations Board. The administration has handcuffed large and small businesses alike.
“Obama talks of creating jobs. But his presidency is a job-killer. Instead of freeing businesses to hire Americans, he makes them fear the future …
“This is leadership community-organizer style. He organizes congressional leaders in a room, but refuses to propose a plan. He stands on the sidelines, critiquing but never contributing.
“So who’s the biggest critic of the president? He is. Just last week, he told Americans they “deserve better” than what they’ve gotten “for the last two and a half years.”
“On that we agree. When confronted with harsh economic realities, he casts the blame back two and half years — to the last administration. “I inherited” these problems, Obama’s fond of saying. Well, there is one thing he did inherit: a triple-A credit rating …
“Just as he runs away from his responsibilities in Washington, Obama runs away from his dismal record—faulting everything from earthquakes to the European economy to the weather. If all that does not absolve him, he will talk about the problem’s intractability. The problems are too big, he spins, and change can’t happen overnight.
“But the more he talks about how large the crisis is, the smaller he looks. Facing big challenges does not pardon one’s incompetence…
“In these empty-promise speeches, his phrases of choice are “balanced approach” and “grand bargain.” But how does one bargain without anything substantive to offer? Instead of a “balanced approach” perhaps we could use a balanced budget …
“So if voters want to fix the system, if they want an economy that’s moving forward, they will have to replace the guy in the driver’s seat before his bus-tour presidency steers the country further off course.”
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