Barack Obama: Incompetent From Day One
Barack Obama has only been president for two weeks, but he’s already involved in several national and international controversies. Tom Daschle, Obama’s nominee for health, withdrew Tuesday after Republicans refused to confirm him; he had try tried to duck $128,000 in taxes. He only paid them after Obama picked him.
Daschle is the third nominee to withdraw due to tax issues; it’s yet more proof that liberals wantothers to pay higher taxes but often do everything in their power not to pay them themselves.
On top of the above, the European Union and Canada warned Obama yesterday that a “Buy American” clause in the economic stimulus plan is unacceptable and will result in a major trade war. Obama immediately responded by saying he no longer supports the clause. It’s a strange turn of events; Obama should have known that the rest of the world wouldn’t accept protectionism.
Either Obama is grossly misinformed about the world (and world trade) or he lacks courage. Or both.
George W. Bush is often called “incompetent” but his administration didn’t suffer this many crises; and that in only two weeks time. I wonder what’ll happen in the coming years; things can’t get worse, can they?
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George W. Bush is often called “incompetent” but his administration didn’t suffer this many crises
W didn’t have this many crisis in his 8 years?
LOL
At least Obamama isn’t pushing Meirs, O’Beirn, Brownie or Deutsch for his Cabinet posts and advisors.
This is no surprise to me..however..I have to laugh at the lack of backbone shown by this new Presidden.
Well, let’s hope he learns fast. But it’s always easy to criticize. I’m shure I can’t make the job better than him.
Killefer, Daschle, and who is number 3? You do realize that Geitner was confirmed with a large bipartisan majority, right?
Leaving aside non-cabinet appointments, two Bush cabinet choices had to withdraw as well. Chavez for something on near the same level as Killefer (considerably less bad than Daschle) and Kerik for reasons far worse than any Obama pick. It seems that some are using radically different standards for what constitutes incompetence in making cabinet picks. Of the four above Kerik stands out head and shoulders as the worst, but probably got past the Bush vetting largely due to Giuliani. IMO this leaves it a draw on this one front for the moment because we don’t yet know how successful Obama’s picks will be relative to Bush’s picks at this point. Early indicators lead me to believe they will compare favorably, but time will tell. (Can’t really do worse than Brown, can you?)
Also to Obama’s credit he has come clean and acknowledged these mistakes and taken responsibility for them something the previous administration did not manage to do in 8 years.
Further to somehow imply that somehow Bush did not suffer more crises than two withdrawn cabinet nominations and one proposed policy reversal requires some economy sized blinders.
“You do realize that Geitner was confirmed with a large bipartisan majority, right?”
You do realize:
1- Geitner is now in charge of the IRS…the same agency he ‘forgot’ to pay.
2- He was one of the engineers of the TARP plan…you know, that first big payout we tax payers (sans Geitner) funded. We see how that worked out- they are back into our pockets for more money.
It’s like the fox guarding the henhouse. Very poor choice – makes Obama look bad & lowers the crediblity of the IRS. Tax payers can now say “Well, if it’s ok for Geitner, it’s ok for me”. Holding the common tax payer to a different set of rules is hypocritical at the very least.
I had hoped Obama would do well but am sorely disappointed…and it’s only been 2 weeks. Hold on folks its going to be a bumpy ride!
Seriously Michael. A few of his cabinet appointments don’t pan out and he’s “incompetent from day one”? C’mon, I know you aren’t a fan but this is exaggerated even for you! Almost every president ends up nominating people who don’t make the final cut. It’s a part of the process. Oh I do recognize that he and his people should have vetted more strictly in certain cases, but the things that have come up have hardly been earth-shaking and Obama has recognized his mistakes in that department (recognition of when you mess up was sorely lacking for the past 8 years).
Geithner was confirmed by a vote of 60-34.
By contrast, his predecessor Henry Paulson was confirmed on a voice vote with no stated dissents. Paulson’s predecessor John Snow was confirmed unanimously. Snow’s predecessor Paul O’Neill was confirmed unanimously. Snow’s predecessor Larry Summers was seated on a 97-2 vote. Summer’s predecessor Robert Rubin was confirmed unanimously. And so on and so forth…not one Treasury Secretary since the Ford Admin was confirmed with more than 2 “nay” votes on record. Maybe farther back.
Those votes fit the description of “large bipartisan majority.” Given the historical confirmation vote record of the post over the last thirty years, 60-34 doesn’t cut it. Very few nominees for any cabinet post have squeeked in that closely over the last few decades.
For such a highly-touted draft pick, Obama’s batting average pretty much sucks at the moment. But hey, it’s still early in the season. Right?
This may be looking inward, but I wonder how many on the right would be against that “Buy American” clause.
You may consider it bad, but I guarantee there’s more than one conservative here in the U.S. who’d consider it good.
Jimmy Carter Part Deux…. All mouth and popularity, but no backbone or realistic solutions as proclaimed.
Claudia, I’m not quite as critical as Michael is at this point, but you are being way too dismissive. The cabinet picks are the first actions of the president, so that’s what his batting average is mostly based on right now. And we heard lots of praised heaped on him for his great transition team, and they certainly haven’t done a stellar job here. It should have been completely a no brainer to vet everyone for tax/nanny/lobbying/ethics issues since Obama ran on a promise to clean up Washington (and made some very specific promises which he’s already had to break.)
Of course the real problem is how naive people were to believe that promise, because unless Obama brought in people from the private sector with no government experience, you’re almost always going to have some of these issues. But Obama can’t do that because he himself is so inexperienced that he obviously needs some insiders- but even Obama’s more rational supporters didn’t seem to want to hear it when some of us pointed out those concerns before the election.
Tax cheats, corruption, evil lobbiests, now his assistant attorney general turns out to be a lawyer for the porn industry, and his attorney general was involved in the Mark Rich pardon as well as the FALN terrorist pardons. Panetta for CIA, whose only qualification seems to be that he has driven past CIA HQ, Napolitano for Homeland Security, maybe living in a state bordering Mexico she can see that country from her house, she has no other qualification. On top of all that 0bama keeps the WH at a cozy 80 degrees, dines on $100 per lb steak while the people in Kentucky are freezing to death, 0bama didn’t know how to operate a fireplace which resulted in smoke damage in the WH, and he thought a window was a door. All in 2 weeks. What is this clown going to do next week?
He supports abortion. That, my fellow Americans says it all.
If you can’t defend the weakest and most vulnerable, then what can you defend, besides what pays?
Jeebus…
By the end of week three I’m fear that a new psychological disorder will be named after the guy. Perhaps we should call it ODS…
Yes. Like the BDS and PDS, and MDS from the left. I think we’re going to need some psychological counseling for it all.
Change has been coming for America for a long time.Barack Obama spent the last eight years campaigning to win the election. Everyone got caught up in the hype whether for or against him. Change has come to America not because of him but in spite of him and that change is now a leadership for the first time that has very little clue in which direction to. Even if George was doing the wrong the the guy was definitley commited and that is more than Mr Obama has been so far.
If this is the best case you can make against Obama, he’s going to have a great four years.
The protectionism clause was a real blunder. Wall Street is moving its cash and assets out of the US for the Obama duration. Obama is incompetent we are going to experience a great depression and deflation under his regime. A country that won WW2 to save moneylenders we should never have given the value of our dollar and our manufacturing away. If this happened in 1970 there would be civil war. I was in the Civil Defense in the 1960. We took a pledge to defend our country from Communisn and Socialism. To kill traitors on US soil and so on. There are at least 750,000 former CDs that took this pledge to take the stolen government by force. Keep the powder dry Boys!