Last night President Obama gave a press conference - which I watched because I'll do anything to get 'American Idol' off the air!Overall, it was as slick as everything we've come to expect from the Obama administration - although it was fairly obvious when he was improvising answers and when he was just reading off his teleprompter.
Some of the most telling moments - when you can see how confident Obama really is - came between the questions and answers, when he bantered blithely with the journalists. He's a smooth guy, that Barack!
I gathered two things from Obama's conference:
First off, I can see both the cynical and practical aspects of his upcoming budget and its trillion dollar spending plan.
Obama justified this spending by highlighting how fragile America's infrastructure is - and he's absolutely right. I've mentioned in this blog before how America seems completely jerry-rigged to me.
The problem with a traditionally capitalist society like ours is that private industry doesn't want to spend their profits developing infrastructure. This means things like the electricity grid are hopelessly primitive (explaining why a fallen branch knocked out the electricity of the entire Eastern Seaboard in 2003.)
I'm no fan of socialism, but I do identify that this lack of infrastructure development is always going to be the Achilles heel of privatized industry.
Just compare the railway networks of France and Britain. The French one is subsidized to the tune of millions of Euros - but is the envy of the world. The British rail network, on the other hand, is a crumbling joke.
Likewise, America's roads, bridges, public buildings and networks have been left to crumble for decades. 'They'll do,' is the motto - and they will, until events like the bridge collapse in Minneapolis highlight the fact that they should have been fixed years ago.
So Obama's trillion dollar spending package will benefit all of America, no matter how unpopular it is. Obama was absolutely correct when he said that America needed to invest in industry, education, science and technology - otherwise India and China would eclipse us in a few years.
What was slightly less salubrious was the timeline of Obama's deficit slashing. He has boasted that he'll halve America's deficit in the next four years. His current budget suggests he'll do just that (in time for election season.)
However, five, six and seven years from now, the deficit is forecast to grow again (as Obama doesn't have a reelection to worry about.)
It was a cynical little ploy by the administration and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in 2012. However, that's still mitigated by the fact (which Obama incessantly reminded us of) that his administration inherited America's current deficit disaster. Whatever progress he makes reducing that nightmare would presumably be more effective than the Republican's spendhappy-silliness that created it.
The only big question mark over the whole thing were these carbon offset trade caps.
These seem a bit woolly to me. It's difficult to remain competitive in the world economy when you're tying your hands behind your back with trade caps. Added to that, I'm not sure the science (or politics) of this tactic really make sense to me. I think these trade caps are difficult to justify given the fact that India and China are both churning out pollution at a prodigious rate (which is propelling their unprecedented profitability.)
I will have to do more research.
All in all, however, Obama gave a convincing conference that still leaves me confident about his ability to govern the country during this difficult time. As he told the journalists, his focus is 'fixing the economy.' That's something we should all hope he's successful at.
