No Way to Run a Railroad

---

---

"It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong."

John Maynard Keynes

---

And so it begins again. One political party was slapped down by the voters, and everyone wonders if this is the end of that party. Eight years ago, they wondered the same thing about the Republican Party. It has happened several times in my lifetime. It will happen again. That is the one sure thing about politics in America. Success is never permanent, yet still the recriminations come. The finger pointing begins.

In spite of evidence to the contrary, people always want to believe that one party or the other is on the verge of eliminating that party. In the aftermath of Watergate, it was popular to wonder if the Republican Party was dying. A decade later, when Ronald Reagan and the Republicans were ascendant, people wondered if the Democrats were finished. The pendulum seems to swing one way, then the other about every 8–10 years.

The finger pointing happens every election cycle, though. It's like clockwork. Every election. Doesn't matter which party is judged the overall winner and which is judged the overall loser — or by how much (although I think everyone pretty much agrees that this was a decisive setback for the Democrats). At one time or another, each has been both, and the same scenario has been played out.

Well, this time it is a little different. Most of the time, whoever the president happens to be is usually humbled, chastened by the experience because it is almost always the president's party that suffers in the midterms — especially when the president told the world that his policies were on the ballot even if he wasn't. That's like when Gary Hart dared reporters to follow him in search of evidence of infidelity. Then they did and found out that he was being unfaithful to his wife.

And that was the end of Gary Hart's presidential ambitions.

Most presidents have been too smart to remind voters that their policies were being judged — and hand the opposition a neat little sound bite in the bargain — especially when their approval ratings were in the crapper.

In light of the fact that Obama did precisely that, though, there really is no other way to view Tuesday's results except as a rejection of those policies from sea to shining sea. This wasn't simply the South throwing a tantrum. Polls showed Senate races in the South to be close; they weren't. Polls showed Democratic incumbents outside the South had a good chance of winning. They didn't.

This wasn't merely a wave election. This was a tidal wave election.

---

---

The numbers on the federal level tell a somber story for Democrats. When Obama first took the oath of office in January 2009, Democrats have lost more than 60 seats in the House and about 15 seats in the Senate. The numbers won't be official yet, but that is how it is looking. On the state level, Democrats were expected to gain ground with Republicans defending more than Democrats, but Republicans picked up some governorships. That is about the worst showing for any two–term president in American history, and the losses weren't just on the federal and state levels, either. They were local, too.

For a party that insists on living in the 19th century, the Democrats have, appropriately, fallen to controlling "the lowest number of state legislatures since 1860," reports Reuters. This was across–the–board, top to bottom repudiation.

The president says he will work with the members of the victorious opposing party — because that is clearly what the voters want, and it is probably what most expected from Barack Obama's post–election press conference.

"No one reasonable expected the president to grovel," wrote Megan McArdle for BloombergView, "but it seemed reasonable to think that he'd seek whatever narrow ground he and Republicans can share."

Think again. This president has burned so many bridges with the Republican leadership that one wonders if there are any left. If there is one left standing, it seems to me it is the immigration issue. There is common ground to be found there, and presidents with experience in consensus–building — like, for example, Bill Clinton — would see this as an opportunity. But Obama seems determined to drench this bridge in gasoline and strike a match before anyone tries to cross it.

The prudent thing for a president to do in this situation would be to encourage compromise. Obama's presidency only has two years left, and, like it or not, this is the Congress with which he must work. Both sides must be willing to give a little to get a little.

But that is a lesson in leadership that Obama never learned.

Give Peas a Chance

---

"[I]f we think it's hard now, imagine how these guys are going to be thinking six months from now in the middle of election season where they're all up. It's not going to get easier. It's going to get harder. So we might as well do it now — pull off the Band–Aid; eat our peas."

Barack Obama
July 11, 2011

---

I'll be the first one to admit that the headline on this post is not original. I heard that Rush Limbaugh used it on his radio program (sneeringly, I'm sure), and the Washington Post used it as the headline on its editorial supporting Obama.

And it wouldn't surprise me if some form(s) of it wound up in print elsewhere.

It just seems so right for this topic, no matter which side of the fence you're on — and Limbaugh and the Post are about as far apart as you can get.

I've never been able to resist a really clever play on words. Neither could John Lennon, the guy who wrote "Give Peace a Chance" back during the Vietnam era.

And I think he would have appreciated this one.

I've always respected Obama's gift for public speaking. It's a gift he used far more effectively on the campaign trail than he has in the White House, and I think that is because he still hasn't learned the truth in Mario Cuomo's observation so many years ago about campaigning in poetry and governing in prose.

Obama simply hasn't proven to be nimble enough to manage that tricky transition. He wants to be the eternal outsider cheered on by his adoring supporters. He refuses to accept the fact that he has a record and that he is responsible for the economy now.

Obama rightfully admires past presidents who had a similar gift for the poetry of the campaign trail — guys like Lincoln and the Roosevelts and JFK — but he forgets the crucial role that leadership played in the success of their presidencies — even if that success was not recognized during that president's lifetime.

I think Obama sees himself as being like them in many ways — as he imagines himself to be, he sees them as being smarter than most of the Americans of their time and having used their superior language skills to sway the naysayers.

But he is often bewildered because, while he thinks is doing exactly what they did, he doesn't get the same response from lawmakers and voters — and that can be frustrating as well as bewildering.

---

"I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."

The Animals

---

There is a reason for that response, and I have been writing about it here since Obama took office.

It is not racism — the all–purpose excuse onto which the president's supporters latch when the results of his policies are disappointing.

This president has some admirable virtues. When he came to office, he was aware of a lot of problems, and his instinct was to deal with all of them.

To me, that suggests someone who deeply loves his country, someone who wants only the best for his country. He wants no flaws — even though such a state of perfection is impossible to achieve. It does not suggest someone who wants to turn the country upside down and inside out, as his political opponents have strongly implied.

But with unemployment as high as it was when Obama took office (and, of course, it is much higher still today, 2½ years down the road), it was obvious to me that, before anything else could be done, it was urgent to put America back to work. It would take money and lots of it to repair schools and highways and power grids, to develop alternative energy sources, to achieve all the things Obama said he wanted to achieve.

That meant that a much larger tax base would be necessary. To achieve that, it was necessary to put people back to work — so they could contribute to the tax revenue again.

For me, it was obvious what needed to be done. The question was how to do it.

In 2008, the poetry of his campaign speeches spoke to people — but too often "yes we can" has become "they won't let us" since Obama took office. The rhetoric rings hollow today. It sure doesn't sound like leadership.

It's easy enough at this point to say that, if the stimulus package had worked as advertised, things would be different. America was told a lot of things about what the stimulus would achieve — and little about what it would not.

If the stimulus had worked the way Obama told the country it would, I think it is likely that there would be no debt ceiling debate today. Oh, perhaps there would be, but the dynamics would certainly be different.

But it did not work as advertised.

For many Americans, especially unemployed Americans, it came as a shock when unemployment continued to post six–digit monthly losses long after the stimulus was passed — and they watched many of the outfits that caused the economic collapse in the first place regain lost ground and post hefty profits while the jobless slid deeper into economic quicksand.

Meanwhile, Obama said little publicly about job creation (frankly, I was shocked when he said not a single word about unemployment on the first Labor Day of his presidency). He spoke instead about his Supreme Court nominations (neither of which ever were in jeopardy), and he spoke a lot about his health care reform package. And he made a controversial speech to the schoolchildren of America.

As far as millions of unemployed Americans are concerned, Obama has been negligent. I've heard some suggest he should be impeached.

It was no secret that Republicans didn't like many of the things the Democrats did in the first couple of years of the Obama presidency, and it is certainly not a novel experience for the minority party to dislike and resist the majority's initiatives, but they were essentially powerless to do anything about them, especially after Al Franken was declared the winner in Minnesota, giving the Democrats a filibuster–proof majority in the Senate.

That was a golden opportunity, but the Democrats squandered it. Since the elections last fall, we've been hearing more from Obama on job creation — it's a welcome change but seems a little late and far too politically motivated. Besides, it comes across as insincere, considering the window he had.

I think most presidents have to learn that their opportunity is limited and they have to take advantage of their chances — and most do learn that by the midterm elections, if not before. Obama is still learning that, even after his party lost its huge majority in the House — and in spectacular fashion.

I suspect he will still be learning it when the debt ceiling crisis is past.

Eat your own damn peas, Mr. President.

The C Word

The "C" in "C word" doesn't stand for "color" — although I have no doubt that there are those among the Obama apologists who wish it did because that would be something their hero could blame that is beyond his control.

The "C" doesn't even stand for "conference" — as in "press conference," which is something Obama can control, and it's a good thing he held one on Thursday.

I say that not only because it is essential for a president to keep the country informed when the greatest disaster of its kind is happening in the Gulf of Mexico — which it is — but also because, as Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway reminded readers on Tuesday, the president's last press conference was nearly a year ago.

On that memorable occasion, Obama criticized the Cambridge, Mass., police for responding to a citizen's complaint and arresting a black man, who turned out to be a noted Harvard professor, for breaking into his own home.

It was also held during prime time, whereas Thursday's soiree was in the afternoon (and, presumably, drew a smaller audience). So, like Roger Maris' single–season home run record, I guess an asterisk is needed — because the clock is still running on Obama's streak between prime time press conferences.

Will the streak live for a year? Less than eight weeks to go. Does anyone know the Vegas odds?

The president pledged an open and accessible presidency, and, in fairness, he has been accessible for one–on–one interviews with some members of the press, usually the ones whose employers already have shown themselves to be editorially sympathetic to Obama's agenda.

A president has many ways of communicating with the people — and, since the Kennedy presidency, the televised press conference has been one of the most effective ways of explaining policy. Not all presidents have excelled at the give and take with the press (JFK did set that bar pretty high), but the nine men who succeeded Kennedy (including Obama — because, after all, no matter how many one–on–one interviews a president does, there's nothing more American, more democratic than an open press conference in which a dozen or more people get the chance to ask the president a question in front of a national TV audience) have utilized it.

In spite of his much–publicized oratorical skills, Obama has been reluctant to hold press conferences. He got off to a rather fast start, holding monthly press conferences in the first couple of months, but the pace of his press conferences seemed to taper off after his faux pas about his bowling skills and the Special Olympics — and was nonexistent after the Sotomayor confirmation hearings last summer.

No, the "C" in "C word" clearly doesn't stand for "press conference" — although maybe it does qualify as a word for which this White House has little fondness. After all, Obama could have used the occasion of Labor Day to hold a press conference and reassure unemployed Americans, who saw their ranks swell by nearly 250,000 the month before, but he did not.

Perhaps he didn't hold a press conference on Labor Day because he was too busy putting the finishing touches on the speech he was scheduled to give to America's schoolchildren the next day.

Or maybe he was too tired after traveling to Cincinnati to give a speech on health care reform on Labor Day.

Well, that's ancient history now, I suppose.

I guess the "C" in "C word" could stand for "crude," as in crude oil. Alphabetically, of course, it could — and perhaps that would be appropriate, given that, during Thursday's press conference, Obama told America that "[rapid response] has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred" more than a month ago.

Perhaps it was just coincidental that, as Obama was saying that, in my mind's eye, I saw the mayor from "Jaws" telling the sheriff "it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, 'Huh? What?' You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July."

No, actually, the "C word" is "competence." Sometimes it is expressed directly. Sometimes it is implied.

But that is the buzzword I have been reading and hearing lately. And, upon reflection, it does seem to me that, if it was fair to use that as the standard by which to judge George W. Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina or Jimmy Carter's handling of Three–Mile Island, it's fair in this case as well.

At first, I guess I tended to brush off criticism as more from the sour grapes crowd. In fact, I think the first article I saw was a double whammy — a column from former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan in the Rupert Murdoch–owned Wall Street Journal.

"He was supposed to be competent," moaned the headline on Noonan's column, and I almost didn't bother to read what she had written. But then I did, and I couldn't help admitting there were times when I felt she might be on to something. Like:

• when she started with the observation that "[t]his is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts."


• or when she wrote that Obama "continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. ... [H]e has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another."
  
  Kind of like that Labor Day thing I mentioned earlier. Seems like an obvious time for a president who is presiding over a nation reeling from an economic crisis to hold a press conference on job creation. And maybe, I mused at the time, that is precisely why he did not hold a press conference. Too obvious. Style would be critiqued with no attention given to substance. The spin would be all about politics.
  
  Well, I mused that at the time. But I never really believed it.
  
  Anyway, the days after Labor Day turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months. At some point, it became obvious that the press conference on joblessness — which, for months, has been getting the top spot in polls about Americans' No. 1 concern — wasn't coming, that Obama hadn't merely been playing pre–emptive politics by not addressing the issue on Labor Day.


• or when Noonan complained that Obama "repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae," observing that his professorial demeanor "made him seem like someone who won't see the big picture."
  
  His tendency to lecture isn't too appealing, either.


• or the thing that seems so incredible to so many people — "the way both BP and the government, 40 days in, continue to act shocked, shocked that an accident like this could have happened. If you're drilling for oil in the deep sea, of course something terrible can happen, so you have a plan on what to do when it does.
  
  "How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc, so inadequate, so embarrassing? We're plugging it now with tires, mud and golf balls?"

Peter Wehner also has ties to previous Republican administrations, so you've got to consider the source, but I am compelled to admit that he puts his finger on a problem I have seen in not only Obama but also his most strident supporters.

"Obama is among the most thin–skinned presidents we have had," Wehner writes for Politics Daily. "In Obama's eyes, he is always the aggrieved, always the violated, always the victim of some injustice. He is America's virtuous and valorous hero, a man of unusually pure motives and uncommon wisdom, under assault by the forces of darkness."

It all has a Nixonian feel to it, doesn't it? And, in a telling observation, Wehner writes, "When arrogant men lose control of events it can easily lead to feelings of isolation, to striking out at critics, to bullying opponents, and to straying across lines that should not be crossed."

Shades of Watergate, for sure.

Then Wehner makes another point: "With Obama there is also the compulsive need to admonish others, to point fingers, to say that the problems he faces are not of his doing." He's been president for 16 months now, and he continues to blame his predecessor for everything. I gather, from what I see in the polls and in the primaries that have been held so far, that it's wearing thin, even with those who bent over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Last week, Obama spoke in the Rose Garden of the "cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill." Wasn't 16 months enough time to do something — or at least get started on something — about that cozy relationship?

Wehner concludes that Obama "was as unprepared to be president as any man in our lifetime" and he is "overmatched by events."

As I said, you can make a case for disregarding such thoughts from Noonan and Wehner. They have reputations as being among Obama's loyal opposition.

It isn't so easy to overlook what Charles Blow of the New York Times writes.

"People needed to be assured that Obama possessed three basic presidential traits: being informed, engaged and empathetic," says Blow.

• "As for the first trait, he was superb as always. I think amassing facts is his idea of being warm and fuzzy."


• "On the second, he was a bit wobbly."


• "On the third point, empathy, Obama came up short."

And empathy is one of those things Americans want to see in their presidents. Even if there isn't a damn thing the president can do — and there often isn't — people like to know that a president, in Bill Clinton's famous words, feels their pain.

Obama often seems to be above their pain.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

The day after Barack Obama's second presidential news conference, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that there are those who are so eager to drink the Kool-Aid that they gulp it down and get back in line for seconds.

Almost defiantly, the Huffington Post seized upon conservative Bill Bennett's assertion that the press is not "in love" with Obama. Nice try.

Obama, by holding these regular press conferences, can be said to be keeping the people informed. In much the same way, Franklin Roosevelt sought to keep Americans informed with his less frequent fireside chats.

But those were different times. People seem to have had more patience during the Great Depression than they do today, even though the times were tougher. A few days ago, Jamie Lee Curtis wrote admiringly on Huffington Post about Michelle Obama's vegetable garden on the White House lawn.

"I want growth, healthy growth," she wrote. "Grassroots growth. Seeds planted and taking root in front of a hungry America. Give him time. Give them time. Give it all time. Yes we can. Wait and wonder."

She lamented "the shrinking of our news" but not the departure of "the greed, avarice, gluttony, grossness, selfishness, deceit and cruelty of the last eight years and beyond."

Perhaps it is easier to counsel the virtues of patience when one is a child of Hollywood stars, a reasonably accomplished actress herself and the wife of a man who is — nominally, at least — a British lord and a successful screenwriter, musician, actor and comedian.

It's tough to be patient when you can't be sure where the money for your rent or your health insurance or your next meal is coming from.

Nevertheless, some folks are quaffing that Kool-Aid.

As Walter Shapiro observes in The New Republic, "journalistic convention requires three events to justify a trend, but we are jumping the gun because, frankly, the networks are not likely to pre–empt their lucrative evening programming next month to give Obama a third chance to fail to make news at a news conference."

Even so, I'm inclined to think the networks will devote prime–time to the next Obama press conference — even if it means postponing the season finale of "American Idol."

I wonder, though, if anything substantive emerged from the press conference. Was there anything new?

Josh Gerstein reports, for Politico, that Obama attempted "to convince Americans that his budget and policy prescriptions are exactly what's needed to get [the] nation's economy back on track, despite criticism from both parties in Congress."

He also defended the president's response to the AIG bonuses. Obama, he wrote, "sought to temper some of the public anger over bonuses paid to employees at the failed insurance giant AIG — saying that while it's understandable, it shouldn't lead to punitive measures that stymie the economic recovery."

Gerstein quoted Obama — "This budget is inseparable from this recovery" — as an article of faith.

Acknowledging that an "eclectic and pre–determined list of presidential questioners ... reflects the breakdown of traditional media hierarchies," Shapiro writes that "perhaps Obama's boldest decision was to call on Jon Ward from the conservative Washington Times, but to ignore the Washington Post."

Ward's question dealt with Obama's recent decision to end the ban on federal funding for stem cell research. I'm not certain when I first became aware of Obama's intentions concerning funding for stem cell research, but I know I was aware of it before he took the oath of office. So that action was hardly a news flash, in my view. Nor would I consider responding to a question about it to be "bold."

"Obama fluently answered the questions, sometimes at considerable length," write John Harris and Jonathan Martin at Politico. "But his responses were typically variations on a single–word theme: Whatever."

Is "whatever" enough justification for a presidential policy? Many seem to think so.

"Over the past week, Obama has barnstormed the nation's televisions, with repeated town halls in California, a seat on Jay Leno's couch, a big 60 Minutes splash on Sunday, and now a prime–time press conference," observes Michael Scherer for TIME. "Even those who eschew politics have most likely seen a clip or two of their President in charge, projecting confidence, explaining that things will get better. And for the White House, that is the message that matters."

So why is it becoming a tough sell for many of Obama's devotees in the media? I think it has a lot to do with the instant gratification culture in which we live.

John Dickerson of Slate referred to that, albeit indirectly. "The president tires of people who want quick and easy answers," he writes, "a point that became abundantly clear when he snapped ever so slightly at CNN's Ed Henry, who pressed him on why he hadn't shown outrage about the AIG bonuses more quickly."

I grew up in the 1970s, when it took a couple of years for enough irrefutable evidence to accumulate to lead to the resignation of Richard Nixon. The lesson of that experience was not lost on me.

But I was dismayed, some 20 years later, when I found myself in a classroom instructing aspiring journalists, many of whom expected news stories to be resolved immediately — and exhibited a certain impatience when they were not.

And that was before the influence of the internet and the more pervasive presence of cable and satellite TV — both of which have fed the fallacious impression that others can do the job of gathering the news better than trained journalists.

Today, the Huffington Post is reporting that a Rasmussen survey indicates that about one-third of Americans under the age of 40 believe that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are replacing traditional news outlets.

These men are intelligent and articulate. They may even have some insights into news events. But they are not — I repeat, not — trained news gatherers.

By the time our Kool–Aid–logged culture realizes that, it will be too late.

Accountability

---

"The duty of journalists is to tell the truth. Journalism means you go back to the actual facts, you look at the documents, you discover what the record is, and you report it that way."

Noam Chomsky
(1928- )

---

It is ironic, I think, that Barack Obama will be holding a primetime press conference the day after it was reported that one newspaper in Michigan will fold in July, three more will reduce their publishing operations to three days a week, the Charlotte Observer will cut its staff by nearly 15% and will reduce the pay of the staffers who remain, and other newspapers, most notably the oldest newspaper in Arizona, may go under if a buyer is not found.

Mind you, I think it is a good thing that Obama apparently intends to communicate regularly with the people in this way. It wasn't exactly habitual in the Bush White House. And presidential press conferences are one way to promote the "filter–free news" environment of which Jonathan Martin writes at Politico.com.

But the downside of "filter–free news" is the alarmingly rapid decline of daily newspapers. They have played an important role in maintaining freedom and democracy in America for more than two centuries, and their demise is not to be taken lightly, even among those who like to complain about the press.

There are many angles to this. One is the decline in advertising revenue, which is the lifeblood of a newspaper. In a weak economy, advertisers are always more reluctant to pay for the display ads that keep newspapers in business — and that problem is more pronounced today since this recession is more severe than any that most people who are alive today have ever encountered.

Some have suggested that a drop in the quality of writing has played a role, which is probably true at some newspapers but not necessarily across the board.

Newspaper readership has been declining, which makes advertisers more skittish because they don't believe they will get as much bang for their bucks. Now, that raises an interesting point for me because total readership is somewhat hard to calculate.

There have always been people who read newspapers that were purchased by others, whether you're talking about newspapers that were placed with the other periodicals for general consumption in a library or a newspaper that was discarded in an eatery and picked up by someone else. It's hard for me — or anyone, really — to tell if a lot of readers have been irretrievably lost or if just as many people are reading the paper but fewer are paying for it.

Is total readership declining that dramatically? Or is the real decline in actual sales? That doesn't seem to matter to advertisers. As far as they are concerned, paid circulation is the key — and that has been dropping in many places.

Which leads to a downward spiral.

The assumption these days seems to be that the internet, relying on "citizen journalists" who have no training as journalists and often cannot distinguish — or do not even attempt to distinguish — between news coverage and opinion, can fill the gap.

I'd like to think it is true that ordinary citizens can perform this vital role in the life of a republic. But, as I see it, turning these "citizen journalists" loose to write whatever they please and then post it directly to the internet — with no middleman to check their facts or their spelling or their grammar — is a recipe for chaos.

Not to mention libel.

The fact that it hastens the day when illiteracy reigns concerns me, although I see signs of that on the internet every day. I fully expect, one day soon, to see "news" reports at the online-only publications that are primarily internet slang (i.e., abbreviations like LOL), emoticons and smileys — and whose authors cannot be bothered to capitalize proper nouns or write grammatically correct sentences.

But what concerns me more is this — it begs the question, "Who will be held accountable?" when these citizen journalists don't take the time to dot their I's and cross their T's — or when there is no one to do it for them.

As I say, I'm glad the president will endeavor to hold these press conferences in an attempt to make the actions of his administration transparent.

But who will hold Obama — or his successors — accountable when the Fourth Estate exists no more?

No, We Can't?

My earlier confusion over Barack Obama's intention in his TV appearance tonight appears to be resolved — as I understand it, he will make a statement to the nation, then he will take questions from members of the press.

So it's going to be a floor wax and a dessert topping.

But I'm not expecting much.

For all of Obama's conciliatory efforts, how many Republicans in the Congress have said they will support the economic stimulus package — even when tax cuts (the real sacred cow for the GOP) are thrown into the mix? And in spite of clear evidence that something must be done?

And, unless I am misreading his column today, Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist and columnist for the New York Times, isn't encouraged by the Senate compromise, of which Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson spoke in such glowing terms a few days ago.

"Even if the original Obama plan... had been enacted," Krugman writes, "it wouldn't have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years."

And the cuts that were agreed to only make it "weaker and worse," Krugman says.

Here are a few excerpts from his column. You should read the whole thing:

• "One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending."


• "The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut."


• "It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut."

"All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan," Krugman says, "with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump."

Meanwhile, Krugman writes, the compromise did nothing about "one of the worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers." This provision, he says, "will cost a lot of money while doing nothing to help the economy."

If tax cuts are the answer, as the Republicans always contend, why are millions of Americans losing their jobs? Why are millions losing their homes? Republicans held the White House for the last eight years. Tax cuts were enacted. Shouldn't we be seeing the benefits they promised?

For that matter, if deregulation is such a wonderful thing, why are we dealing with salmonella from peanut butter?

This compromise, says Krugman, has led to legislation that will result in "comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted ... lead[ing] to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering."

Maybe I was wrong, but I thought Obama was elected because people believed he would bring an end to the through-the-looking-glass approach to government that was a hallmark of the Bush years. I see less evidence of that as the days go by.

Krugman says Obama's "belief that he can transcend the partisan divide" is to blame. He says that belief has "warped his economic strategy."

Essentially, Krugman writes, Obama sold out those who expected "a really strong stimulus plan" in a misguided effort to achieve bipartisanship. Thus far, the president has gained not one Republican vote in exchange — not in the Senate, not in the House.

What's more, Krugman says, "[e]arly indications aren't good" that Obama has learned from the experience.

Obama has an opportunity tonight to re-establish himself and take a firm stance that reassures the people who have been hurt by the recession that he really is on their side. He can go over the heads of the Rush Limbaugh acolytes in the Senate, lay it on the line for the senators, urge the voters to contact their senators and insist that they pass an economic stimulus package that really helps.

We're wasting valuable time on this. Frankly, it is obscene for the same senators who gave the go-ahead to the unending war in Iraq — and its immense price tag — to complain about the high cost of repairing the American economy. I hope Obama will use the bully pulpit appropriately tonight, but I don't have a lot of confidence that he will.

So we the people may have to do it ourselves. Contact your senators. You can find e-mail addresses, Washington office addresses and phone numbers for your state's senators at this website. Contact them and tell them you demand action. Not just action — action that will do some real good for real people who are really hurting.

And tell them you will remember what they do when it is your turn to vote.