That article that I cited below (tipped to me by Slublog) was quoted by Allah yesterday, and it's been bothering me since.

While proud of his record, Obama has already begun thinking about what went wrong — and what he needs to do to change course for the next two years. He has spent what one aide called “a lot of time talking about Obama 2.0” with his new interim chief of staff, Pete Rouse, and his deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina. During our hour together, Obama told me he had no regrets about the broad direction of his presidency. But he did identify what he called “tactical lessons.” He let himself look too much like “the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat.” He realized too late that “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects” when it comes to public works.

You want to know who knew there was no such thing as a "shovel-ready project"? (Thumbs back to self.) This guy!

Wanna know how I knew? Because I listened to people who seemed to know what they were talking about who cured me of this misapprehension.

In 2006, when the economy was hitting a doldrums, I myself was pushing the idea of spending money on shovel-ready infrastructure projects. Makes sense -- the economy needs a jolt, and a lot of infrastructure projects get put off and off and really need to be done at some point, so why not get the most bang for the buck and just take care of such needs when the economy most needs it?

Makes so much sense it's almost fun to say.

But readers -- commenters -- informed me that this was fatally flawed in the starting premise -- that there was any sort of genuine infrastructure project that could be put into motion in the three or six month (maximum) window in which such a project would help get us out of a recession or a slowing economy. Readers, again, who seemed to know their onions, told me such projects took at least a year, if not a year and a half or two, to plan and survey and get all required approvals for, and in a year to two years, the recession would be passed, and the project would have no effect on it whatsoever.

So as lovely an idea as this seemed, people smarter than me were able to convince me it was just not a realistic idea. Pretty, but silly.

But... no one's smarter than Obama, right? And no one's smarter, either, than all of his political hacks charged with righting the economy. So they heard the pretty idea and just ran with it.

That's why there are so many "dog parks" listed in the stimulus bill. You can make a dog park in a couple of weeks. You don't need any heavy engineering work for it, right? So, we now have some dog parks and bike paths. Because they're "shovel ready" because they're so easy. And so trivial, both in terms of stimulus effect and value added to our infrastructure.

But that's not even the thing I'm pissed off about. It's this next thing:

Perhaps he should not have proposed tax breaks as part of his stimulus and instead “let the Republicans insist on the tax cuts” so it could be seen as a bipartisan compromise.

Let's look at the facts, not the politics: The stimulus did not work. Millions of good people are in dire financial straights (not to mention psychological hell) due to their long-term unemployment, wondering if the will ever get a job again, or if this is the new normal.

That's the fact. The stimulus did not work and in fact probably hurt. So how does Obama deal with this reality?

Does he consider that perhaps he should have pushed for a differently-shaped stimulus?

No. He insists that he would have pushed the same failed stimulus that is the reason for millions of Americans being in distress and want. The one thing he would have done differently is how he approached it politically -- he would have made Republicans agree to his plan in order to get some (minor, fakey) tax cuts, so Republicans too would have been responsible for this monstrous failure and could not criticize him for it.

Get that? What he would have changed is not the failure itself; that's full-speed ahead. He would have put Americans through the same misery and pain. What he would have changed, all he would have changed, would be to get Republicans on the hook for the failure as well.

The reality, as far as he's concerned is fine. It's a failure; so what? The only thing that matters is the politics of it, because that's the thing that's pulling his job approval ever closer to the 39% mark. Because that's how the Great Recession effects him, personally -- just in terms of popularity and people's estimation of how Awesome he is.

He'd keep the Great Recession as-is if only people would, between pulling their hair out wondering how they're going to make rent, blame the Republicans for it more and still think he's Captain Awesome.

There you go. That's what you elected, America. Take a bow.

Barack Hussein Obama

Like the Greek gods whose colonnades he enjoys posing amidst, petty humans exist only to worship him and thereby increase his deific awesomeness.

And like the Greek gods, he visits disasters upon the earth.

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (240)
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Via Michael Barone and Jim Geraghty, Ken Buck sums up the coming election.

Buck (website here) is up by 3 according to the RCP average.

That's well withing the margin of cheating. No one has signed up for a Colorado event yet...BE THE WAVE.

Oh and just for fun...Joe Miller, Old Spice guy.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:02 AM | Comments (65)
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polling at 48% in a district they win by over 70%? more...

Posted by: CAC at 09:40 AM | Comments (103)
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Well, that's sort of it, isn't it? Obama treated these problems in an unserious manner, because his ego was so large he imagined he could fix everything without doing much work.

Thus, the stimulus was subcontracted to the blithering idiot Nancy Pelosi. Hey, Obama was going to lower the sea levels on day one of his presidency. A little recession was just a hiccup to him, right?

The aides continue whining that they misjudged the politics. That's all they see this as. When all you have is a hammer, all the world looks like a nail.

But Reagan didn't become Reagan because of politics. He became Reagan because of tangible success. Not clever arguments or rhetoric; his policies worked, and not just on paper, but in people's actual lives.

They still don't seem to get this. This isn't about politics (or, if it is, it's about politics in a very secondary way). It's about results.

Last month, I made my way through the West Wing talking not only with Obama but also with nearly two dozen of his advisers — some of whom spoke with permission, others without — hoping to understand how the situation looks to them. The view from inside the administration starts with a basic mantra: Obama inherited the worst problems of any president in years. Or in generations. Or in American history. He prevented another Great Depression while putting in place the foundation for a more stable future. But it required him to do unpopular things that would inevitably cost him.

“He got here, and the expectations for what he could accomplish were very high and probably unrealistic,” Pete Rouse told me. Indeed, David Axelrod and David Plouffe, the masterminds of the 2008 presidential campaign, said they cautioned Obama after his victory to brace himself for a precipitous drop in his popularity given the severity of his challenges. “I told him at some point that at the end of ’10, his approval rating could be low- to mid-30s,” Plouffe told me.
...

But it is possible to win the inside game and lose the outside game. In their darkest moments, White House aides wonder aloud whether it is even possible for a modern president to succeed, no matter how many bills he signs. Everything seems to conspire against the idea: an implacable opposition with little if any real interest in collaboration, a news media saturated with triviality and conflict, a culture that demands solutions yesterday, a societal cynicism that holds leadership in low regard. Some White House aides who were ready to carve a new spot on Mount Rushmore for their boss two years ago privately concede now that he cannot be another Abraham Lincoln after all. In this environment, they have increasingly concluded, it may be that every modern president is going to be, at best, average.

“We’re all a lot more cynical now,” one aide told me. The easy answer is to blame the Republicans, and White House aides do that with exuberance. But they are also looking at their own misjudgments, the hubris that led them to think they really could defy the laws of politics. “It’s not that we believed our own press or press releases, but there was definitely a sense at the beginning that we could really change Washington,” another White House official told me. “ ‘Arrogance’ isn’t the right word, but we were overconfident.”

That is a damning statement. Because, yes, it's true: Obama inherited a tough situation economically.

He did not appreciate it as a tough situation, though. He misjudged the seriousness of it. He thought he could play partisan games and just let the situation right itself, and then take credit.

A real president, one who was a bit more humble about his pure awesomeness, would not have made this error.

Posted by: Ace at 07:45 AM | Comments (350)
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Again, "George Orwell."

This is live now: bethewave2010.com. Sign up to do a little GOTV and fire someone who really needs a good hard firing.

Posted by: Ace at 06:46 AM | Comments (142)
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If you had taken the day off tomorrow, today would feel like Friday to you. You could relax, play a little golf maybe.

Look at the upside, every day he plays golf he's not in the office using this pen.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:26 AM | Comments (220)
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This is part of the San Francisco delegation.

48%-42%.

When the Democrats built their firewall, did they think San Fran would be on the wrong side of it?

Another winner.

Thanks to RSMcCain.

Posted by: Ace at 09:05 PM | Comments (87)
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Here's what CAC, George Orwell, and I knocked together. CAC did the maps, George Orwell did the animation, and I complained about shit and brought a poisonous attitude to the project.

That video quality is bad. We'll try to do flash or something. (George Orwell uploaded it to youtube; looks a lot better there.)

So here's the thing: Delayed until tomorrow morning because there's no sense at all rolling it out at this hour.

But, if you're interested in doing this -- in signing up for a day over the next three weeks (I'm doing three or more myself) -- let me know by email and I'll give you the super-secret URL so you can sign up.

Particularly bloggers and big twitterers or tea party activists, I mean, because we'd like to have a bunch of planned events filled in ASAP.

Oh: As I've already mentioned I'm doing something in Newton, MA for Sean Bielat on Saturday, like 12:00 (lunch, gather), then 1:00 to 6:00 or so, then like out for dinner and drinks for whoever wants to come.

Posted by: Ace at 05:42 PM | Comments (126)
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Welcome to tonight's semi-half-assed hump day ONT.

The Original Marty McFly in Back to the Future

It's a little known piece of trivia that Eric Stoltz was originally cast as Marty McFly in Back To The Future. But after five weeks of filming Director Robert Zemeckis and producer Steve Spielberg decided he wasn't funny enough and replaced him with Michael J Fox and well, the rest is history. But in the 25th(!) anniversary version of the Back to the Future DVDs they've included some of the original footage giving us a glimpse of the movie that could have been.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:22 PM | Comments (760)
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The last man up was the shift supervisor. He was in charge and wanted to be last up...once his men were safe.

Leadership.

Speaking of leadership...the President of Chile, Sebastian Pinera, was quite the camera hog in all of this, staying on site for days on end and greeting each miner as they came up. Thing is, he earned it. He was leading.

By sad contrast, Obama stayed far away from the Gulf during the BP spill, as if to deny it, and made only a few brief appearances later.

Sadder still is what happens in China, where miners are routinely left for dead after mines collapse — a big reason more than 2,000 parish in such accidents each year.

"Lucky people who were born in Chile. ... If it was us, we would definitely have been buried alive and died," a Chinese wrote on the Internet, as quoted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Pinera is different. He focused on avoiding conflict and laying blame while the rescue was still on. He took accountability himself by firing incompetent inspectors on his own side, but didn't condemn business or shut down an entire industry, as Obama did with his Gulf moratorium, only now being lifted.

Pinera worked with local officials instead of bickering with them or throwing up bureaucratic obstacles because they belonged to the wrong party. Sadly, that's what Obama did with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who had to take matters into his own hands in building berms when Louisiana's coast was threatened by the April spill.

Chileans, by contrast, said the crisis united them as never before. That takes leadership, and it comes about only because Pinera believes in openness, free markets, transparency and putting himself last.

That, along with the bravery of the miners, the effectiveness of the tools and the remarkable organizational skills that were brought to bear, turned a horrible tragedy into perhaps the greatest rescue operation in history.

It was truly an international effort. Naturally from NASA to mining companies and a world class drill operator, the US was deeply involved.

Chileans have found a new hero in American Jeff Hart, the drill operator who has spent weeks drilling down to where 33 miners have been trapped deep underground for more than two months.

Rescuers finished drilling an escape shaft on Saturday for the men, jumping for joy as the drill pushed through the last inches (cm) of a nearly 2,050 foot-long (625-meter) shaft through which the miners will be hoisted to safety.

"There's an emotion there that I can't describe. It's an amazing thing," said Hart, 40, who government officials praised for his central role in the rescue.

"We finally got there, we fought all this time. We have an avenue now that we can actually rescue these miners ... There's nothing more important that I will ever do," Hart told Reuters in an interview at the mine.

Damn fine job by all.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:09 PM | Comments (280)
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