In my exclusive interview with Barack Obama airing tomorrow on This Week, the president-elect told me that fixing our economy over the long term will require sacrifice from every American and scaling back some of his campaign promises.
“Our challenge is going to be identifying what works and putting more money into that, eliminating things that don’t work, and making things that we have more efficient. But I’m not suggesting, George, I want to be realistic here, not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped,” Obama told me in his first interview since arriving back in Washington, DC as president-elect.
I asked the president-elect, “At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your presidency some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?”
“Yes,” Obama said.
The poor proggies have already sacrificed so much. :shudder: I’m glad he’s just “scaling back”; imagine what parsnip would say if I used “to renege.”
When and if Roland Burris claims the Senate seat from Illinois formerly occupied by Barack Obama, it will represent the greatest climb-down by an incoming president since Sam Nunn turned Bill Clinton around on the issue of gays in the military at the start of Clinton’s first term.
Fortunately for Obama, the voters are much more concerned with the economy and Obama’s effort to fix it than they are with the infighting over the Illinois Senate seat.
But politicians keep score on each other all the time. And, after a near-perfect month of transition operations, Obama has stumbled twice in two weeks, first being caught unaware by the investigation of Bill Richardson, his choice for commerce secretary, and then being outmaneuvered by Burris and his tawdry sponsor, Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
When politicians start taking about doing things for the “greater good” I get really nervous.
We’re going to have to take things away from you, for the greater good.
He’d say “It’s all George Bush and the Republicans fault, you right-wing extremist!”
Man, talk about your sitting duck waiting to be shot. I’m certain he intends “I am suggesting I want to be realistic, I’m not suggesting that we going to be able to do everything that we talked about during the campaign on the pace we had hoped,” but transcribed unheard just in the word order he spoke it, without sufficient indications of pause and emphasis, the sentence comes off as clumsilycious and gaffetastic. Which of course, oughtn’t to be brought up in the first place (and George wouldn’t dare)…..due deference to the office and all.
One gets the impression that Obama got a call from one Rich Daley’s minions — or perhaps Daley himself — that said in essence, “Look Barry, you make a fine mouthpiece, but don’t start thinking that your ideas matter, or there’ll be a new Hopeandchange President in 2013″.
I’m shrugging when I read this kind of stuff. We all knew it was coming – at least those of us who weren’t glassy-eyed religious zealots with Obama shrines. Yet I somehow don’t think he’ll be able to pull it off as easily as he built up expectations. The idiots who believed him were waiting for someone to lie to them, they aren’t waiting for someone to let them down. Look at how congress is viewed by the country for failing to do all the stuff they claimed they would.
No gas?
OK, my wife and I have sacrificed our jobs and soon will be sacrificing our house. What does that get us?
Erm . . . good karma?
Exactly what I was thinking, donald.
Bitch best have my free gas and mortgage payment.
looks as if there is No end in sight with this downward economy
I love the way that Obama is changing his tune from “creating” X million jobs to “saving” X million jobs.
The convenient thing about that is that “creating” jobs can be measured, while “saving” them can’t (no way to prove that those jobs would have been lost without his programs).
Obama is now back-pedaling on Gitmo, too.
I like your blawg.
I’m curious to know how the media justifies continuing to call this “a near-perfect month of transition operations”… that’s at least the third time I’ve read that kind of line usually embedded, I’ll point out, in a story about some gafftastic mistake on Obama’s part.
um, hello? it’s Barak “57 states” Obama.
and there’s a big “D” after his name.
I was at a club last night, and they were passing around petitions they planned to send to Obama to make him keep his campaign promises. I have to admit I gave the people near me some grief with my response, but overall no one heard me, which is probably for the best. They are delusional.
If he actually did just this I would vote for him in 2012. He won’t of course as it would mean eliminating most of the Federal Government outside of the military and justice. Probably have the Federal budget down to a trillion or less. Not going to happen under a Democrat.
I expect that it will be like Clinton (downsize the military and upsize everything else especially the government union jobs) only Obama will do it more, in all ways.
I was at a club last night, and they were passing around petitions they planned to send to Obama to make him keep his campaign promises. I have to admit I gave the people near me some grief with my response, but overall no one heard me, which is probably for the best. They are delusional.
Or what? They gonna tell their mommies on him?
OH, you made my afternoon with that one…
I, for one, am sacrificng nothing.
Piss off, Barak.
Where in the world is Rahmbo?
“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”.
That about cover it?
#22: last I heard he was ramping up to knife Howard Dean in the back.
If he actually did just this I would vote for him in 2012.
All of us would but there’s no point on even commenting about it because we all know that he has absolutely no intention of doing so – unless you define “our intelligence services and military” as the “don’t work” parts.