President-elect Obama seems to be receiving bountiful praise from news reports, analysts and pundits about how he is approaching the financial stimulus and navigating the political minefields around getting the stimulus passed.
Although some influential voices like Paul Krugman have expressed concern about the tax cuts and about whether the package will be big enough, these voices have been few and far between so far, other than in the wingnut media.
However my concern is that this package will end up being a grab bag of varied proposals and expenses, many of them made for politically expedient reasons. Obama's latest response to Krugman's criticism (we'll throw what you want in there too!) does nothing to convince me otherwise.
All of which leads me to my biggest concern about Obama's coming presidency - he can obviously deal with a lot of adulation (who can't?), but is he willing to be unpopular? Is he willing to tick some people off to stay true to his principles? Is he willing to play hardball to get the right thing done?
Or will he always strive to be the most popular boy in the class, and will that be his undoing as it was with Bill Clinton (aside from his inability to keep his pants on, of course) ...
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Valid concerns, I too have had similar thoughts. But, it might be a bit too early to draw any conclusions. My bigger worry is whether he can get all the opinions around him to forge forward (let alone get all the egos in one room, which is a tough job in of itself) - driving consensus was the toughest job I had when I had many strong opinions with no deterministic solution.
I'm hoping his drive to succeed will overcome his desire to succumb to continued adulation. Based on what happened when he was vying to be the Law Journal President at Harvard, I think he can maneuver and reach out for compromise to get to his ends.
RamRam
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