False Sense of Urgency
One of the now-common negotiation tactics that Obama uses is the false sense of urgency. (Or, at least it's what I call it, anyway.)
When he was running for President, the message was 'we are running out of time, we need to change America before it's too late.'
When his awful version of a stimulus bill was near death, the message was 'we don't have time to debate. We need a bill -- any bill will do!'
When health care reform lost its steam, the message was 'there is no time for squabling over the details. There are Americans without health insurance and we need reform -- any reform will do!'
And, yes, when two fruitless weeks in Copenhagen discussing climate change became the embarrassment that we knew it would, the message was (er, is) 'our future is hanging in the balance. The perception of our ability to get something done -- anything done -- hangs in the balance. Destruction is imminent and we have no time for quarreling. We must act.'
Such urgency!
It ought to be admired, right?! The man wants to get things done!
I happen to think this 'urgent' approach is not only hollow, it's irresponsible and costlier than simply working to find the best solution to each problem (and some 'problems' aren't as urgent as other 'problems,' btw).
And, frankly, you just can't be urgent about everything.
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3 comments:
The other day Obama said that the United States would go bankrupt if the health bill was not passed. Now, how someone can avoid bankruptcy by going further into debt must be something only taught in the Ivy Leagues. Out here in the bumpkins that don't make no sense.
What Obama failed to mention, was that with the health bill, the United States would also go bankrupt.
the good news is that Hillary Clinton promised $100B to developing nations so they can fight global hoaxing. 100 Billion. It's global redistribution of wealth. And for scale, in 2008 the total amount of foreign aid (funding dictators, really) was 26B.
I'm tremendously disappointed in the meager efforts Obama's made as a speech-giver in this regard. He needs a serious overhaul of his handlers if he's going to have any prayer of running a viable election in 2012.
Here we have a guy who markets himself as the ultimate blend of cerebral academic and down-home, talk to your soul leader, and he's yet to give a single speech really explaining the rationale behind any of his pet policies.
He needs to follow the advice of Bill Gates on The Simpsons, "I didn't get rich by writing checks".
We can't get economically prosperous by continuing to write checks to solve every pseudo problem.
There will be problems that just can't be solved.
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