Legal Commentary

Obama's "Culture Of Caution" On The Financial Crisis

By Big Tent Democrat

Mike Lux has a nice piece in the Huffington Post about timid Democrats:

Unfortunately for those of us in the Clinton administration, our too-cautious message, along with the "don't do anything transformative with health care" Democrats -- folks such as Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) -- slowed the Clinton health care reform effort enough that it stalled in Congress, which kept our voter base home in the 1994 elections and cost Democrats control of Congress. With our problems far worse now than they were in the '90s, I fear that these cautious Senate Democrats could damage Obama's ability to make big enough change. If that happens, voters who expected big change from Obama will be severely disappointed, and 2010 could be another 1994.

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True enough (and props for calling out the now venerated Moynihan) but Lux avoids the critical issue where Obama himself has been timid - the financial crisis. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time (I just did in my previous post) worrying about the Media, Limbaugh, Michael Steele and other silliness. What matters now, for the politics, is the results of the policies. Whether Democrats will dominate politically entirely depends upon the results of President Obama's policies. And of course, the country is staring at an economic abyss if Obama's policies fail. Update - Matt Yglesias had a very good piece on this:

The is the sense in which Obama is most likely to fail by being too cautious rather than overreaching. There are a number of things—including the libertarian/populist idea of just letting the banks fail—that seem risky, terrifying, and might work. And then there’s the “muddling through” option that’s less terrifying but also certain to fail. A number of people have noted over the years that Obama mixes a progressive agenda with a small-c conservative temperament. Which is, I think, normally a good kind of temperament. But I don’t think it’s a temperament that’s well-suited to this situation.

Read the whole thing.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 07, 2009 (boomark / email).