‘I am frank to say that I have made my mistakes, and I have learned again the im portance of humility in all human endeavor.”
I wish I could report that President Obama said those words last night. Or these:
“I think we all agree that we have to change the way the government works. Let’s make it smaller, less costly and smaller — leaner, not meaner.”
He said neither, nor anything close to them. It was a wasted opportunity.
Those admirable passages came from President Bill Clinton’s1995 State of the Union, a moment that closely parallels the current state of affairs in Washington.
Then as now, a young and ambitious Democratic president had vastly overreached and got punished in his first midterm election. Clinton got the point. Obama ignores it.
There is no way to sugarcoat it. The speech was a dud, a colossal bore where even the platitudes fell flat. It did none of the things the country needed to hear.
“Our Sputnik moment”? What is Obama thinking? That all he has to do is make symbolic gestures about bipartisanship, then go back to pushing bigger and more expensive government?
It was nearly 15 minutes before he said the word “deficit,” and then only in passing. Apparently, he missed the meaning of the elections.
Clinton, on the other hand, sulked briefly in 1995 before devising a comeback plan that mixed expressions of contrition with positions that fell between Republicans and Democrats. In time, the phrases that described his “third way” would help redefine him.
“Mend it, don’t end it.”
“Abortion should be safe, legal and rare.”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Then there’s that single word that summarized the whole effort to navigate a divided Washington: “triangulation.”
It’s not really surprising that Obama is rejecting the Clinton model, given that he disparaged it and the Republicans he would need to work with so many times.
What is surprising is that he doesn’t seem to have a clear alternative. He’s back on the Big Government horse that he rode through the first two years, and that got Republicans control of the House because the public is against his policies.
So health care and abortion fights — here we go again.
Spending, taxes, size of government — check.
Of course, even if Obama tried to copy Clinton, the path would not have been smooth. Although the GOP held both houses of Congress in 1995, Obama’s political problems are worse than Clinton’s, giving him fewer options.
For example, his historic “victories” in Congress directly led to his party’s defeat. That makes his triumphs, like the health-care overhaul, impediments to even surface moves to the center.
He can’t suddenly reinvent himself, as Clinton did, because Clinton’s health-care overhaul was defeated. That freed him from having to defend it.
But Obama’s biggest problem is Obama. His lame-duck compromise on tax rates aside, there is no record to suggest he is anything except a true believer in expanding state power.
It’s his default position, which makes it hard for him to even contemplate serious cuts in spending or getting Washington out of the way of the American jobs machine.
Faced with a liberal base that thought the first two years didn’t go far enough left, and with unemployment numbers that could doom his 2012 chances, he clearly intends to keep using the federal printing press to stimulate growth. He calls it “investment” and he believes in it.
That sets up a running showdown with Republicans, who will frequently put him on the defensive with legislation that calls his bluff on his promises of bipartisanship.
He’ll try to make it look like he is ready to work with them, and will meet them halfway on occasion, but only when resistance is too risky.
Mostly, he’ll be the same statist he was the first two years. We know how that worked out for America.
Unions’ sad ‘help’ myth
As soon as Mayor Bloomberg vowed to do something about public pensions, a union boss trotted out the predictable defense. John Ahern, president of the Central Labor Council, first accused the mayor of scapegoating “hard-working New Yorkers” and then hearkened back to the 1970s to claim the unions “have consistently stepped up” to help the city.
Since Ahern doesn’t let the facts get in the way, I must.
He uses “hard-working” as a euphemism for “deserving,” as if any attempt to defuse the pension bomb is unfair. Yet what is truly unfair, as Bloomberg’s office notes, is that the average New Yorker who pays city income taxes is forking over $3,182 this year just to cover pensions. It will climb again, to $3,773 in the fiscal year that begins July 1, City Hall says.
The figure was $682 in 2001.
The exorbitant increase is because the city’s pension tab is now $7 billion, and will go up nearly 20 percent, to $8.3 billion, in the next fiscal year.
As for Ahern’s reference to the good old days when the unions pitched in to help, former Mayor Ed Koch helped me separate fact from myth. His view is doubly important, since Bloomberg asked him to lead the charge in getting the Legislature to back reforms, including eliminating overtime in calculating payouts.
“The unions did buy the city’s general obligation bonds” with their pension funds, Koch said of the crisis when he took office in 1978. “But those bonds were protected with federal guarantees, so there was no danger to the unions.”
Indeed, the unions got full payment of interest and principal, and raises.
Noting that mayors and governors of both parties are pushing back against the outrageous cost of public pensions, which dwarf private ones, Koch told me he is optimistic changes are coming. “The reputation of the unions is not what it was years ago, and today we have an aroused citizenry,” he said. “Democrats can take a stand against union abuse without feeling they are violating their liberal values.”
Rex’s pain gain
Most poignant line of the week comes from Rex Ryan. After his Jets lost a heartbreaker to the Steelers and failed to get to the Super Bowl, the teary-eyed coach said simply, “It’s supposed to hurt.”
STINK RISES FROM ALBANY ‘SUER’
Shorn of facts, the statement from state Sen. James Alesi sounds contrite enough. The Rochester Republican says he’s withdrawing a lawsuit he filed after getting hurt on a home construction site. He says he’s sorry and will “move on and do the job I was elected to do.”
What he doesn’t say is that he reportedly snuck in a locked house under construction, used a ladder because the stairs were not finished — and fell and broke his leg. Then he sued for negligence.
He withdrew the suit after it became public. Surely, we can do better in Albany.
He’ll be baaack . . .
Every silver lining has a cloud, and the exit of Keith Olbermann from TV apparently is no exception. His fans promise he’ll be back behind a microphone soon. Sigh.