Comments on: You know, the White House is not as politically astute as it thinks it is

By: S Andrew Swann

S Andrew Swann — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:07:23 +0000

I am not taking that bet.

By: Geoffrey A. Landis

Geoffrey A. Landis — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:56:24 +0000

I suppose that, since I don’t actually care where the Olympics are in the first place, the magnitude of the political error, if any, seems rather underwhelming. I suppose if that’s the worst screw up in his presidency, I’ll be happy.

But he has 3.5 years to go. Fifty to one odds that this will not even be in the top hundred list.

By: michelle

michelle — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:13:36 +0000

That’s why presidents don’t meet with IOC, until Obama. And getting the olympics is so damn trivial it doesn’t warrant the weight of the president. The millions spent on jet fuel, secret service, planning, etc., especially since his wife and Opra couldn’t wait a few more hours and take the same plane as him over such a trivial thing as the olympics is a disgusting waste of money. And lots of cities end up losing money on the olympics when all is said and done, so why put the presidential show-pony out there for something that even if he wins, we might still lose.

By: S Andrew Swann

S Andrew Swann — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:43:54 +0000

Actually I wasn’t talking risk/benefit solely in terms of political partisan hackery (which still goes to the point of Obama’s undeserved rep as some sort of political genius) but in terms of the cachet of the presidency itself. A senator screws up like this, oh well. the president does it and there are serious repercussions beyond the president’s personal political ambition. Allowing the presidency (and by extension the United States) to look so weak in the face of something so trivial is, at the very least, demoralizing to our allies and a propaganda victory for our enemies, and has diminished our ability to conduct diplomacy where the resolve and or effectiveness of the administration is an issue.

By: Geoffrey A. Landis

Geoffrey A. Landis — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:24:23 +0000

Odd. I have pretty much exactly the opposite view.

I don’t think it was worth doing at all. However, once it’s decided that it’s worth doing, I would applaud Obama for doing it without calculating the “political risk benefit analysis.” Frankly, I wish more politicians would quit doing “political risk benefit analyses.”

On the other hand, the importance of this issue ranks approximately zero on a scale of zero to ten.

By: S Andrew Swann

S Andrew Swann — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:59:10 +0000

Geoff, I wasn’t saying don’t do anything if you don’t know how it will play out. However, if the president weighs in on something, there should be some political cost benefit analysis. It’s one thing to go there to try and take credit. It’s quite another to go there and risk taking the blame. Someone in the administration needed to ask, is the benefit of having the president involved (not the benefit of winning the Olympic bid, which is a different question all around) so great that it counterbalances the damage if the effort fails. There are plenty of issues of uncertain outcome where the weight IMO is in favor of involving the White House. This ain’t one.

The president should have only gone and involved himself if it was already a done deal. It’s one thing to have a foreign policy embarrassment over nukes in Iran, or Mideast peace talks, at least there the gravitas of the situation is in line with the presidency. But this?

By: Geoffrey A. Landis

Geoffrey A. Landis — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:09:32 +0000

Actually, I don’t give a damn about the Olympics one way or another. The fact that nobody thinks it’s unusual that the president is involved in at all is, to me, a sign of how sports-obsessed our society; but I don’t buy the argument “don’t ever do anything unless you know you’re going to succeed,” either.

So, what do you think about Paul Krugman’s commentary on the issue?

By: S Andrew Swann

S Andrew Swann — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:58:38 +0000

BTW- administrations are not all inept, they’re all corrupt, but they aren’t all inept. Reagan, Bush II, and Clinton weathered a lot scandal-wise and somehow managed to have coherent presidency. Hell the liberals portray Karl Rove as some evil political genius for how Bush actually managed to conduct policy in the face of his own unpopularity.

Conservatives accuse the Obama administration of a lot, but political genius is not prominent on the list.

By: S Andrew Swann

S Andrew Swann — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:53:00 +0000

I thought I was clear what I was getting on about: The Obama Administration is completely inept. They’ve managed to misplay almost every ball that’s been thrown at them. The Olympic bid is just the latest. That’s a critique of their competence, not their ideology.

As for my “brand,” I’ve long ago accepted that my particular ideology will never find a home in the White House, which is why I think the power of the federal government needs to be constrained as much as possible so as to do the least damage to the Republic.

By: Evyn Gutierrez

Evyn Gutierrez — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:14:28 +0000

I’m not sure what you are getting on about with this.

Are you complaining because your Brand isn’t in the Whitehouse?

All administrations are inept. And the current environment of vitriol is just a smoke-screen, keeping the sheeple angry and focused on fluff is just the current way of keeping them from noticing how badly they are being shorn.

Or in direct instruction Follow the Money, not the politics.