Posted on 02/22/2010 5:08:15 AM PST by Track9
The first-year agenda of a promising young president has gone down in flames. Talkbacks (5)
In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. Some suggested a single, six-year presidential term.
The president's own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control. America had become ungovernable.
Then came Ronald Reagan, and all that chatter disappeared.
The tyranny of entitlements? Reagan collaborated with Tip O'Neill, the legendary Democratic House speaker, to establish the Alan Greenspan commission that kept Social Security solvent for a quarter-century.
A corrupted system of taxation? Reagan worked with liberal Democrat Bill Bradley to craft a legislative miracle: tax reform that eliminated dozens of loopholes and slashed rates across the board - and fueled two decades of economic growth.
Later, a highly skilled Democratic president, Bill Clinton, successfully tackled another supposedly intractable problem: the culture of intergenerational dependency. He collaborated with another House speaker, Newt Gingrich, to produce the single most successful social reform of our time, the abolition of welfare as an entitlement.
It turned out that the country's problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn't.
Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills and an ideological compass in tune with the public, the country was indeed governable.
IT'S 2010 and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama's two signature initiatives - cap-and-trade and health care reform - lie in ruins.
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
I think Krauthammer is being overconfident on this one.
“I think Krauthammer is being overconfident on this one.”
Agree. Calm before the storm, that kind of thing. There is a limit as to how much the American people will take. I don’t think we’ve seen it yet. The ruling regime certainly hasn’t. Their gamble is, they won’t.
Me too. I keep reading how health care reform is dead. As long as the left is willing (and in some sense able) to do anything to get it passed, it’s not dead.
later
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