“It’s a sincere question: What have been the truly innovative, groundbreaking or even unconventional big public policy ideas to come out of this administration? Are there any? Because from where I sit, it simply looks like Obama takes existing, conventional, liberal ideas – some of them very, very old – off the liberal pantry shelf and hawks them like it’s new inventory. Where’s the evidence that Obama’s “mastery” over public policy has translated itself into creative approaches? Not in the stimulus from what I can tell. Maybe there’s something impressive to tout in ObamaCare, but Obama didn’t actually have much to do with the crafting of ObamaCare – a fact Wilson acknowledges. Was his genius to be found in shovelling cash into Solyndra and other embarrassing white elephants? Was he the guiding intellect behind a green jobs program that has produced dozens of jobs in places where it was supposed to create thousands?
And if he’s such a genius about public policy, why did it take him so long to discover that there’s no such thing as “shovel ready jobs”? You don’t have to be a Jedi Master of public policy to have known that.”
– Jonah Goldberg, over at the National Review’s Corner blog. I think the same question might be put to pretty much any of the major political figures of our time.
“I think the same question might be put to pretty much any of the major political figures of our time.”
Well, to any figure that is routinely called the greatest intellect in American history.
Actually, everything Goldberg says could have been said as early as “cash for clunkers”.
Jonah Goldberg could have written that without embracing the Left’s bastardization of the term “liberal”. If you’re a conservative, what do you imagine you would conserve if you can’t even hold onto something as simple as a word? It isn’t difficult – simply use the term “socialist”.
I see nothing necessary to justify this, and it is partly because it is such a “small” thing, that it just boils my piss.
I think the “revelation” that Obama brings nothing new to the table is *very* old news at this point.
Stop and think for a moment. What is meant by Public Policy?
What does the term imply?
What do “Policy Makers” do?
Are we not dealing with the concept that some few of us shall set the course for the rest. Some shall determine what is best (or least bad) for us all.
And, why is that? Is “policy” part of the Rules of the Game” that are to bind us all? Not proven!
Well Obama decided he can have Americans killed without due process. I think that counts as new, or maybe just extremely old since it hasn’t happened since Lincoln.
Also, the claim that the administration can prevent a company operating in one state from building a factory in another state strikes me as something new and novel as well.