Obama's Governing Style

[bijou]

In the Middle Ages, when a young prince suddenly and prematurely became king, the royal court, the church leadership and other senior aristocrats would scrutinize his every word and habit for signs of what kind of mind would be deciding their country's fate and their personal prosperity and safety. Today, around the world, President Barack Obama's every word, every action, every inaction is being likewise scrutinized for similar reasons.

Prior to the November election, the only evidence we had of Mr. Obama's managing style -- and that evidence was indirect -- was the management of his campaign, which was brilliant. But whether he was its active manager or merely took guidance from a shrewd Svengali remains to be known.

Since the election, we have begun to get hints of his management style in four items Mr. Obama himself has described as of the highest priority to him -- and thus, one presumes, items to which he would have given his personal attention: Cabinet selection, closing Gitmo, the stimulus package and bipartisanship.

...

The second item, President Obama's performance at the Gitmo executive order, provided brief but revealing insight into the president's personal involvement in vital decision making. He had campaigned hard on closing Gitmo. His first public signing as president was that executive order to close it down. The central issue of Gitmo's closing was and is: What do we do with the dangerous inmates? President Bush kept it open primarily because his administration couldn't figure out an answer to that question.

Thus, it was breathtaking that at the signing ceremony, President Obama didn't know how -- or even whether -- his executive order was dealing with this central quandary.

President Obama: "And we then provide, uh, the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed, uh, no later than one year from now. We will be, uh. ... Is there a separate, uh, executive order, Greg, with respect to how we're going to dispose of the detainees? Is that, uh, written?"

White House counsel Greg Craig: "We'll set up a process."

To be at the signing ceremony and not know what he was ordering done with the terrorist inmates is a level of ignorance about equivalent to being a groom at the altar in a wedding ceremony and asking who it is you are marrying. ...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/obamas_governing_style.html

[Baruch Menachem]

Kind of remnicent of Germany in the 30s.  Lots of people running around with non constitutional authority, the central power very detached and mercurial, and very willing to drop people with less than no warning, and people all over the place with conflicting agendas.

Also corruption both financial and moral on a collossal scale.

The parrallels between Barny Frank and Ernst Roehm are starting to build.