On the Road Again

Like Willie Nelson, 44 couldn't wait to get out of the house and off to a campaign stop, even if only for a day. He chose Elkhart, Indiana as the location for a town meeting style exchange with sympathetic citizens, and later referred to the city in his East Room prime time news conference. Elkhart indeed has fallen on hard times, suffering a 15.3% unemployment rate. 44 mentioned that Elkhart is the "RV capital of the US", an ironic distinction given his insistence elsewhere in his press conference remarks that the US had to advance further along in energy conservation measures, particularly when it comes to use of foreign petroleum. Maybe he intends for Elkhart's unemployed to work in factories that produce the fluorescent light bulbs that will be mandatory in a few years. He didn't say.

Nevertheless, it was an impressive display by 44 as he chided his Republican opponents for running the national debt to $1 trillion (that's $1,000,000,000,000) but being critical of his economic stimulus package. To the degree that the economy is in free fall, every day spent arguing about the means to recover is another day longer before things turn around. On the other hand, those brave enough to withstand the heat have to muster an argument that 44's plan will waste time doing exactly the wrong things to pull out of the recession. Among economists there is disagreement that cleaves along predictable fault lines. There is Paul Krugman, who thinks 44's plan doesn't do enough in terms of government spending. He unabashedly favors more, not less, government involvement in health care financing, for example. On the other end of the spectrum, a column in the Wall Street Journal by Nobel laureate Gary Becker presents a different take on the same problem.

So what are non-economists supposed to do? If 44 is the surgeon with a scalpel and the US economy is a sick patient, the obvious thing to do is let him operate. he made that plain in his remarks and in the question and answer period. He, as he so bluntly put it in a conversation with some Republicans, won the election and he gets to be in charge of the toys for the time being.

The press in attendance were respectful, not fawning as much as during the campaign, as if they were starting to wake up from their trance and remember to ask tough questions of the President. A couple of partisans, one from CNN and one from the Huffington Post, asked questions that would have painted 44 into a corner. One was about the prohibition of taking photographs of "flag-draped coffins" returning from Iraq, as if the question hadn't already been rendered moot by the recent reduction in numbers of coffins returning. The deaths that day of four US serviceman in an IED explosion equalled the combat deaths in Iraq in the entire month of January, a fact that 44 could have pointed out, but didn't. He merely deflected the question by saying that the policy was "under review", a polite way of saying "shut up." 43 would have risen and taken the bait, much to the delight of his many critics in the media. The other question was more argumentative, asking if 44 agreed with a proposal by Senator Leahy for a "truth commission" to investigate the administration of 43 for various alleged abuses. The questioner clearly hoped for just such a witch hunt and lynching party, but if he thought 44 was going to buy a ticket, he was sorely disappointed in 44's demurral from the festivities.

The most entertaining moment in the entire news conference when 44, after recognizing Helen Thomas of the AP and answering her question about Afghanistan, he brushed aside her attempt at a followup as if she were a whelp and not a dried up fossil occupying valuable space in the room.