Weekly radio address: President-Elect Obama

Recent days have provided a number of indications that Barack Obama isn't buying the argument that he needs to go slow, focus on deficit-reduction, etc. Earlier in the week, his soon-to-be chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, spoke to a business group assembled by the Wall Street Journal and talked about "going deep" (not, one hopes, a 'Hail Mary pass') in responding to the economic crisis. This week's radio address/YouTube video from the President-Elect doesn't make the specifics clear, but it does make clear that he is going to seek an ambitious economic package that includes government-created jobs rebuilding our infrastructure, crumbling schools, and so on. Combined with his reference in his "60 Minutes" interview to the two books he's currently reading on FDR, the signal is pretty clear that he isn't going to be seeking modest programs. He continues, however, to emphasize that he's going to need bipartisan support and that he will reach out for it. If he convinces the public that he is doing so sincerely, it will put the onus on congressional Republicans if they maneuver to block his initiatives or if they seek party-line votes. The appointments leaking out from the transition team have been stirring some unrest among the netroots, but they also will make it harder for the GOP to claim that he's governing as a wild-eyed lefty.



Of course, there are some who would make that claim even if he retained Dubya's current Cabinet and appointed Mitt Romney as domestic policy adviser (you know, the same one's who are calling this the Obama Recession and hawking investment advice to survive the crippling effects that Obama already has had on our economy (here, for example; and Human Events is filled with declarations of the disastrous effects Obama already has had on the economy, and sends numerous emails to its readers, offering up the financial services of right-wing financial gurus who will protect them from further Obama-created losses). These same folks are also trying to gin up a controversy over Obama's plans to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine (eliminated by Rappin' Ronnie Reagan), thereby wiping out right-wing talk radio and the fair and balanced folks at Fox News. The absence of any evidence that Obama has any sch plans hasn't slowed down the hysteria (which is being used in fundraising emails), nor do any of them seem to notice the contradiction between the ludicrous claim that Fox News is fair and balanced and the assertion that the return of the Fairness Doctrine (which called for broadcasters to provide equal time on controversial issues) would have a negative impact on the network of Hannity, Beck, and O'Reilly. Let's hope that such knee-jerk ideological idiocy becomes increasingly irrelevant in the coming years.