Obama's Press-Conference For The Stimulus Package

Tonight Obama got some national air-time to campaign for his stimulus bill, which has taken some good hits from the Republican opposition last week. Considering how small the Republican presence in Congress is, not to mention how hostile the media is towards their arguments, they should be quite happy with their efforts to mount a successful opposition to a piece of legislation that is nauseating to conservatives on multiple fronts. Rasmussen and Gallop had the stimulus package slipping by the day until Obama began his recent push to translate his own personal popularity into support for the stimulus. If you love him, should you not trust him? Any good political relationship is based on the trust of the constituency in their elected leader, and conversely the ability of the leader to translate their trust into tangible results that can be readily seen in mass media. In the Post-Modern world perception is reality, and there is not a politician on earth that better understands this fact than Obama. So Obama used his big blue 747 to soar out of the muck of the beltway into the fabled middle America to remind the voters he indeed feels their struggle and to trust his wisdom in supporting the bill.

The press conference itself was fairly predictable in its content. Whenever Obama was asked a question, he did what he does best, give a speech. The flow and tempo of the exchange between reporters was not often like two opponents sparring, but more like the press was throwing up alley hoops for Obama to dunk with the finesse of his teleprompter athleticism. I don't want to get into every question asked because they were pretty dull for the most part (although I am beginning to think Obama is our national sports czar offering opinions on the state of NCAAF, NFL, and now MLB sports) but here are some points I think were lost upon much of the analysis I caught.

1.When referring to the rate of jobs lost, Obama mentioned we have lost more jobs last month than there are jobs in the entire state of Maine. Of course, it is simply a coincidence that two of the three GOP senators in negotiations with the Dems for supporting the Senate Stimulus bill happen to be from Maine. That surely was not political pressure being applied as Obama is above partisan politics, or as he put it, “..old habits die hard.”
2.Obama's use of Japan as an example of what can happen when a country fails to spend the big bucks to avoid a recession was poorly chosen but will not be questioned due to most American's ignorance of Japanese economic history. During the 90's bet the farm on Keynesian economic theory and deficit spent many, many billions to no avail. Japan could not shake off their depression with deficit spending, they only were successful in providing Obama a poor example a decade later.
3.When Queen Helen of the presidential press corps asked Obama a softball question about “so-called terrorists”, with a clever follow up gotcha on what countries currently have nukes in the Middle East to his knowledge (aka Israel, and possibly Iran), he focused on part one and totally ignored the nuke question. It is an unspoken fact that Israel has nuclear weapons, but refuses to deny or confirm their existence. What really makes this ignorance of the nuke question interesting is an earlier question on how he would deal with Iran diplomatically, answering in part “...their financing of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas, the bellicose language that they've used towards Israel, their development of a nuclear weapon or their pursuit of a nuclear weapon -- that all of those things create the possibility of destabilizing the region and are not only contrary to our interests, but I think are contrary to the interests of international peace.” Notice the presence tense as if they already have one. I think Obama has intelligence verifying Iran has the nuclear bomb right now and both instances were possibly a slip letting onto that fact. It is not a total shocker as various Intelligence Reports have already pointed to Iran being almost there, but I think they have it and we know it.
Overall, I think Obama went out and accomplished what he had to do in getting out his message. Approval ratings for the bill will slip above 50% by the end of the week, and he'll get his token GOP senators to sign onto the Senate bill. As for whether it will work, that is a different topic for a different post.