Obama doing too much? I think not!

Interesting post in the Post urging Obama to do less. It make some superficial sense but then think of FDR's hundred days -- Obama has an opportunity to make sensible revisions to major programs but that opportunity won't last long. He's wise to act while he still can.

Kelly McParland: Too many balls for Washington's juggler-in-chief
NP Editor, National Post

Saturday, Mar 14, 2009

While Canada's opposition parties launch daily fusillades at the Conservative government for failing to move quickly enough to reverse the recession, President Barack Obama is under fire on the opposite front. Mr. Obama -- who after two solid years of campaigning and two months of governing shows no hint of flagging -- is being told to slow down and focus on one crisis at a time: Specifically, on the economy.

It's a critical concern. By political standards, Mr. Obama has moved extraordinarily quickly to push his mammoth stimulus package through the U.S. Congress. Yet he still found time to craft a budget, order the closure of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, organize the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq and boost the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, begin the process of reforming health care, set the stage for a cap and trade system on greenhouse gas emissions, visit Canada, entertain the Prime Minister of Great Britain, continue efforts to save the auto industry, revamp policy on stem cells, outline plans for educational reform and keep an eye on legislation easing recruiting rules for labour unions.

It's too much. Mr. Obama has far too many balls in the air, and the result could well be that they all come crashing down."It's crazy. People need a clear message," Jack Welch, the former chief executive at General Electric, complained this week.

"This guy is locked in another world and he's throwing all these initiatives into this game in the middle of a crisis. Focus on the economy! It's the economy. It's getting the banks going. It's a clear message to everybody, "All hands on deck. We have a crisis. Let's deal with this."Mr. Welch was just one of several captains of industry delivering similar advice.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire Omaha investor who is an Obama supporter and adviser, started it off when he told CNBC Mr. Obama has been confusing Americans with his simultaneous campaigns on competing fronts. He was followed by Andrew Grove, a co-founder of Intel Corp., who urged the President to "rein in the chaos."

"Our health-care system may well be ripe for a major overhaul, as are our energy and environmental policies," Mr. Grove wrote in the Washington Post. "Widespread recognition that all of these reforms are overdue contributed to Barack Obama's victory in November. But if the chaos that resulted from initiating such an overhaul were piled on top of the unresolved status of the financial system, society and government would become exhausted."

Mr. Obama made many promises during his run for the White House, and clearly feels the weight of expectation on him to deliver. His message of "change" dealt not only with economic issues, but an ambitious overhaul of social programs as well. Despite his comfortable margin of victory, and Democratic control of both houses of Congress, his window of opportunity is not infinite: Republicans have already begun to regroup, and his sway over the fractious Democrats in Congress is limited.

Thus the push to get as much done as quickly as possible. As Hillary Clinton, now Mr. Obama's secretary of state, quipped: "Never waste a good crisis."

But without a stable economy, much of the rest of Mr. Obama's agenda becomes redundant. Efforts to introduce universal health care or impose new costs on emissions will go nowhere while banks are failing, credit is frozen and people are too frightened to make the purchases necessary to lubricate the economy. The good news is that this message may be getting through. In an address Friday, Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, said economic recovery is the administration's "single most important priority."

"Without robust and sustained economic expansion, we will not achieve any other national goal. We will not be able to project strength globally or reduce poverty locally. We will not be able to expand access to higher education or affordable health care. We will not be able to raise incomes for middle class families or create opportunities for new small businesses to thrive."

That is the sort of clear, unequivocal message Americans -- and countries like Canada that benefit from American economic wellbeing -- have waited to hear. One has to hope Mr. Obama can bring himself to temporarily sideline some other priorities until much more progress has been made on this most crucial of fronts.
James Morton