Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Upcoming: The President's speech at Carneige-Mellon...

Listening to it live. It's a bit of a barnburner. It's not going to re-write the Obama record books, but there was a bit of a fire in his gut. (Satisfied, Keith??)

Greg Sargent put it very well. At a time when there's a meme building about Government ineffectiveness in light of the BP Oil Disaster, Obama seems to be doubling-down on the idea that Government can be a force for good. Good for him.

And he takes a good whack at the GOP to boot:

A good deal of the other party's opposition to our agenda has also been rooted in their sincere and fundamental belief about government. It's a belief that government has little or no role to play in helping this nation meet our collective challenges...

As November approaches, leaders in the other party will campaign furiously on the same economic argument they've been making for decades. Fortunately, we don't have to look back too many years to see how it turns out. For much of the last ten years, we tried it their way. They gave tax cuts that weren't paid for to millionaires who didn't need them. They gutted regulations, and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight...This the same crowd who took the record $237 billion surplus that President Clinton left them and turned it into a record $1.3 trillion deficit.

So we already know where their ideas led us. And now we have a choice as a nation. We can return to the failed economic policies of the past, or we can keep building a stronger future. We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward. I don't know about you, but I want to move forward.

I'll get the video when it comes.