The little man at the podium

Bet you have that Steinberg poster on your wall :-). LGA really IS close to the Hudson – Manhattan only seems a world apart from Queens.– A former New Yorker

Very sadly, the speech was an emblem of his presidency. It made no contribution. I don’t know how he even had the nerve to read what someone else wrote, the content of which told absolutely nothing.I think behind the curtain there is a decent but incompetent person, sadly for him and us, mostly us. He gets the lifetime pension, office budget and more no matter what happens to us, our pensions and our economy, After eight years it would have been interesting if he had spoken from the heart and soul, and told us how he really felt. Instead, what was on television was someone struggling to perfectly deliver a written speech prepared by a battalion of writers, paid by taxpayers. It reinforced the plastic, artificial image we’ve already seen too much of. Is there a real George Bush?Couldn’t he say anything from heart? I mean, after eight years he can’t even say goodbye to us without reading it from a taxpayer-paid script! What’s he afraid of, ruining what he thinks is a near perfect record by making a little verbial error in saying goodbye?

Adam Gaffin,A world and many traffic jams apart!

I thought the audience was a terrific metaphorical touch. They were there to prop W up one last time. They represented his parents, the people of Texas who gave him a stadium, the Supreme Court, the Military Industrial Complex, enablers all. Wouldn’t it have been different and possibly even effective had Bush appeared sitting a desk, beginning his talk saying he wrote what he was going to say himself? He had a chance to end with a –small–degree of respect but as usual he fumbled it away.

Bill H., at long last we are about to shed that “deep vein of anti-intellectualism” that has infected the White House these last eight years. Surely, all “57 states, with one to go” will rejoice at the cerebral renaissance led by Obama.

Fish, it can’t be any worse. Generally, I distrust claims of American exceptionalism, but now I’m not so sure. If this country can survive eight years of George W. Bush, we may well be able to survive anything. And Fish, renaissance is not a bad thing.

“The Little Man at the Podium” from “The Little Man with the Blog” Come on Dan, you’re not a sophomore in high school any more.

O-FISH-L said… Bill H., at long last we are about to shed that “deep vein of anti-intellectualism” that has infected the White House these last eight years. Surely, all “57 states, with one to go” will rejoice at the cerebral renaissance led by Obama.… a transparently prejudicial statement but not because Obama is black, because Obama is a Democrat. Who is on board with O-FISH-L’s argument that Obama’s pragmatic, anti-ideological, big tent, open dialogue approach has anything in common with Bush’s anti-science, anti-intellectual, ideologically driven, self proclaimed moral arbiter decider approach? Anyone? Anyone?Bush was a massive failure. You’d be well advised to consider why rather than offer the “so is Obama knee-jerk response”. It makes you look stupid.

PP: What the hell are you talking about? A middle-class tax cut is part of the stimulus package. As for “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Fox News reported as recently as Thursday that Obama has reiterated his pledge to repeal it.

FDR told a friend if he succeeded he would be “remembered as America’s greatest President. And if I fail I will be remembered as the last one.”It is hard to predict the future, and how various twists and turns would have affected the past is conjecture, but it most certainly appears we and the new President are in the same situation as were at the Inauguration in 1933.It certainly seems reasonable that we don’t have the cushion to absorb the mistakes in the next administration that have been made in the last eight years.Bush is correct that we as citizens helped it into the trouble we are in with spending and non-saving habits, along with doing our jobs building houses, working as carpenters, plumbers, in manufacturing, trading options, futures, assembling more automobiles than we can afford, allowing executives to get away with being so overpaid it gives the appearance of embezzlement, and for taxpayers to suffer consequences within the last couple of months because the Washington crew – senators, representatives, the President and Secretary of Treasury so carelessly and recklessly disbursed money in the Recovery Act without sufficient regulation and oversight.Many of the hardworking citizens who contributed to this were just doing their job of selling real estate, trading deritivates and manipulating markets teased to tremendous success for the best skilled with extraordinary pay, and bankers who took in deposits and lent out the money only to have our financial system almost completely fall apart. To some extent, isn’t that what they were hired to do? Can you imagine being a builder and not building, or a banker and not lending? Or saving and sacrificing to some extent to maximize the future in a 401K plan only to be let down with a 50% decline in less than a year?Perhaps it isn’t all George Bush’s fault, but we as a society were, for the most part, at least many of us, all doing the jobs we were hired to perform, some if not most of us faithfully and honestly, paying our taxes and educating our children and providing for the unfortunate, volunteering in our community and society, and we have every damned right to feel the way we do right now.

George Bush will be a part of American history for a long time or as FDR might say, until time immemorial. His Presidency and Administration will be studied and restudied over and over again.He isn’t the first president, and fearfully not the last, who has demonstrated strange behavior patterns. Many seem to have personality disorders that grow into dysfunctional emotional self-importance and overload resembling that of a nervous breakdown concealed from the public with a huge protective staff. Most try to make the Executive Branch more powerful when maybe we should be thinking in the inverse. A weaker presidency perhaps – – – someone to attend funerals, give talks and calmly read books to little school children.The position seems to be a chaotic, growing nightmare where the person who holds the office has departed from the mainstream of life and becomes horribly isolated from reality living under the extraordinary comfort, plushness and security provided by hard working taxpayers. At least it seems that way looking currently at the current president.Maybe we need someone like Harry Truman again to bring this back to planet Earth. This certainly is Mr. Obama’s time to make many, many welcome changes. It is a time to try to be optimistic and we as a nation and society should be most appreciative if he really does outdistance himself from so many prior Administrations.All of our well compensated politicians have let us down either by oversight, incompetence, reckless disregard, or by accident. We should not be in this big of a mess.