Youval Levin:
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... This is certainly not a time when the economy is strong or steady, or when the public’s concerns are elsewhere. It is certainly not a moment for business as usual.
The Obama White House tonight seemed to be betting that the public thinks it is such a moment; that everything is basically fine again, and it is safe to go back to the usual kind of Clintonian chatter about solar panels; indeed, that doing so (as opposed to creating more massive new entitlements and taking over more car companies) would be seen as moderate; that we should be careful to learn nothing from the past three years, and from the glimpse they have given us of what a debt crisis might look like. But the result was a speech wholly and oddly divorced from the moment. That is not what a move to the center would look like today. It not only offered no concession to the strong public mood evident in the last election, it evinced no awareness—not even in passing, for rhetorical effect—of the economic facts and pressures underlying that mood and defining this time in our nation’s life. The president merely notified us that he had appointed a commission to look at the deficit, he noted that we ought to think about entitlements, he mentioned the terms “Medicare” and “Medicaid.” But he proposed to do nothing about any of it.
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You could certainly see the media was in the business as usual mood and they felt Michelle Bachmann spoiled the mood with her speech pointing out the failures of this administration and Obama's failure to address the concerns of the voters.
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