Charles Krauthammer and Reality: Still Not Friends

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 10:51 AM on February 6, 2009.

You've got to pity the Hammer. He still has his cushy perch on the opinion page of the Washington Post, he still has a healthy lust for foreign blood in his loins, and he still reveres the economics of Reagan and Thatcher. And, of course, he still lives in a bubble of seething resentment. But somewhere along the line, the ground shifted beneath his feet. The American public -- even those good Heartland folks who don't share Charlie's place among the coastal elite -- elected a smooth-talking black man with a funny middle name to be president.

Sure, the Hammer's mad. But today he makes a bold attempt (you might say 'desperate," but I'm too much of a fan) to pull reality back into his corner. 

His thesis is simple: the bloom is off the rose. Obama's been in office for seventeen full days, and he hasn't fixed the economy yet. He hasn't fixed Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Pakistan. He hasn't fixed the deficit, the health care crisis or "the tone" in Washington. Seventeen days, and pizza still makes you fat, cigarettes aren't health food and ugly dorks still can't bed supermodels!

The bloom is off the rose, people!

... so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

I will agree with the Hammer that there have been some "hypocrisies in the appointment process."

But he's not bitching about the appointment process; his point, again:

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

Is the Hammer's glee about Obama's alleged fall from grace founded?

You be the judge:

Early stumbles by the Obama White House over some high-level appointments caused a furor in the capital and on cable TV this week, but most Americans dismiss them as just a normal part of staffing a new administration.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Wednesday, those surveyed say by nearly 3-1 that their confidence in President Obama's ethical standards and his ability to manage the government and improve the economy has gone up rather than down since his inauguration last month.

"They're willing to cut him some slack," says political scientist Gary Jacobson of the University of California-San Diego. "They're more interested in things like what's going to happen to their jobs and their incomes and their 401(k)s. This other stuff is just a distraction."

Oh, that's gotta hurt!

But, in Charles' world, it gets worse. Even "more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package." Among other transgressions, Charles laments that "[Obama] inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House."

That's right! How can anyone explain a president allowing the legislature write legislation? One would need to have passed a 6th-grade civics class to wrap one's head around that mystery.

What follows is lots of boilerplate about the stimulus package being laden with pork. I don't necessarily disagree with Charles when he rails about how the lead up to the Senate bill was marked by "pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting 'planted' for 'ready to market' would mean a windfall garnered from a new 'bonus depreciation' incentive." Although I do know how he tends to cherry-pick, and that one man's "pork" is another community's "investment." But what strikes me is how Krauthammer suddenly became so acutely aware of how dysfunctional the legislative process became after his GOP friends lost power.

Funny how that works.

Tagged as: obama, krauthammer, stimulus package

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.