Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Except for that election thing last November (oh yeah, and that primary thing earlier last year) I guess President Barack Obama just can't win. For the first month of his presidency, his critics said that by telling the truth about the devastated U.S. economy, he was spreading way too much gloom, that he was scaring consumers away from spending and businesses away from investing. Then on Tuesday, Obama delivered an address to a joint session of Congress, and it wasn't just audacious -- the man did write a book called "The Audacity of Hope," remember? -- but downright bodacious. He told America that we can cure cancer, harness energy from the wind and from the sun, and send more of our children to college than any other nation. And so those same cynics who just said the new president was too doomy and gloomy now asked: Oh yeah, and how to plan to pay for all of that hope? Which is why the poor guy just can't win. . . .

Over the last three decades, we've all been grappling with the meaning of the American Dream, the meaning of hope. . . . A key to the Reagan myth was that the 40th president -- who told Americans reeling from stagflation and a hostage crisis overseas -- told the nation frequently that "America's best days lie ahead." His audience was receptive -- but under his Randian, government-is-the-problem philosophy it was a quick and slippery slope from Reagan's so-called sunny optimism to rampant consumerism, to magical thinking that there is plenty of oil and no need for energy research.

. . . Make no mistake, Obama believes in honest accounting and he seems sincere about sharply reducing the deficit once our economic crisis has passed. But inherently he knows that it in a weird kind of way it may not matter a great deal in the long run if the deficit is $500 billion or $10 trillion, that America is worthless without our capacity to dream, to set impossibly lofty goals and then achieve them.

-- WILL BUNCH

The Reagan Experiment has ended in abject failure leaving the diehards, a la the Marxist-Leninists, to argue that it just wasn't implemented correctly. But the Reagan hangover isn't just the shattered global economy, it's thirty years of stinking thinking that is so ingrained in the public that it will take a long time to unlearn. Obama is making strong steps in the right direction but, as the pendulum swings, we're still far to the right of where Reagan left off when he retired. That's not a knock on Obama. He doesn't want to stun the system. It's like adjusting the pH level in an aquarium or pitching yeast into a beer wort. You have to avoid making changes too quickly or everything shuts down and dies.

-- BOOMAN

Look at how Obama has framed the debate since the election. Every single symbolic act has been inclusive and sober. From that speech in Grant Park to the eschewal of euphoria on Inauguration Day; from the George Will dinner invite to the Rick Warren invocation; from meeting the House Republicans on the Hill to convening a fiscal responsibility summit; from telegraphing to all of us Obamacons that he wasn't a fiscal lunatic to ... unveiling the most expansive, liberal, big government reversal of Reagan any traditional Democrat would die for.

Smart, isn't he? He won the stimulus debate long before the Republicans realized it (they were busy doing tap-dances of victory on talk radio, while he was building a new coalition without them). And now, after presenting such a centrist, bi-partisan, moderate and personally trustworthy front, he gets to unveil a radical long-term agenda that really will soak the very rich and invest in the poor. Given the crisis, he has seized this moment for more radicalism than might have seemed possible only a couple of months ago.

The risk is, at least, a transparent risk. If none of this works, he will have taken a massive gamble and failed. The country will be bankrupt and he will have one term. His gamble with the economy may come to seem like Bush's gamble in Iraq. But if any of it works, if the economy recovers, and if the GOP continues to be utterly deaf and blind to the new landscape we live in, then we're talking less Reagan than FDR in long-term impact.

It's going to be a riveting first year, isn't it?

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

The 2008 election did not just put a new president in the White House. It also completed one of the biggest shifts in the regional balance of power in America's recent history, draining influence away from the once-mighty South and redistributing it to the coasts. This will help determine who gets what from Barack Obama's attempts to stimulate and reshape the economy. . . .

This geographical shift has brought dramatic changes in style and substance. California's Democratic House delegation is the most diverse on the Hill, with 10 white women, nine Hispanics, four black women and two Asian-Americans. It is also one of the most left-wing, according to the voting records. It is hard to imagine a bigger change from the southern-fried conservatives who once lorded it over Congress.

-- LEXINGTON

{The] good news for Obama is countered by the bad. The genuine populist rage in the country -- aimed at greedy C.E.O.'s, not at the busted homeowners mocked as "losers"[Rick] by Santelli -- cannot be ignored or finessed. Though Obama was crystal clear on Tuesday that there can be "no real recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis," it was telling that he got fuzzy when he came to what he might do about it. He waited two days to drop that shoe in his budget: a potential $750 billion in banking "asset purchases" on top of the previous $700 billion bailout.

Therein lies the Catch-22 that could bring the recovery down. As Obama said, we can't move forward without a functioning financial system. But voters of both parties will demand that their congressmen reject another costly rescue of it. Americans still don't understand why many Wall Street malefactors remain in place or why the administration's dithering banking policy lacks the boldness and clarity of Obama's rhetoric.

-- FRANK RICH

Conservatives cry "class warfare." But the truth is that current arrangements actually represent plunder from above. . . . As a moment's reflection shows, the ability to enjoy more tax savings because you’re in a higher tax bracket is perverse; why should America subsidize John Thain’s mansion more than it subsidizes the average homeowner -- or the average renter, for that matter, who gets no subsidy at all? As the GOP cries foul, I'd put Obama out in town-hall meetings to pose this question: "Why in America should a millionaire's mortgage be worth more to him than yours is to you?"

-- MATT MILLER

I know that the insurance industry won't like the idea that they'll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that's how we'll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won't like the idea that we're ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that's how we'll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won't like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that's how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries.

I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they're gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

So am I.

-- BARACK OBAMA

Top photograph by Charles Dharapak/The Associated Press