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11:58

Fred Barbash-Moderator - Welcome to Arena Live. To participate write your name in the indicated box, write your thoughts, think for a moment, and press send. We'll try to get as many in as possible with apologies for those that don't make it.

The topic today began with Charles Krauthammer's column this morning in which he says Obama is engaged in "brazen deception" for portraying the economic crisis as a product of problems in health care, energy and education. Krauthammer says this toward the end:

"Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime."

Your thoughts?

12:00

Fred Barbash-Moderator - Here's what Tom Mann said in his post in Arena: Krauthammer creates a straw man and then vanquishes it brilliantly. President Obama certainly agrees with Krauthammer (as he and his top economic aides have said many times) that the financial meltdown and deep recession were fueled by “a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry.” Obama’s argument is that our failure to grapple successfully with health care, energy and education policy has worsened the economic outlook and weakened our ability to cope with immediate and long-term economic challenges. And Krauthhammer’s assertion that the “president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime” is pure hyperbole. Give credit to New York Times columnist David Brooks for allowing in his column today the Administration to respond to his accusation that they have veered sharply to the left. Stuart Taylor in National Journal, David Gergen on CNN, and other self-identified moderates would do well to take those responses seriously and not reach for ideological conclusions after Obama’s first six weeks in office.

Obama’s highest priority must be and is stabilizing the financial markets, an effort still in its infancy. We are all, sadly to say, bereft of the wisdom to know precisely how best to proceed. Obama will properly be judged on his Administration’s success in dealing with this crisis. At the same time, he like virtually every other world leader must takes steps to try to stimulate the economy, a task that requires huge short-term spending increases. Can you believe that House Republican Leader John Boehner’s response to this morning's unemployment figures was to call for a freeze on spending or that Senator Evan Bayh has decided to pick a fight with the FY2009 omnibus spending bill on grounds of excessive domestic spending and earmarks? (See my thoughts on the earmark debate here in Politico.) Including in the stimulus initial efforts to deal with health, energy and education policy made good sense.

Whether Obama is right on the substance and politics of policy change in these three arenas is debatable but it is crazy to label his efforts as radical or doomed to fail. And it is a mistake to assume that the solutions to our problems necessarily lie at some golden mean between ideological poles. Give the President credit for trying to get all of us to think in less conventionally ideological terms. He looks more pragmatic that his “responsible” critics.

12:02

Fred Barbash-Moderator - And here's what Arena contributor Robert Moffit said:

Krauthammer is right. Health care today represents roughly one out of every six dollars in the American economy, but it has been a steady driver of economic growth not a drag. In terms of medical science and technology, particularly the pharmaceutical revolution, the private share of that economy has been yielding value for dollars, in terms of newer and more effective medicines and treatments for disease, and has proven to be one of the most highly productive sectors of the American economy. The problem: government share of total health care spending is approaching 50 percent, primarily in the expansion of the financially troubled government programs -Medicare, and Medicaid. Government is somewhat competent at redistribution of taxpayers’ money, but not much good at production. Obama’s health policy agenda is to accelerate the federal government’s expansion and control over this sector of the economy, reduce private sector share of health care financing and delivery ( as with the recent SCHIP expansion into the middle class), and control costs through higher taxes and re-jiggering the government’s silly payment formulas to pay medical professionals less in its big entitlements. It’s a brilliant strategy for cost shifting, and spreading the pain. It is hardly a prescription for economic growth.

12:02

[Comment From Peter Kust]
Earlier in the Arena, Celinda Lake called the President's duplicity "complex thinking", which it is....and is exactly the irrational illogical style of thinking precluded by Occam's Razor (pluralitas non est ponende sine necesitate), which discards the overly (and unnecessarily) complex thinking as flawed. Or, as Einstein restated it, "make everything as simple as possible but no simpler". When thinking and argumentation is complex, it is most likely flawed and incorrect as well. The President's thinking is complex. The President's thinking is wrong. The President's thinking is basically stupid.

12:05

Fred Barbash-Moderator - Here's Celinda's post, for the record:" Its the kind of complex thinking needed in the 21st century. Voters believe health care reform is critical to getting the economy going -- both for businesses and peoples personal pocketbooks. That energy is the best future source of good new jobs. And that education is the best long term investment in the economy"

12:06

[Comment From Dave Fairbanks]
I just think through all this talk, that the answer that works, is usually the simplest. That in my mind means less government not more. The problem with Obama's ideas is that what he is proposing has been tried in the past and it does not work. We do not need history to repeat itself... I also think he is trying to scare people into following his agenda. I think those that are center-left are even a bit nervous about some of his ideas, especially in reference to the market.

12:06

[Comment From Christine Pelosi]
Barack Obama ran for President pledging to get the economy back on track, achieve universal health care, invest in 21st century jobs and education, promote energy independence, bring our troops home from Iraq, and support our veterans. In the 21 states I visited in 2008 for boot camps and campaign blogging from South Carolina to Southern California, from Missouri to Montana, from Detroit to Denver, the Obama platform was clear and consistent. Brazen? Yes - he called it the audacity of hope. Now that candidate Obama is President Obama, he is keeping his word. Hallelujah! THAT is the change we believe in, the change we voted for, and the change we his supporters must help him deliver.

12:07

[Comment From Jen]
Doesn't this all depend on whether or not one approves of Obama's agenda? The question of how he portrays it will be overlooked if it works. Right?

12:09

[Comment From Peter Kust]
It is also worth observing that political discourse, and in particular productive political discourse, is necessarily "ideological". "Ideology" derives from the essential concepts of "right" vs "wrong", and the putatively pragmatic "non-ideological" positions some would ascribe to the President are themselves predicated on the "ideology" of moral relativism. We SHOULD be ideological in matters political.

12:10

Fred Barbash-Moderator - Hello Christine. Hello Jen and Dave.
Jen: I suspect that "if it works," a lot will be overlooked, that is, if the economy stabilizes in the near term, then his rationale will not be of much interest to voters.

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