The problem with Obama’s last-minute moves

Yahoo News ^ | 01/05/2017 | Matt Bai

[Olog-hai]

I love a good real estate analogy, so naturally I had to admire the way Erick Erickson, the conservative blogger, recently described the last-minute flurry of actions emanating from the Obama White House. “Obama and John Kerry,” Erickson tweeted, “are like tenants who trash a place as they are being evicted.” Except, in this case, the analogy is a few degrees off. The president isn’t really trashing anything. It’s more like he’s hurriedly adding the bold, modernist touches his landlord always resisted — repainting walls, recessing lights, tearing up carpets and restaining floors — in hopes that the guy who’s moving in next won’t have the time or tenacity required to undo them. […]

Kerry should not have given his speech denouncing Israel. Obama should not be filling jobs at the last hour. It’s tempting to exploit the time you have left for maximum impact, but it’s also self-serving, and it’s bound to be fleeting. Because if there’s one thing Obama should have learned from his futile strategy of governing by “phone and pen” — if there’s one thing that should be clear as Republicans prepare to obliterate much of his second term in a matter of hours — it’s that you can’t build anything lasting by executive fiat. Sooner or later, whatever you achieve with the flourish of a single pen is erased with about the same casual effort.

What history will most remember, unfortunately, is that you refused to stand down when the verdict was in. That’s no way for an otherwise graceful president to go out. …

[Olog-hai]

LOL “otherwise graceful”. The truth bursts out of this fakenewser because it cannot be held back.

[sparklite2]

I think Obama’s parting actions are more like
the people who vote a town dry, and then move.

[Gen.Blather]

Did he actually have a reason why Obama’s actions wouldn’t be permeant? I couldn’t bear to read all the way to the end. (Gag reflex.)

[knittnmom]

Or, who vote a town dry, so they can charge more for bootlegged liquor.

[Lurkinanloomin]

Erick Erickson, the conservative blogger
*****************************************

No

[Olog-hai]

Consider the perspective that Bai is writing from.

[loveliberty2]

These ignorant-of-history Democrats act as if the wise Founders of this country were not smart enough, or never anticipated, a situation like the one they find themselves in today.

The antidote for their ignorance is a good dose of Jeffersonian wisdom:

26.6 Termination of An Administration

"I have thought it right to take no part myself in proposing measures, the execution of which will devolve on my successor. I am therefore chiefly an unmeddling listener to what others say. On the same ground, I shall make no new appointments which can be deferred... thinking it fair to leave to my successor to select the agents for his own administration." --Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1808. ME 12:219

"I should not feel justified in directing measures which those who are to execute them would disapprove." --Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 1808. ME 12:195

"[My predecessor in the office of the President made several] last appointments to office... [which] were among my most ardent political enemies, from whom no faithful cooperation could ever be expected, and laid me under the embarrassment of acting through men whose views were to defeat mine, or to encounter the odium of putting others in their places. It seems but common justice to leave a successor free to act by instruments of his own choice." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:29

"It would be with extreme reluctance that, so near the time of my own retirement, I should proceed to name any high officer, especially one who must be of the intimate councils of my successor, and who ought of course to be in his unreserved confidence." --Thomas Jefferson to Henry Dearborn, 1808. ME 12:64

"It is but common decency to leave to my successor the moulding of his own business." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1793. ME 9:12

[rcrngroup]

"...one thing Obama should have learned from his futile strategy of governing by “phone and pen” — if there’s one thing that should be clear as Republicans prepare to obliterate much of his second term in a matter of hours..."

Ohhhh that sounds so good! The boy-king's faux legacy...obliterated!

[Lurkinanloomin]

I take your point, he probably thinks John McCain is conservative.

[Olog-hai]

The last paragraphs are actually from the end of the article. He took way too long to even get to the gist of his headline; I had to skip over some especially nauseating congratulatory-sounding propaganda and lies directly out of Obama’s administration (Bai can’t write or think for himself on that score) to get to that part. So no, he doesn’t give a reason, but he does conclude that they won’t be.

[bigbob]

More like Erick the Dumbshit

[sauropod]

I pretty much had the same reaction.

Mat Bai is a creature.

[showme_the_Glory]

I half expected we’d get to see the furniture on the curb in a pile.

[fella]

"the Obama White House, Obama and John Kerry, are like tenants who trash a place a they are being evicted"

[fella]

"the Obama White House, Obama and John Kerry, are like tenants who trash a place a they are being evicted"

[V K Lee]

That sentence was the cause to stop reading the rest.

[TexasFreeper2009]

quote “Sooner or later, whatever you achieve with the flourish of a single pen is erased with about the same casual effort.”

well... that depends honestly.

Up until now it has been very rare for a new president to undo the executive actions of previous presidents, thus making executive orders VERY powerful.

If Trump actually does void most if not all of Obama’s actions (which I HOPE and PRAY that he does) it would go a LONG way toward fixing this issue. And I hope that Trump near the end of his 2nd term will work with congress to reign in what his successors can do.

[Fightin Whitey]

Been reading a biography of the novelist Joseph Heller.

His father dies early on, when Heller was 6 or so.

The family gets by on the sewing/alterations the mother takes in, and on the few bucks older brother Lee can earn by doing whatever needs doing.

In the days after the funeral they had to relocate to a smaller apartment. When they had their belongings pretty well moved, Lee corralled Joey and handed him a broom, dustpan, rags and so on.

Joey said, "Why are we cleaning this place now?"

Lee said, "So nobody can say the Hellers are slobs."

A lesson, along with so many others, competely lost on our scheming, cheating, self-worshipping mutt of a president.

And all his muttley camp-followers as well.

[CaptainK]

Because you stopped reading you missed the funniest line in the article:

Obama is a pretty deep thinker

[V K Lee]

LOL - Appreciate your pointing that out!
:-) Wonderful to see some still have a sense of humor.