Posted on 08/27/2013 4:57:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
Evidence of the astonishing incompetence of the Obama administration continues to roll in.
It started with the stimulus package. One-third of the money went to public employee union members -- a political payoff not very stimulating to anyone else. Billions went to green energy loans, like the $500 million that the government lost in backing the obviously hapless Solyndra.
Infrastructure projects, which the president continues to tout, never seem to get built. He's been talking about dredging the port of Charleston, for example, to accommodate the big container ships coming in when the Panama Canal is widened.
The canal widening is proceeding on schedule to be completed in 2014. The target date for dredging the port of Charleston: 2024.
Then there's Obamacare. Barack Obama has already said the administration will not enforce the employer mandate, will not verify eligibility for insurance subsidies and will not require employer-provided policies to cap employees' out-of-pocket costs.
The Constitution's requirement that the president take care to faithfully execute the laws apparently does not apply.
Obamacare administrators continue to miss deadlines set by the health-care law -- 41 of 82 of them, according to Forbes' Avik Roy's reading of Congressional Research Service report.
Then there's the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. According to the law firm Davis Polk, the administration as of July had missed 62 percent of the deadlines in that law.
All of which indicates incompetence in drafting or in implementing the legislation -- likely both. We have a president who delights in delivering partisan speeches to adoring audiences but doesn't seem interested in whether his administration gets results.
But I blame someone else, someone who has been dead these last 68 years. I blame Franklin D. Roosevelt. I blame Roosevelt for making big government look easy -- and politically rewarding.
He set an example that most of his successors -- Obama is just the latest -- have a hard time duplicating.
Roosevelt certainly had his defects. As his best and generally admiring biographer Conrad Black notes, he was devious, largely ignorant of economics, cruel to subordinates, vacillating on many issues.
But he had a great gift for picking the right person for the right job -- if he thought the job was important. For the unimportant jobs -- well, anyone politically useful would do and, if the job suddenly became important, the appointee would be sent off on some diversionary errand.
Roosevelt's knack for picking the right man (or right woman: Frances Perkins was a fine secretary of labor) is the central theme of Eric Larrabee's wonderful 1987 book, "Commander in Chief."
Larrabee shows how FDR selected the unflappable George Marshall to organize a vastly expanded Army, the splenetic Ernest King to lead an aggressive Navy, the grandioloquent Douglas MacArthur to dramatize the side conflict in the South Pacific and the emollient Dwight Eisenhower to hold together fractious Allied coalition forces. No other president has made such excellent military appointments right off the bat.
Roosevelt's knack is apparent in domestic appointments, as well. He picked social worker Harry Hopkins to run a winter work relief program in late 1933. In two weeks Hopkins had 4 million on the payroll. When spring came, Roosevelt ordered the program shut down. In two weeks, the payroll was down to zero.
After that, Roosevelt trusted Hopkins to deal with political bosses -- and with top-level negotiations with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin during World War II.
Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, Hopkins's bureaucratic rival, was a stickler for detail and scourge of graft. But he spent billions bringing in big projects under budget and on time.
Roosevelt picked some good regulators, too -- stock speculator Joseph Kennedy to set up the Securities and Exchange Commission, Utah banker Marriner Eccles to run the Federal Reserve.
FDR's knack for choosing the right person for important jobs resulted from some unknowable combination of knowledge and intuition. It also showed an overriding concern for getting results.
It's not clear that Barack Obama shares that determination. In his defense, he has made some high-quality appointments, and Roosevelt's administrators did not face today's tangle of legalistic requirements and environmental restrictions.
But New Deal legislation tended to run dozens of pages rather than thousands. And some unworkable laws were overturned by the Supreme Court.
Roosevelt's example shines through history. But Obama's continuing stumbles show that it's a hard -- and politically damaging -- example to follow. Big government these days is harder than FDR made it look.
oh crud. from one Socialist to another. I don’t think so.
if this POSOTUS is going to emulate a WW2 leader, let it be Churchill...a conservative.
FDR’s choice of Henry Wallace as the VP for his third term was among his most questionable choices and one he, thankfully, was able to correct with the selection of Truman. Had Wallace been VP when FDR died, the US would have been in dire straits and the future would have been much different.
FUBO!
Maybe he thought Charleston was on the Gulf of Mexico and couldn't find it...
If Wallace had assumed the presidency, Imperial Japan would still exist.
And imperial japan would own China. Maybe not so bad.
Somehow, Michael Barone, who is usually a very insightful analyst, forgets to mention the HUGE congressional edge the Democrats had under FDR until the 1938 Republican sweep. It’s much easier to pass large-scale government programs when you don’t have to convince Congress to go along. Obama not only is no FDR, he’s not even Jimmy Carter; and that says a lot.
LLS
Given his performance so far, just imagine the damage he could do if he actually knew ‘how to get things done’.
Let’s all pray he never learns.
Possibly that is true, but no names come to mind.
scratching my head here...not sure who I hate the least...Obama or Roosevelt.
Thank God Obama isn’t as effective as that slimebag FDR, our nation would be toast.
Not Michael Barone’s best article. I’m not sure how well FDR’s appointments stood up to say, Truman’s or Eisenhower’s (or Reagan’s for that matter).
Doubtful. The nuking made them surrender faster (and without a costly invasion) but they couldn’t “win” let alone keep control of China.
Wallace would have been very good for the Republican party, just imagine if Obama was elected decades ago, the backlash would have been tremendous, he’s out on his a$$ in 1948, unlike Truman who BSed his way to victory.
Or you know the 1944 election was fairly close, say he keeps Wallace on and maybe someone doesn’t like that and leaks that FDR is dying, he loses and we’re better off without Wallace touching the White House. Dewey probably wouldn’t have been any worse than Ike.
As for Truman T-Bird45, while he may have not been a literal communist traitor like Wallace he was an incompetent socialist piece of crap and all around horrible President just like every democrat of the 20th century. He was the baby of the Kansas City rat machine and it’s boss Tom Pendergast. Completely unqualified for high office.
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