Posted:
Pretty decent read if one shares my pov on Obama and his policies so far. What's up with so many same old same old speeches over and over again? What's making this president so insecure? Read on.............
Obama's star begins to fade
24 Mar 2009, 0026 hrs IST, Tony Allen-Mills, Sunday Times, London
When the White House announced last week that President Barack Obama will be returning to the nation's television screens on Tuesday for a
prime-time press conference that will postpone the latest episode of American Idol ? the talent show watched by 25 million viewers ? fans of the programme were quick to respond.
"Stop, please stop, Mr O, we can't take much more," one angry viewer wrote on an Idol-related website. "Not again!" complained another. "It's the same speech he's been giving for the past year."
There were dark mutterings that by commandeering evening programming only a few days after he appeared on Jay Leno's popular late-night chat show, Obama was "just like Fidel Castro (of Cuba) and Hugo Chavez (of Venezuela) - always on camera, always giving speeches and lecturing".
The barbed response to the prospect of yet another mass-media dose of Obama's economic prescriptions underlined the dangers the president is facing as he struggles to sell his recovery efforts to a country seething with anger and anxiety over the costs, effectiveness and potential abuse of the government's trillion-dollar bail-out programme.
White House aides remain outwardly confident that Obama's telegenic appeal will reassure Americans who were appalled by last week's Wall Street bonus fiasco and who are becoming increasingly sceptical about the president's so-called "Big Bang" approach to reviving a shattered economy.
Sceptics were hardly encouraged on Friday when the main US budgetary watchdog reported that Obama's proposals would generate far greater budget deficits than the administration had predicted. The Congressional Budget Office prompted consternation with an estimate that deficits over the next decade would total $9.3 trillion.
The deficit revelations followed the administration's much-criticised handling of multi-million-dollar bonuses handed out to employees of the crippled American International Group (AIG) ? the insurance behemoth laid low by reckless investments, and propped up by taxpayers.
Stung by popular anger over the AIG saga, several Democratic senators have been quietly distancing themselves from the Obama team, suggesting it may have bitten off more than it can chew. There are also rumblings of discontent from a wide range of disillusioned Obama supporters complaining about everything from his lack of support for gays to his plans for a new military "surge" in Afghanistan.
While Obama is still greeted everywhere he goes by raucous crowds patently thrilled by his historic election, his poll numbers have begun to slide. A new survey from the key battlefield state of Ohio last week showed his approval rating had slipped to 57%, down 10 points from February. Elsewhere in US, some of the president's allies have begun to take public issue with policy decisions.
"Here we are six months after the Wall Street bailout began and it's still the case that almost no loans are being made to (ordinary people on) Main Street," said Robert Reich, a liberal academic and former labour secretary under Bill Clinton. "The bailout is beginning to look like the most expensive tax-supported fiasco in history."
"Stop, please stop, Mr O, we can't take much more," one angry viewer wrote on an Idol-related website. "Not again!" complained another. "It's the same speech he's been giving for the past year."
There were dark mutterings that by commandeering evening programming only a few days after he appeared on Jay Leno's popular late-night chat show, Obama was "just like Fidel Castro (of Cuba) and Hugo Chavez (of Venezuela) - always on camera, always giving speeches and lecturing".
The barbed response to the prospect of yet another mass-media dose of Obama's economic prescriptions underlined the dangers the president is facing as he struggles to sell his recovery efforts to a country seething with anger and anxiety over the costs, effectiveness and potential abuse of the government's trillion-dollar bail-out programme.
White House aides remain outwardly confident that Obama's telegenic appeal will reassure Americans who were appalled by last week's Wall Street bonus fiasco and who are becoming increasingly sceptical about the president's so-called "Big Bang" approach to reviving a shattered economy.
Sceptics were hardly encouraged on Friday when the main US budgetary watchdog reported that Obama's proposals would generate far greater budget deficits than the administration had predicted. The Congressional Budget Office prompted consternation with an estimate that deficits over the next decade would total $9.3 trillion.
The deficit revelations followed the administration's much-criticised handling of multi-million-dollar bonuses handed out to employees of the crippled American International Group (AIG) ? the insurance behemoth laid low by reckless investments, and propped up by taxpayers.
Stung by popular anger over the AIG saga, several Democratic senators have been quietly distancing themselves from the Obama team, suggesting it may have bitten off more than it can chew. There are also rumblings of discontent from a wide range of disillusioned Obama supporters complaining about everything from his lack of support for gays to his plans for a new military "surge" in Afghanistan.
While Obama is still greeted everywhere he goes by raucous crowds patently thrilled by his historic election, his poll numbers have begun to slide. A new survey from the key battlefield state of Ohio last week showed his approval rating had slipped to 57%, down 10 points from February. Elsewhere in US, some of the president's allies have begun to take public issue with policy decisions.
"Here we are six months after the Wall Street bailout began and it's still the case that almost no loans are being made to (ordinary people on) Main Street," said Robert Reich, a liberal academic and former labour secretary under Bill Clinton. "The bailout is beginning to look like the most expensive tax-supported fiasco in history."
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