The Note: Goldilocks Approach: Obama Seeks Balanced Pace
EmailABC News’ Rick Klein reports in Monday’s Note:
When No. 43 hosts No. 44 Monday, the two men come to the White House riding competing historical crosscurrents — and it’s not just that one is coming and one is going.
The future of the Republican Party hinges on the argument over whether the GOP got where it is because it was growing too big or thinking too small.
The future of the Democratic Party hinges on the argument over whether President-Elect Barack Obama will get where he needs to by acting big or aiming small.
The challenge for Obama and the team he’s putting together is in finding a Goldilocks balance, when plenty of folks want it hot, and plenty of others want it cold. He needs to deliver on his promises for change, while not eroding the promise of the broad change to politics his election meant to so many.
The new guy gets a big platform, and a bigger opportunity. Early on, he’s conveying the sense of measured action, after months of stasis in the executive branch.
Read the rest of The Note — and get all the latest on the 2008 election, Congress, the White House and the wide world of politics every day — from Rick Klein by bookmarking this link.
“The American people, right now, need help economically,” incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos Sunday on “This Week.” “It is essential that we focus on the stress and strains on the middle class.”
Bipartisanship, now: “The challenges are big enough that there’s going to be an ability for people of both parties, as well as independents, to contribute ideas to help meet the challenges on health care, energy, tax reform, education,” Emanuel said. “So that is the tone. That is the policy. And that is exactly how we’re going to go forward.”
But pacing is everything: “The debate between a big-bang strategy of pressing aggressively on multiple fronts versus a more pragmatic, step-by-step approach has flavored the discussion among Mr. Obama’s transition advisers for months, even before his election,” Peter Baker writes in the Sunday New York Times. “The tension between these strategies has been a recurring theme in the memorandums prepared for him on various issues, advisers said.”
“The argument for an aggressive approach in the mold of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson is that health care, energy and education are all part of systemic economic problems and should be addressed comprehensively. But Democrats are discussing a hybrid strategy that would push for a bold economic program and also encompass other elements of Mr. Obama’s campaign platform, even if larger goals are put off.”
The pressure builds, already: “Saying Obama’s decisive election victory amounts to a mandate, many of the president-elect’s staunchest supporters, including labor leaders, are looking for strong, swift action on many of the sweeping proposals — including reforming health care and increasing the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation — that he pushed on the campaign trail,” Michael A. Fletcher writes in The Washington Post. “But at the same time, Obama will be under pressure from fiscal conservatives and others to restrain spending, which could cause him to move slowly on his most ambitious plans.”
Continue reading today’s Note by clicking HERE.
ABC News’ Hope Ditto contributed to this report.
Sen. DeMint: GOP Race Could Go Until Convention 
Obama Avoids Questions on Contraception Rule
Emanuel’s answer (as everyone else’s) should have started with “energy”…
our focus on the car industry, jobs, the economy restart, …everything
has to find a crowbar…and that crowbar is ingenuity in coming up with a new energy building block.
Obama said the race to the moon was going to be energy independence and alternative sources.
that is major…and he is right.
It makes me nervous when Emanuel leads with the idea of “healthcare ” (as much as we need reformm there) in every statement he makes
and that an issue that has such partisan bickering is the first issue they are tackling.
when the issue of energy alternatives and it’s effects on our economy and our future weigh on everyone and everything and the future of the world.
Posted by: dl | November 10, 2008, 8:59 am 8:59 am
energy independence
energy independence
energy independence
and it’s subsequent “green jobs”, security, environmental impacts and socio-political effects
should be first …in every statement coming out of this new administration
period.
somebody tell the partisans.
Posted by: dl | November 10, 2008, 9:01 am 9:01 am
Things are set up pretty badly for Obama or anyone else who might have won this year’s election.
We’re probably looking at a failed presidency before it even begins, with guilt for that shared by both parties and us voters for decades of mismanagement and living beyond our public and private means.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 9:03 am 9:03 am
I am one of those democrats that worry about the deficit and spending. However, the GOP made sure to run all that into the ground a long time ago. It renders the conservative idea of balanced budgets and little spending mute.
Any president will have to spend to save the economy now.
And with health care so out of reach for basic services, it is more of a luxury item now for many people rather than a service that is needed.
I think Obama will have to go somewhat big just to give a major shot in the arm to the economy and family budgets and then, go about bringing spending back under control later.
Posted by: vwcat | November 10, 2008, 9:04 am 9:04 am
dl – I’m with you on energy as top priority.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 9:05 am 9:05 am
vwcat – I could see me posting the exact same message as you just did.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 9:06 am 9:06 am
Obama needs to do what he thinks is right for this country and not listen to those who “helped” him get into office. We have to give him a chance to put in place the policies needed to help improve things in the long run. President elect Obama needs our support.
Posted by: Sandy | November 10, 2008, 9:46 am 9:46 am
Jamie S. Gorelick would bring corporate experience to an Obama administration — in the same way Rahm Emanuel did. Gorelick was vice chairman at Fannie Mae in the years when the GSE FRAUDULENTLY reported its income. She got a Friends of Angelo sweetheart mortgage for almost a million dollars in 2003, and is currently UNDER INVESTIGATION by the department she would run if nominated for AG.
But even without that taint of corruption, Gorelick would signal a return to incompetence and infighting. Gorelick played a major role in keeping counterterrorist and law-enforcement agents from sharing information and “connecting the dots” before 9/11. In a series of judgments at the DoD and at Justice during her tenure in the Clinton administration, Gorelick hamstrung our efforts to find and disarm terrorist infiltrators by discouraging any cooperation between intelligence and enforcement efforts by making “THE WALL” much more significant than Congress ever intended.
Gorelick wound up serving as a panelist on the 9/11 Commission, but she should have been served a SUBPOENA instead. Two memos from Clinton-appointed US Attorney Mary Jo White made this point crystal clear, as did an explanation from someone involved for years in the counterterrorist effort. Gorelick imposed an unrealistic standard on intelligence gathering that LED DIRECTLY to the 9/11 attacks. As AG, she would have even more power to reimpose those same limitations, and leave us just as blind as we were before those attacks.
Obama ran on “hope and change”, but if Gorelick is what he had in mind, then he sold the US a bill of goods. It would make the second former GSE board member nominated to a high position in his administration, one who already has connections to Countrywide’s corruption and a federal probe into her actions. Gorelick also has failed in developing policies and strategies to keep the nation secure. She would be a disaster as AG, and if she really is on the short list, it shows how clueless Barack Obama is about the threats to this nation.
Posted by: Culture of Corruption 2 - Jamie "The Wall" Gorelick | November 10, 2008, 10:07 am 10:07 am
obama your speech was amazing and historical i am glad you are president,and i know you will fight for the middle class.
Posted by: seth | November 10, 2008, 10:12 am 10:12 am
“Obama said the race to the moon was going to be energy independence and alternative sources.
that is major…and he is right.”
I agree energy independance is critical to this countries secure economic future. But Obama’s instance to make comparisonns to the space program of the 60′s shows he does not grasp the enormity of what the rheotric means.
The space program’s purpose & goal had ZERO to do with creating products or changing the way our everyday lives operated. In time, over MANY YEARS, products and industries evolved from the research & discoveries of NASA’s first 15 yrs. Billions of daollars were poured into the idea of creating a mechanism to get a man to the moon & back safely. After all the Mercury & Gemini missions, the end product of NASA’s efforts was the Saturn V rocket.
A 360 foot beast that in the end only returned the 11 foot high capsule. The rest of the vehicle was expendable. It took a completely seperate effort and billions of more dollars to create the shuttle “fleet”.
The effort to create vehicles that millions of people would purchase is a readically different one than creating a few space ships.
Right now, the auto inductry has “Hybrid” vechicles, that cost 4 to 6 times as much as a used car that actualy gets better MPG! In order for Obama’s idea of an Amercia operating on alternative/renewable fuels to happen, the auto industry must research & prototype first, then transform that protoype vehicle into a manufacturable,
affordable and safe vehicle. Affordable meaning a car at the 20K mark that gets 50 MPG if its some kind of “Hybrid” or able to run for days without having to be recharged for 12 hours if its “Electric”.
It’s going to take a great deal of time to get to the point where these low coast viable cars exist at your local dealers.
Oh, by the way, that does not even take into account what we need to replace busses and 18-wheeler truck for moving people & goods across the country.
Until these problems are conquered, the masses in the US are going to be driving the same kind of vehicles we are now. Hence it is time to stop the politically correct BS and get serious about having the US produce & refine the oil that exists under our own feet.
If everyone thinks the answers are to populate this country with solar & wind farms, certainly more oil wells & refineries should not be a big issue either. Unless of course your ok with gas heading back up towards 5 to 10 dollars a gallon.
Posted by: Mike_C | November 10, 2008, 10:39 am 10:39 am
Mike C: “I agree energy independance is critical to this countries secure economic future. But Obama’s instance to make comparisonns to the space program of the 60′s shows he does not grasp the enormity of what the rheotric means.”
I don’t see what you mean. From where exactly are you drawing the impression that Obama doesn’t grasp the enormity of his rhetoric?
Are you saying there are differences between the Apollo effort and energy independence? I’m guessing Obama gets that part.
Analogies can be valid while retaining distinctions. In fact, they must retain distinctions, or else they wouldn’t be analogous; they’d be identical.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 11:13 am 11:13 am
Mike C: “If everyone thinks the answers are to populate this country with solar & wind farms, certainly more oil wells & refineries should not be a big issue either. Unless of course your ok with gas heading back up towards 5 to 10 dollars a gallon.”
I think we can leverage solar to degrees you aren’t even imagining yet.
A solar panel gives you something like 9 percent efficiency, because unless its layered (a much more costly design than the $20k outlay a couple panels would cost most homeowners) they only capture energy from a small slice of the light spectrum. We do have multi-spectral panels, but they cost more by a factor of 10 plus.
Swansea University in England and another group in Japan is working with electricity conducting fibers in paint. I saw on TV there’s also a guy in this country doing the same – it works, he’s painted his shed with it, and now is waiting to see how it weathers.
This paint right now seems to be about 20 percent efficient in energy transference – more than twice the efficiency of most panels.
To make a home electric neutral, most homeowners need 2 to 3 panels, which covers a minority of the roof area. Imagine a painted roof that is more than twice as efficient over a larger area. The house is suddenly producing… what? Four times the electricity it uses? Eight times? Twelve times? Imagine the siding of the home painted with the same stuff.
What to do with all that excess electricity…
Hmmm. Oh, here’s an idea. You can recharge the fuel cells in the car.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 11:23 am 11:23 am
By the way, the Swansea effort is directly looking at a paint that adheres to the metal of bridges. Imagine every bridge becoming a solar collector.
In all honesty, I’m thinking we could harness enough power from the sun to basically make electricity free at some point in the future, and that electricity also powers much of our ground transportation.
Sure there are regional obstacles – the Pacific Northwest might be hardpressed to power itself to the degree that, oh, South Carolina could.
But there is a lot of potential to do much more than we are with solar.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 11:30 am 11:30 am
Every student of political science is presented, sometime during his freshman year, with the question, “do the times make the man or does the man make the times?”
In the context of American political history we have to wonder whether our great presidents… Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Reagan, to name a few…would have achieved greatness had they not been confronted with great difficulties? Probably not.
But they were and they each had the experience, vision and judgement to make sound decisions, the courage to take action and the charisma to attract a loyal following.
Certainly the times we find ourselves in demand such a leader and I believe we have just elected him. I am sure I will sometimes disagree with President Obama but until I am sure that my own experience, vision and judgement would make me better qualified to confront and overcome the difficulties he faces I will remain a loyal follower and pray for his success and the greatness it will bring.
I hope we will all do the same. We need another great president right now. The times demand it.
Posted by: david dial | November 10, 2008, 11:34 am 11:34 am
Why wait until Obama as actually accomplished something? Let’s celebrate The Messiah right now with a new federal holiday.
—Plans are being made to promote a national holiday for Barack Obama, who will become the nation’s 44th president when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20.
“Yes We Can” planning rallies will be at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. every Tuesday at the downtown McDonald’s restaurant, 1100 Kansas Ave., until Jan. 13. The goals are to secure a national holiday in Obama’s honor, to organize celebrations around his inauguration and to celebrate the 200th birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, who was born on Feb. 12 1809.—
Posted by: Celebrity Before Leadership | November 10, 2008, 12:17 pm 12:17 pm
“Certainly the times we find ourselves in demand such a leader and I believe we have just elected him.”
He had better get to leading then and make the speaker of the house realize that HE is the leader and not her! She is already discussing a 100 Billion dollar bail out for the US auto makers.
I guaranteee yo that money is NOT going toword alernative fuel based cars!
Posted by: Mike_C | November 10, 2008, 12:24 pm 12:24 pm
“A solar panel gives you something like 9 percent efficiency, because unless its layered (a much more costly design than the $20k outlay a couple panels would cost most homeowners) they only capture energy from a small slice of the light spectrum. We do have multi-spectral panels, but they cost more by a factor of 10 plus.”
Your making my point for me! There are a ton of wonderful ideas out there, but thaey are ALL a very very long way from making it to the everyday family in an affordable & safe way!
The solar power promises have been going on since the 70′s! Obama’s new chief of staff has already stated they want to pull back the idea of drilling in Utah and will use an executive order to stop it. “Prestine” terriroty I beleive was the term. In order for solar & wind to really yield significant result, we are going to have to go out into some of those “prestine” area and build solar & wind farms.
Posted by: Mike_C | November 10, 2008, 1:06 pm 1:06 pm
Mike C: “He had better get to leading then and make the speaker of the house realize that HE is the leader and not her”
Mike, we kind of have a checks and balances thing working here. The president is in charge of the executive branch and not the whole government.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 2:13 pm 2:13 pm
Mike C: “Your making my point for me! There are a ton of wonderful ideas out there, but thaey are ALL a very very long way from making it to the everyday family in an affordable & safe way!”
Not necessarily.
Germany a few years back set goals everyone laughed at. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but it was something like 33 percent of all energy used coming from solar by 2018. A lot of folks scoffed at the notion.
But with just a couple tweaks to tax incentives, the Germans are now on track to meet that goal in the next year or two.
Now we’re in a situation where there is an obvious future market for alternative technology, that is ready to implement now and is being implemented, but to even get into that global market we’re already chasing the Japanese and Germans, and to a lesser extent the Brits.
When we do implement alternative energies on a massive scale, we’ll be buying the equipment from other countries, unless we move quickly.
And, yes, it is affordable and safe now. Will the technology be better in the future? Sure. But its ready now, in the case of solar. Most homes in the U.S. now could operate from solar panels. There is upfront cost, but in about 15-20 years these homes would hit a break-even point.
Many homeowners could do this. Not all, of course, but many could get the loan for $20k to install a system. Why don’t they? Because its something you have to do now in order to break even years later. Most won’t and aren’t choosing that deal.
But if the government provided even modest tax incentives, then more would be inclined to take the plunge.
Electric cars are here now. There are models that can get you a couple hundred miles between recharging. The idea of plugging in a car at night is foreign to Americans right now. But again its a change that could happen quickly if some simple incentives were provided.
Remember we didn’t always have unleaded gasoline, either. People adapted to it. We didn’t have safety inspections for vehicles. People adapted to it.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 2:26 pm 2:26 pm
Paul:
I’m a Republican, but I agree with Mike C that President-elect Obama needs to be the leader. He operates within the confines of the constitutional check/balance system to which you allude. The American public, correct or not, elected him to lead the country — not Speaker Pelosi [or Sen. Reid]. She was sent to Washington by a district in San Francisco and elected Speaker by her fellow Democratic representatives. His job is to be commander-in-chief, set policy and send legislation to Congress. So, that being said, let’s see what he can do. I vehemently opposed him, but he’s now our President-elect.
Posted by: TampaLawyer | November 10, 2008, 2:48 pm 2:48 pm
Obama is a great leader.
i think this will change up everything
in our envirment,we finally have a black
president.thank god for everything
Posted by: jasmine | November 10, 2008, 3:23 pm 3:23 pm
Remember we didn’t always have unleaded gasoline, either. People adapted to it. We didn’t have safety inspections for vehicles. People adapted to it.
Your analogies are extremely weak!
Germany is approx. 138,000 sq mi (just a bit smaller than the state of Montana) with a population of some 86 Million.
The US is approx 3.8 millon sq mi with a population just over 300 million.
It going to take a LOT longer and LOT more money to doanything similar to that in this country. Also, if I am to believe what you stated, they only got to 33%. So what are they doing to cover the oter 67% ?
On gas, the move to add unleaded gas did not mean your local gas station had to install an entirely new system. New pumps got installed yes, but you did not have to train people how to handle unleaded gas. Hydrogen is a much more volatile thing to deal with than gasoline. Oh and how long was it before say 99% of stations in the country had and unleaded pump?…answer…Years!
Electric Cars sound great, but try commuting in heavy traffic with them. If you facing a 50 to 75 mile commute around the greater metropolitan areas of Boston, NY, Washington Chicago, LA etc, these things are not all they are made out to be by the hype. Just like the idea your car is supposed to get the MPG thats on the sticker, most dont get that number anyway.
Simple example of why we are a long way away.
Chevrolet :
Aveo – under $13,000 with HGWY MPG of 34
Malibu Hybrid – more than double the cost for the SAME MPG!
I own a used Aveo, and im getting 33 to 35 MPG. There is no way I can possibly justify spending 26K or more on a car that does not do me any better in MPG than what I get with the used one I paid less 9K for!
I am not saying we cant get to the point we all hope for, what I am saying is it is not going to happen in 10 yrs!
Incentives are not going to make a big difference, if they did, we would already be well along the way on tihs road
Posted by: Mike_C | November 10, 2008, 4:12 pm 4:12 pm
My two cents… there is a U.S. company gearing up to RENT solar, kind of like a satellite dish. This is terrific technology. www dot dowattsright dot com
Posted by: Wayne Miller | November 10, 2008, 5:17 pm 5:17 pm
TampaLawyer: “His job is to be commander-in-chief, set policy and send legislation to Congress”
Its not the president’s job to send legislation to Congress. Where did you get an idea like that?
The president does send a president’s budget request. That’s probably the closest thing you have to the executive branch sending legislation to the legislative branch. But the PresBud is a bunch of numbers. Its Congress that considers those numbers and then comes up with budgets in the forms of appropriations and authorization bills.
New presidents do often come with a perceived mandate, and his allies in Congress may well capture that mandate in legislation.
But the president ‘leading’ is really just a reference to the bully pulpit aspect of leadership in terms of having any direct authority over the nation or Congress. He is commander in chief – but again that’s not a legislative function.
No where does “it” say the speaker of the House can’t voice his or her opinions about what the House needs to do.
Politically it may be better for the Democrats to orchestrate less of her and more of him. But that’s a party political decision – not a function of either’s job.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 9:07 pm 9:07 pm
Mike C – I don’t agree the analogies are weak. Again, they aren’t exact, but then they wouldn’t be analogies anyway.
Yes, Germany is smaller. Not sure why that invalidates the analogy. It seems to me there is a good chance the average German uses about the same amount of electricity as the average American.
I never said Germany was completely independent of all non-solar energy sources. But what they have accomplished is impressive, and we can do that, too. We also can profit from everyone else doing, if we move fast and jump into this global market.
Yes it takes more money to buy enough solar collectors to make a similar dent in our energy proportions. But like you said we have a lot more people. And the bottom line is this is a private sector function. The government provides the proper incentives, and the private sector employs its initiative, innovation and capital. It took more money to build all our gas stations, too, since we have so many more of them than Germany.
My point with the adaptive remarks was that people can and do adapt. There was a time when we didn’t have cars at all. People adapted to the technology available, and now most people have one. There will be a time when cars don’t run on fossil fuels. You know that as well as I. It might be 20 years or it might be 200 years, but its going to happen. Again with the right government incentives, it can happen sooner than later, and our car makers perhaps can be among those exporting these cars to other countries – or we can buy them from other countries.
Posted by: Paul | November 10, 2008, 9:15 pm 9:15 pm
I think the auto industry is very important to our nation. I would love to be able to purchase a new well-designed AFFORDABLE and COMFORTABLE vehicle completely made in the US that gets at least 35 mpg and has air conditioning. Bells and whistles are not important and create future complications. We are still driving a 94 Buick and 87 Honda and both get over 35 mpg. Haven’t found a new car we want to buy.
Posted by: Gail | November 10, 2008, 9:16 pm 9:16 pm
If the Japanese or some other society manufactures these cars, then they’ll take over the market anyway. Why does anyone think they’ll be made here in the states exclusively?
I don’t think this country can even manufacture plastic bowls anymore. Why do we always fall into this trap that so and so is going to ‘bring jobs’? Actually, they allow them to be sent overseas…and the American public buys up foreign-made stuff-and then complain that they don’t have jobs. Oh, and complain about unions.
Until corporations are given the incentive to carry on profitable operations over here (lower or no corporate taxes) then they will continue to hire few, and/or move overseas and profit under more cooperative governments.
You can’t have it both ways…sucking the dollars out of companies in order to punish their leadership for getting wealthy and to fund disastrous social programs while at the same time expecting to employ more Americans.
Also, as soon as more jobs become available, the Mexicans will rush in and undercut American workers.
Without dealing with those fundamental issues, it’d by like pouring water in a bucket with a big hole in the bottom.
Posted by: Grand Old Party | November 10, 2008, 10:10 pm 10:10 pm
Little Red says:
“Ooo…bama”, what a big campaign you had!
“Ooo…bama”, what a big ego you have.
“Ooo…bama”, why are you outsourcing grand children?
HELP!!!
Posted by: Little Red | November 12, 2008, 1:09 am 1:09 am
Smokey the Bear in The Note: Goldilocks Approach: Obama Seeks Balanced Pace
Smokey the Bear says, Watch out! It’s not hot, it’s not cold, the political porridge is still smoldering (epically in the costal areas). Liberal arsonists recently set the country ablaze with a glowing campaign, that consisted of a lot of smoke and mirrors. Have your emergency preparedness kits ready!
Posted by: Smokey the Bear | November 12, 2008, 1:43 am 1:43 am