First Principles

Obama told the “CBS Evening News” he was not sure what went wrong.

Well, that should help him solve this problem and bring Democrats and Republicans together.  If you don’t know “what went wrong,” how do you expect to make it right?!?

This AP story has all kinds of gems from Obama, like this one:

“Obviously it’s pretty frustrating for Democrats having seen the mismanagement that’s been taking place over the last several years to feel like we’ve got to step in and get something done,” he told CBS. “But that’s how I think many of us feel, that we can’t worry about how we got here. Now we’ve got to take some serious steps.”

And after just having injected Presidential Politics (and not much else) into the situation:

“It’s important not to inject presidential politics into this,” Obama said.

I want to know from Obama exactly what past regulation (specifically) the Republicans opposed that would have solved this problem.  I want to know what reform proposal George Bush blocked that could have prevented it in the first place.

And most of all, I want the mythical Obama who could on the wings of rhetoric make Ahmadinejhad our friend and ally to show up and mediate a good deal!  What ever happened to that guy?

Of course, none of those things are going to happen.  Fortunately, we have the next best thing – working the phones!

An Obama aide says the Illinois senator has been working the phones between campaign events to stay on top of developments with the negotiations and offer his help, speaking daily with Democratic congressional leaders and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Obama called Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., on his cell phone Thursday morning for an update when Dodd happened to be in a meeting with Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, working on a deal. Dodd passed the phone to Bennett, and Obama spoke briefly with him as well.

Gah.

The worst thing, though, is Obama’s sense of perspective:

Obama said he hopes McCain will go ahead with their debate scheduled for Friday night in Mississippi. McCain said Wednesday they should delay the forum to focus on the crisis. But Obama said on CNN: “My sense is that we can do more than one thing at a time.”

There’s a time for multi-tasking, and a time for focus.  This is a time for focus.  Presidential debates are important – decisive, I think, in this election.  But they can also be easily postponed, whereas time is a definite factor in this crisis.  And as even Bill Clinton pointed out today, it’s not like he hasn’t turned down plenty of opportunities to debate John McCain all summer long.

But then, politics is Obama’s life.  This is a guy who honestly thought “running” a presidential campaign (where everyone is on your side, and all your employees are at-will) somehow is on par with running a city, a state, a business, or a superpower nation.  It’s not surprising that he would see his time in the spotlight as deserving equal treatment with one of the most critical and impactful Congressional negotiations in decades.

McCain might not be any more articulate about his specifics, but then he has a long history of actually hammering out bipartisan deals (for good and ill), and more importantly, has been on the record warning of this impending problem for years.  But “better than Obama” is hardly a ringing endorsement.

The bottom line is that I don’t trust either of these guys (or anyone else in Washington) to “fix” our economy.  The most frustrating thing of all is knowing that if only we actually had the limited government our founders intended, we wouldn’t have to.