Where's the Change?

Former Bush administration Press Secretary Scott Mcclellan wrote a book that was deeply lauded in liberal circles for calling out the President on many issues that no one in the tightly controlled Bush "inner circle" had thus far not challenged. In What Happened, Mcclellan claims that, among other things, the Bush administration continued the Clintonista politics of selling the issues rather than governing them. We were told that the President largely ignored facts in favor of persuasion used to convince the public that they should agree with him. The "permanent campaign" is the term that he uses to describe such tactics. Candidate Obama promised us change; President Obama assured us change. I for one, although a committed conservative, was ready for a change.

Here we are, 127 days after President Obama was sworn in and the paint is beginning to dry on this administration. And time after time after time, our inexperienced President provides us with what can only politely be called his version of the truth. In what can only be seen as efforts to perpetuate this notion of a "permanent campaign" we are told only what the President wants us to hear, instead of being given all of the facts. This is not governing.

After multiple attempts to bail out the failed company, Chrysler declared bankruptcy at the beginning of this month. In the President's press conference making the announcement, he vilifies the secured debt holders of a company in shambles:

"Now, while many stakeholders made sacrifices and worked constructively, I have to tell you, some did not. In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.
They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none. Some demanded twice the return that other lenders were getting.
I don’t stand with them. I stand with Chrysler’s employees and their families and communities. I stand with Chrysler’s management, its dealers, and its suppliers."

What the President fails to mention is that, before his government began giving away free money (now that they are in Bankruptcy, Chrysler will not ever pay back the $7 billion in loans they received) Chrysler sought out financing through the place all companies do: free capital markets. These investors took enormous risk by investing in a company that had been failing for years; the only way they could justify it to their investors and boards of directors was through the security of knowing that, as secured debt holders, they would be among the first to be paid back in a bankruptcy that was looking more and more likely. The President failed to mention that his administration strong-armed the other debt holders, who had received TARP funds, into submission to his administration's demands. Demands that required these investors to take a more severe loss than the one he asked his friends at the United Auto Workers' Union to take. The non-TARP debt holders refused to sell out their own shareholders in this fleecing of the private sector; shareholders for whom the have a legally mandated duty to act in their interest, only to be publicly flogged by the leader of the free world for doing exactly what they are required to do. But Mr. Obama had his scapegoat and he was not going to miss the opportunity to blame someone other than himself and his own failed policies.

Just yesterday, as you can read about on Despina Karra's blog, the President announced trillions of dollars in health care savings for the American people. He failed to mention that this savings had already been figured into his budget; a budget that, with this savings that is hypothetical at best, still pushes us into record deficits that this country has never seen before. But he stands up and announces it to a public that is largely unaware of this fact.

The evidence goes on. Take a look at his Cap and Trade policy as well as his heroic announcement to close the corporate tax loopholes that will put all American multinationals at a competitive disadvantage and cost us jobs. Half truths at best, concealment of the truth at worst. For a President that campaigned almost exclusively as a change; an alternative to the lies of the previous administration, you would think that he would make every effort to avoid even the perception of hiding information from the public. But as the paint dries, its a very different picture that is emerging.