No One’s In Charge

28 November 2008 |permalink | email article

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on the interregnum: “Having two presidents is starting to feel like we have no president, and that’s the situation we’ll face until Inauguration Day.”

Barack Obama said, “We have only one President at a time” at his first press conference as President-elect, underscoring the gap between reality and action.

President Bush wore a traditional Peruvian poncho and met with Pacific Rim leaders in Lima last weekend before returning home to sign off on Henry Paulson’s latest ploy to rescue the global economy—the huge bailout of Citigroup. 

On Tuesday Bush greeted thousands of soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky., boasting of military successes in Iraq and Afghanistan and insisting that “success in Iraq will mean the American people are more secure,” in denial again about Al Qaeda as the real 9/11 enemy.

The Decider could have fulfilled his job description by aggressively addressing the economic meltdown; instead, he punted.

Not even the stunning suggestion from James Baker, the former secretary of state and Republican wise man, that Bush and Obama develop and announce a joint economic rescue plan, has moved B43.

Without authority Obama, unlike FDR who waited four months before his inauguration in March 1933 to act, is moving at flank speed to have an economic stimulus package ready “right away” after Jan. 20.

The Changer, on three consecutive days before Thanksgiving, held press conferences to underscore his top priority by announcing a muscular new economic team. Time’s Joe Klein, calling Bush the lamest of all possible ducks,observed that even if George Washington were the incumbent, the markets would want to know what John Adams was planning to do after his Inauguration.

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