President's Weekly Address 03.07.09

President Obama gave his address for the week. It's entitled Toward a Better Day. Here's the vid:

For the complete text click here.

I definitely have to give it to him, he certainly does everything he can to keep things sounding optimistic. Although if there's one thing I'm critical of, it's this focus on the past. He just keeps talking over and over about this huge deficit that he's inherited and how so many terrible mistakes have been made in the past and they'll change that. I hope he's right that they'll change it, but I think most of us have gotten the message about the economic irresponsibility. I mean we feel it on "main street" as he so often likes to reference.

Of course he mentions ARRA and about how it's going to create so many jobs. But assuming it all works the way he plans, it still worries me. He says the jobless rate is up to 4.4 million and ARRA is supposed to create 3.5 million jobs. That doesn't sound too bad, other than he says those jobs are supposed to come over the next two years. Now I'm no math major, but I'm pretty sure that 3.5 million is almost a million less than 4.4 so that means we would still have 1 million less jobs than we did beforehand and those 3.5 million aren't even supposed to come around for 2 years? Yeah, I see a little bit of a problem there. Now the one thing I will say, we can't expect him to be a complete miracle worker, but it seems like there must be something faster than that. I don't know, economics definitely is not my specialty.

Of course I still feel like I'm getting the same Barack Obama campaign politics I got before he was elected. I think there are few people that love hope and change more than myself, but I fail to see the substance of it really coming from President Obama. Sure, Barack is definitely a major change from President Bush in most of his core beliefs, but what about the actual processes? It seems to me like we're still getting more of the same. I just never felt like Obama really had a plan and it seems to be a continuation of that. ARRA and everything else they have been working on they admit isn't necessarily going to solve the problem (and I'm enough of a realist to realize that A. there's no quick fix and B. it probably will take multiple things to fix it) but there seems to be enough uncertainty there that it worries me. They stand confident that they will fix the problem, but do not necessarily seem confident that their policies will fix the problem. The planning just doesn't seem to be there. I said while he was on the campaign trail that I didn't feel like he had real plans articulated, but rather just those rather grandiose ideas of hope and change. Sure it makes you feel good inside, but when it comes down to actually getting it done what is going to happen? Currently it seems like the Obama Administration is simply doing something for the sake of doing something. They don't want to be caught sitting on their hands, which I think is a reasonably admirable quality. Of course it seems like a better idea to really find out what is best and what will work and implement that. Right now it seems like they're simply fueling the fire by throwing money at it and hoping it extinguishes the problem.

I hope it does Mr. Obama. Or else I'm really going to want a change.