OBAMA ON THE ECONOMY...AT GEORGETOWN!

In Chicago over Easter, I had an interesting conversation with one of our hosts over breakfast concerning the importance of "unique opportunities" in decision-making.  Thus, with President Obama giving a speech on campus just this once and with plenty of theology classes under my belt and several more to go, I decided to cut my first class ever (I know, I'm such a square) and watch the speech televised in the student center.  Not quite as cool as being able to say I was in the room (didn't hit the ticket lottery, unfortunately), but seeing him on TV from only a few hundred yards away isn't too shabby.  Especially when you can look out the window and see his Secret Service snipers on the Georgetown rooftops...

Today's talk, which appeared to be largely if not wholly delivered without a Teleprompter, concerned the state of the economic crisis and what the administration has done and is doing to combat it.  "Recessions are not uncommon," noted the President, "but this recession is different...caused by a perfect storm of irresponsibility and poor decision-making" from Washington to Wall St. to Main St.  Repeatedly blaming a lack of "accountability or oversight from anyone in Washington" as a prime enabling factor in sowing the seeds of crisis, Obama went on to explain in layman's terms what has happened, what he's doing about it, and why his hands are so badly bound by events.  Overall, it was a pretty good speech, though it is strange to see him off-text.  He does struggle a bit without a Teleprompter, which is notable only because he normally appears so fluent.  The other somewhat annoying tendency in his speech is repeated use of the royal "we" in places where "I" would do just fine.

As far as the actual content of the speech, Obama did not exactly break new ground.  Essentially, the government needs to keep spending like it's going out of style in the short term because that is actually the case with the rest of the economy; health care and entitlement are intricately connected, wildly expensive, and desperately in need of (hopefully) coordinated reform; education and clean technology need to become priorities; the discretionary budget has to be reined in and the non-discretionary budget has to be tightened and made more efficient; there is a "glimmer of hope" but 2009 will still be "a difficult year for America's economy;" and government as a whole (this means you, Congress) needs to answer the bell and take this opportunity to rebuild the economy for the 21st century as the "house upon the rock."

Ironically, in skipping Islamic Religious Thought and Practice, I got a lecture on another five-pillared foundation from our decidedly non-Muslim President.  These five pillars--Wall Street reform, new investments in education, a focus on renewable energy technology, a commitment to health care, and new savings in the Federal budget--are the foundation of our "house upon the rock."  Specifically, Obama argued that new regulations on investment and banking need to be put in place in order to tie pay to job performance ("a novel concept") and--more worrying--so that the government can recoup salary and/or bonus monies from executives who have been unfairly compensated.  Acknowledging that the next adventure down that road needs legal grounding and precedent to avoid the firestorm that sprang up this time is a good start; laying aside the threat of a special tax to remedy life's unfairnesses at whim would have been better.  Educationally, Obama committed the U.S. to leading the world in its rate of college graduation by 2020, an effort that is being founded right now with initiatives in early-childhood education and reforming teacher compensation to reward excellence rather than tenure.  The President also acknowledged that everyone knows that whichever country gets renewable energy figured out first will automatically put itself on the fast track to 21st-century dominance, lamenting that the U.S. has allowed others to get ahead thus far yet declaring that he was "unwilling to accept failure" in that area, wanting to see the U.S. take a commanding lead in renewable energy development ASAP.  Health care is health care: "skyrocketing health-care costs can't be allowed to keep strangling the economy."  Burgeoning public- and private-sector health-care premiums are putting the brakes on the economy, a situation which is only deteriorating as Federal health insurance costs go up and the Boomers age their way onto entitlement rolls.  While acknowledging that the Federal budget is out of whack and only getting more so in the short run, Obama declared the fifth pillar of the new economic foundation to be long-term Federal budget reform--cutting the stuff that doesn't work and making more efficient the stuff that does.

All of these are excellent and practical points that have already received ample coverage by better-known scribes.  Obama's overarching point today was that the 20th century was dominated by America because America led the world in the education of its populace, access to and use of energy, manageable health care benefits to as many citizens as possible, and a trend of pragmatism and discretion in personal and national budgeting.  All more or less true, and all worthy of current aspiration.  Getting ourselves educated will make us better innovators and workers, better innovators will help produce energy technologies that better workers will build, and so forth.  As Obama also noted, we do need some money-manipulators, but we can't rest the hopes of our entire economy on prospecting number-crunchers.  The President declared that the best and the brightest American minds should get back to focusing on producing "stuff" (you know, stuff that has actual value), and clean energy technologies would be a great batch of stuff to focus on producing.  Government spending, meanwhile, is certainly necessary in the short term but a real effort to, as Obama put it, not just cut a few earmarks (they're a fact of life anyway) and the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts but to lay the foundations for a return to a pragmatic, responsible, and more efficient Federal budget is vital.  Don't hold your breath, but we can always hope...

Regardless of just how bright the glimmer of hope in the economy may seem, there was a glimmer of hope in Obama's rhetorical focus.  As you've read multiple times in this space and will doubtless read again, a return of moral courage and responsibility to the halls of power is desperately needed, and the latter portion of Obama's speech was full of calls for just that.  The post-partisan promised land is still a long ways off, but the President is absolutely right that now is not the time to bicker, blow in the winds of the 24-hour news cycle, or simply ignore problems in the hope that they will go away.  The risks of rebuilding on the same patch of sand in the face of all the warning signs surrounding it are almost too immense to contemplate.  Obama made no bones about the pain of picking up and moving to the rock and then taking the time to carefully establish the five-pillared foundation of 21st-century economic health and dominance, but he was equally right to note that this crash has presented the country with an opportunity too good to be wasted--if those in power can seize the moment and take the long view.  Clearly, we've been playing with fire for some time now, and look where it's got us.  The Depression provided the tabula rasa needed to turn from the recklessness of the Roaring Twenties to the values and practices that brought us the American Century; hopefully we can use this near-Depression to similarly reboot the system for the better before it descends into another Depression, which would be a virtual certainty with the next bust cycle if we simply pull out of this crisis and get right back on the track that got us here.  Obama gets it (I hope), calling to Congress that, like it or not, he and they are the ones in office today and therefore cannot duck the responsibilties thrust upon them: "we have been called to govern in extraordinary times."  Let's hope they listen and learn.

*****

In other news, that was some pretty nifty shooting by those three SEALs who rescued the MAERSK Alabama's hostage captain from the Somali pirates, no?  Simultaneously dropping three jittery, homicidal no-goodniks at over 80 feet is tricky enough as is; to do it at night after a night jump into the ocean, a Zodiak ride to the destroyer, and from one bobbing vessel to another is just freakin' amazing.  In today's speech, Obama noted that Defense Secretary Gates's recently-proposed budget was "right on the mark" for efficient and practical use of resources.  That represents an annointing by the Commander in Chief of the Young Turks taking the Pentagon by storm preaching counterinsurgency and low-intensity warfare, with GEN Petraeus at their head.  This op proves they're right.  As the Post noted this morning, the Navy had a destroyer on-site rapidly but didn't do anything for several days, leading many to assume that the "muscle-bound American military" was once again dressed for battle but unable to act, only to have these SEAL shooters prove everybody wrong.  Those shots would have been hard if not impossible to attempt without the presence of the conventional destroyer, but it was the unique capabilities of the Special Operators that were called for (and employed) to resolve the situation.  We don't need real fancy stuff to get the operators in place (C-135s have been dropping Americans into battle for about a half-century and destroyers are hardly new technology), but investing in the guys who can put bullets in pirate brains under those conditions is certainly worth your tax dollars.  Besides, .30-caliber bullets are way cheaper than stealthed destroyers.