"It may be useful to remember that Christian faith is ultimately dependent upon what actually happened rather than upon the views of historians."
- I. Howard Marshall
Friday, November 7, 2008
As I've stated previously, Barack Obama is not the candidate I supported, but, come January 20th, he will be my President and I wish him great success. I also think it's important that concerned citizens begin reading up on what an Obama Presidency will look like.
The Obama transition team has created a website, Change.Gov, containing the planned agenda of the 44th President. I plan to read as much of this as time allows, and post commentary when the inspiration takes me. Many of the policy positions on change.gov are ones that I will be taking issue with, respectfully, in this space.
There is a lot on the site. It's interesting reading.
One general note: sprinkled liberally (no pun intended) throughout the site are references to George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the "failed policies" thereof. This seems very much like the kind of stuff you would read in a campaign - and particularly a campaign in which George Bush was running for reelection. Does this seem a little pointless to anyone else? Yes, of course, Barack Obama represents a distinct change in direction in the Executive branch, and his policies will differ greatly from GWBs. But come January, all policies coming out of the White House will be Obama's policies. GWB is, for all intensive purposes, in the final slide toward retirement at this point and I don't know how relevant he is to the future. I'm just wondering how long we'll have to hear about how badly he screwed things up, and I wonder how long the blame for how things progress will be laid at his feet. (Personally, I think Bush did a lot of things right, and will post on that more as we get closer to inauguration day.)
Trackbacks:
Trackback URL: http://thinklings.org/bloo.trackback.php/5029.
Comments on "A Look At Coming Policies":
2. Bob Sacamento
- 11/07/2008 3:29 pm CST
Personally, I think Bush did a lot of things right, and will post on that more as we get closer to inauguration day.
I'm with you Bill. Hows about you and me and the other two guys in the country who agree with us getting together for a DVD and pizza some time? :)
Obama, to my mind, is exceptionally intelligent and extremely ideological. If his intelligence can get the upper hand over his ideology, I think his administation will look much like Bill Clinton's. But if not, if he actually tries to do all the things he promised his party he would do, it will be beyond "interesting."
3. dbd
- 11/07/2008 4:42 pm CST
See, this is what I was saying. The "Reproductive Choice" section gives Obama's general opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade, but doesn't mention FOCA or any other specific legislation.
The website seems to be a lot less interactive than his campaign website was, but it does offer an email form to "contact the transition". This probably just goes to the site's support staff, but hopefully they will log citizen emails before deleting them.
I have written to state my support for the President-Elect and my opposition to FOCA. I fondly imagine that, in an Excel spreadsheet on some worker's hard drive, I have increased the value "pro-life supporter email" by 1.
4. Bill
- 11/07/2008 6:08 pm CST
I'm with you Bill. Hows about you and me and the other two guys in the country who agree with us getting together for a DVD and pizza some time? :)
Sounds great! I'll bring the popcorn.
6. Darrell
- 11/07/2008 8:01 pm CST
From the site
a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year
Yay!
8. Bill
- 11/07/2008 11:50 pm CST
Stam - you may be right but I also think that history will be kinder to Bush (by far) than current conventional wisdom. But time will tell.
Darrell - that one's going to be my first post :-)
9. TheCalvinator
- 11/08/2008 12:10 am CST
I don't like the idea of mandatory community service. I didn't like it when Dr. Battistoni floated it at Baylor, and I don't like it any more now.
10. Sharpton
- 11/08/2008 12:31 am CST
In my mind, mandatory unpaid community service kind of misses the point on a couple of levels...
11. Adam
- 11/08/2008 1:13 am CST
What's the purpose of community service? To do something good with a smile on your face, or to serve the community? I understand that the individual who serves the community voluntarily shows greater character than the one who is forced to do it, but either way, the poor get some food, right?
12. Sharpton
- 11/08/2008 2:00 am CST
If the service is mandatory, unpaid, and not a punishment...
It's uncomfortably close to indentured servitude to me. I'm generally against forced activity of just about any kind, outside of a prison sentence scenario. Especially for children.
13. Quaid
- 11/08/2008 9:31 am CST
Well, web sites don't get thrown together that quick - this was obviously being worked on either before election day, or they've co-opted talking points/strategy ideas from the campaign and pasted them into the new web site to have content.
In either case, the people authoring the content are Obama's campaign staff, and, therefore, were indoctrinated to hate/blame Bush for everything. Since they all believe that Bush is, well, evil, then by setting up the dichotomy between themselves and Bush, they are demonstrating that they are not evil. If they are not evil, then they believe themselves to be good.
Hopefully, someone pays attention to this and begins to clean it up.
As far as history's view of Bush - give it about twenty years. People will start to come around. Personally, I think Clinton's place in history will venture slightly downward and Bush's will go from close-to-worst to better-than-average.
Leave a Comment:
Thanks for the link to Obama's site. It will be interesting to read.