by Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
Washington Examiner
December 24, 2009
In his year-end interviews with friendly news outlets like The Washington Post and National Public Radio, President Obama had a curious choice for his biggest accomplishment of the year: the bailout of the financial sector.
It seems odd that a president whose mantra is change, change, change would pick a program initiated by his predecessor.
While the Troubled Asset Relief Program is surely the least popular initiative of President George W. Bush among conservatives, it is also widely reviled by many liberals and moderates.
Obama’s choice says a great deal about the state of things in Washington at the end of his first year in power.
What was supposed to be the year when Washington was made new as the morning has come to an unsatisfying sunset. The Senate majority is defending a rank round of vote buying on the president’s key domestic initiative. The House majority is fuming about a demand to fund another Bush-style surge in Afghanistan. Leaders of the president’s party debate whether voters are angry at Democrats for being too liberal or too ineffective. None argues that voters aren’t angry.
As a candidate, Obama was careful to keep his promises opaque. But he more than compensated in the period between his election and his first speech to a joint session of Congress as president. As the Senate prepares to flee Washington, we see the consequences of a scattered, overlarge agenda.
But candidate Obama only specifically promised a few things, and they all had a common theme: Reversing the wrongs done by Bush.
The editorial continues here.
