Steve Pearlstein Goes Off On Everyone
The Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein is an insightful writer. But sometimes a good venting is better than wisdom. Here Pearlstein manages both–an I’m-mad-as-hell, leave-no-one-spared tirade that covers all three sides of Washington’s Iron Triangle (Congress, the Executive and Lobbyists,) the private sector, Universities, State Governments, Unions and just about everyone in between. The column is so right on so many subjects, I’d have to reproduce its entirety here (which isn’t fair to the Washington Post) or you could go there and finish it.
Here Pearlstein is just tuning up with the tone-deaf Daschle nomination:
For the American public, Daschle became the latest symbol of everything that is wrong with Washington — the influence-peddling and corner-cutting and sacrifice of the public good to private interest. Now that this system has let them down, and left them poorer and anxious about the future, people are angry about it and no longer willing to accept the corruption of the public process and the whole notion of public service.
The irony, of course, is that Barack Obama understood all this and tapped into Americans’ frustration as the central message of his “change” campaign. But even he, with only four years in Washington, failed to see the depth of the problem or anticipate the ferocity of the backlash.
Obama’s first mistake was to hand the keys of the transition office over to a crew made up almost exclusively of Washington insiders who — surprise! — have largely succeeded in restoring to power their friends from the Clinton administration. Worse still, he has fallen for the tired old Washington “wisdom” that the only way to get anything done is to concentrate even more power in an ever larger White House full of czars and councils and chiefs of staff who ostensibly are there to “coordinate” policy but invariably wind up making it, sapping the departments and agencies of whatever importance and energy and creativity they have left.
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, congressional leaders, while nodding in the direction of bipartisan cooperation, have also stuck largely to business as usual. It’s hard to know who is to blame more for the party-line vote in the House on a desperately needed economic stimulus bill — the Republicans who cling to stale ideology and spout economic nonsense or the Democrats who shut them out of the drafting process, never bothered to articulate a compelling rationale and lost a golden opportunity to reform the programs as they were expanding them.
Source:
Stumbing on their Sense of Entitlement
by STEVE PEARLSTEIN
Washington Post; February 4, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/03/AR2009020303634.html
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February 4th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
What’s left to say. He said it all except for the resulting business as usual.
February 4th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. Fantastic article. This is what I was talking about regarding this country’s inability to come together to do big things. Everyone in every corner has their own sense of entitlement and separate agendas and it’s literally tearing the country apart. We are on a precipice.
February 5th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Yup. I know I’ve had days where I felt that way and in a lot of ways I was right.
February 5th, 2009 at 9:23 am
I wish Pearlstein would take this same critical eye to the banks rather than constantly apologizing for them and encouraging continued bailouts for them. He continues to foist the canard that while we may not like it, the only choice we have is to continue pouring money down the black hole known as our banking system. It almost would seem as if there are 2 different Pearlsteins; the uncritical banking apologist, and the highly critical Washington reformer. Hmmmmm wonder which side his bread is buttered on?
February 5th, 2009 at 11:58 am
great stuff. He needed to kick the underwater mortgage clowns too though