That seems to be the latest meme. "President Obama is doing too much," "President Obama should just focus on the Economy," "Who has time to worry about curing disease, education, health care, the war, foreclosures, energy independence, next year's budget, or even eating breakfast before the economy is fixed"?
I mean just think about it. John McCain suspended his campaign during the general election to deal with the Economic Crisis, and it did him a WORLD of good! Just look at him now! He may not be President, but he's still a Senator and he's been raising a stink whenever he could. Heck, losing the election has done him lots of good, so why shouldn't President Obama take the same strategy now that he is President, it's not like there's an election to lose right now, and elections are all that matter, right?
Let's just face it, the last eight years has left this country unaccustomed to a President who can walk and chew gum at the same time. We all know the media can't focus on more than one thing at a time, and by President Obama doing so much he is completely throwing everyone off their guard. In fact, whenever he takes time to talk abotu anything BUT the economy its because he wants to distract us from the economy. It's not like everything else isn't constantly focused on the crappy economy. I mean, when I watch TV, only 90% of the commercials ever mention something about the failing economy.
There is no way for President Obama, or anyone in the current administration, to ignore the economy. With that being said, the last eight years have left a lot of issues in the road for President Obama to deal with. If he only deals with them one at a time, he'd never get anything done. But I suppose that's the point here.
So I say President Obama should totally suspend running the country so he can have tunnel vision and focus only on the Economy. Even if it's something as non-time consuming as signing an executive order, every second of every minute of every day should be spent thinking about the economy. While he's doing that we can implement the Republicans' totally awesome idea of a spending freeze, everything should just STOP until the economy is fixed.
The idea sounds pretty stupid doesn't it? I don't understand how people can be upset (well, just the media it seems) that we now have a President that actually DOES stuff as opposed to what we had the last eight years, I happen to find it quite refreshing. He does something new every day, there'd be months at a time when we weren't sure Bush was even IN the White House.
UPDATE Oh, and Robert Gibbs just gave like the PERFECT answer to the "is Obama doing too much" question right now using the "House on Fire" analogy. Basically he said, would you want the President to pick a room to save, or would you want them to stop the entire house from burning? I'm sure there will be video/a transcript soon, but it was a great answer!
UPDATE #2 Found the transcript on Politico:
The question was: "The administration's critics say that, you know, if there's a house on fire, that the economy, you know, needs, for example, a functioning credit market and there's not a fully functioning plan for getting toxic assets off the books. Why should the president be talking something -- about something that admittedly would be, you know, important for future generations, to improve education in America, when there's a house on fire right now?"
In response, Gibbs got fired up.
"Well, I think part of the house that's on fire is the dealing with the education problem," he said. "Let's posit this. Let's get our banking system fixed. Let's get credit flowing again. But tell me which business is going to borrow money to expand, to add jobs, to do stem cell research that can't find the people either coming out of college today or graduate school to do those jobs. Where are we going to go? Where do those jobs usually go? Somewhere overseas, right? Does that make sense for our long-term economic growth?"
His own windup seemed to fan the flames.
"I think that, unless we take all of these steps -- your -- your analogy about the house is on fire. Which room are you going to put out first?" Gibbs said. "Or are you going to call the fire department and ask them to put all of it out? Or are you going to say, "You know what? We love the living room. Start over there. And if you can, get quickly to the kitchen and next to the den."
There was laughter. Gibbs continued.
"We could do that. And maybe, by the time they get to the kitchen or the den, the whole house is in ashes. Instead of asking the fire department to pick different rooms in which to extinguish, the president has decided to alert the fire department and everyone involved that we have a responsibility to move this country forward, address the long-term problems and the short-term problems in order to create jobs for the future.
Now THAT is a kick ass answer. Still waiting for video. . .
UPDATE #2 Here's video, h/t Kitty: