I have supported and volunteered for Senator Obama since day one. I looked the other way when he backed down on Telecom Immunity. So, maybe that wasn’t a fight he needed to take up at that point. I’ve grinned and beared it as his anti-war Iraq stance has morphed into a pro-war Afghanistan/Iran/Pakistan stance. Okay, maybe he needs to say these things in order to appear strong on defense.
But his support of the "Paulson as Godfather of the Economy Bill" lately is making my head spin. To his credit, he’s been saying some tough things about oversight and CEO salaries. But the bill that failed to pass the House, that Senator Obama approved of was at its heart a bailout package that rewarded bad behavior, plain and simple. It had some nods at possible oversight down the road, but nothing firmly written into the bill. Oversight should have been happening all along and frankly, it's too late to be talking about oversight as a solution. What we need is fundamental, sweeping systemic reform of a broken system based on long hours of hearings and testimony from experts from all sides of the economic spectrum. We’ve had enough of these bailouts that put the cart before the horse and then forget the horse altogether.
But Obama keeps saying what George Bush is saying. We need something now, passed quickly. Gone is the natural skepticism and pragmatism that caused him to be against the Iraq War from the start. I’m beginning to think that Obama was a one-trick pony, that is, his supposed good judgment was a one-time epiphany about one issue. Either that, or maybe he’s just been hanging out in the rich white men’s club too long now.