Al Giordano thinks it's smart for President Obama to retain Secretary Geithner. His tedious arguments boil down to this:
- The Republicans want to destroy President Obama, and they would use Geithner's removal to do so.
- Geithner's critics need to offer an alternative.
- Geithner's critics need to prove that the alternative would be confirmed.
In the comments, Giordano engages in such engaging argumentation as this...
When commenter StephenLahanas says:
The numbers don't lie:
http://money.cnn.com/...
This is out of control and GUESS WHAT - it ain't working. The only idea that they seem to have is toss another trillion down in the abyss...
If you all keep supporting this guy (Geithner, not Obama), kiss Healthcare, and part of Social Security goodbye. Where do you think the dollars will come out of? Have you thought of that...
Obama has had to lose other folks on his team thusfar, it didn't make a dent. Keeping Geithner and this plan is political suicide.
Prediction - Geithner will go or he will take Obama with him.
Giordano responds:
Answer the questions
How can you guarantee that removing him won't be worse?
I and many others can't take your claims seriously until you can do that.
Can you taste the straw? My response:
absurd question
how can you guarantee that removing him wouldn't be better?
i and many others won't take your claims seriously until you can do that.
But to return to Giordano's initial questions, I will offer three simple answers:
- President Obama is enormously popular. The Republicans are enormously not. The American public would embrace an admission by the President that he needs to take more radical steps than he had anticipated, and that he needs more visionary subordinates to help him take those steps.
- I dunno. How about a Nobel Prize winning economist named Paul Krugman? Or how about a Nobel Prize winning economist named Joseph Stiglitz? Or how about an economist who so accurately predicted the current economic disaster that he became known as Dr. Doom? Using his own "logic," I invite Mr. Giordano to explain why none of them would be improvements over Geithner.
- Again using his own logic, I invite Mr. Giordano to guarantee that none of the three would be confirmed. Because I have a hunch that an enormously popular president could manage to sell a new Treasury Secretary who was a Nobel Prize winner, and who predicted the current debacle when everyone else was hyping the seemingly limitless economic expansion.
In closing, I will simply endorse this comment by greenskeeper:
Geithner Is a Distraction
The AIG bonuses were a distraction.
The problem is the policy -- President Obama's policy.
Your attempt to personalize the issue is an attempt to derail discussion of the substantive policy issues.
Nothing more and nothing less.