Obama's Feet of Clay

The Fierce Urgency of Pork
02/06/09 - WashingtonPost by Charles Krauthammer (via JustOneMinute)
An excerpt, not a summary.

[edited] Yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

The Age of Obama began with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits for tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change "planted" to "ready to market" for a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The promised great ethical transformations would be seen as the usual fairy tale that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.