Through The Dust

A reader sees an Obama trade-mark:

What many do not understand is that the government is playing for time, not some brilliant economic miracle. We do not have the money or political leverage to solve this problem from the top down by divine fiat. We have to buy time -- literally -- for the ten-thousand smaller acts of restoration and renewal to take place. All this flow of money, this vast seemingly indiscriminate transfusion of economic blood, has one purpose: to keep the patient's heart pumping until the systemic crisis is past -- another 6-12-18 months. It is messy, sloppy, gross heroic medicine. Sure there's tremendous waste. Get used to it. And get these people out of the operating room!

It is very interesting to watch how this crisis reveals and highlights character: the sniveling privileged Wall Street upper-crust, the semi-hysterical, uninformed punditocracy, the puerile Republican opposition -- and Obama, cool as a cucumber, playing his game, five steps ahead, setting up moves that won't come to fruition for months or years, while his opposition flails at the thin air where he used to be. I love it.

It's the future that is calling Obama, not the present.

The Republican reaction to this stimulus package is on a par with McCain suspending his campaign during the primary to "handle" the economic crisis back in Washington. Completely clueless, cynical empty gestures. They think we'll forget. They're wrong. What Karl Rove wanted, and was willing to steal by any means necessary, Obama will get, handed to him as a free gift by the American people: real political power, the power to transform society for a generation or more.

I cannot say as much myself. For me, the future is still murky and unforeseen crises unknowable. But I've learned not to under-estimate the man. So have a lot of people, except, it seems, the pundits and the Republicans.