SmartRemarks

Just going from the press coverage, of course. I haven’t read the actual FY 2010 federal budget the administration presented to Congress. (Have you ever tried to read a federal budget? Even in outline form, they’re large. And arcane. The legislators themselves don’t usually bother. They have staff lobbyists for that sort of thing…)

Anyway, I’m going to tackle this one in bullet-point format, starting with the largest category:

Good Things About Obama’s Budget

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Tags: climate, Congress, economy, education, energy, environment, federal budget, health care, Obama, taxes

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Obama’s address tonight may well have been the first presidential speech I’ve ever seen that genuinely lived up to the full meaning of the word “presidential.” The first time in my life we’ve had real, effective leadership in Washington. So this is what it looks and sounds like!

It’s sincerely heartening these days, of course, just to hear a presidential speech delivered in complete, grammatical sentences, shorn of angry fearmongering and brazen paralogia. But Obama had to achieve far more than that. He had a tightrope to walk, having to avoid being too doom-n-gloomy (and thereby get accused of talking down the economy) but also avoid making unrealistically rosy promises (and thereby get accused of empty politicking). The times we are in are indeed, as he phrased it, “difficult and perilous,” yet he had to make clear that they are not insurmountably so.

He pulled it off.

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Tags: Bill Kristol, economy, education, energy, financial crisis, George Lakoff, health care, media, Obama, polling, Rachel Maddow, Republicans, State of the Union