Will Slow and Steady Win the Race?

[babylonsister]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/25/will_slow_and_steady_win_the_r.html?wprss=44

Will Slow and Steady Win the Race?

By Dan Balz


"I'm a big believer in persistence," President Obama said at his press conference Tuesday night. No wonder. Just two years ago, Obama was struggling -- not always successfully -- to learn how to be an effective presidential candidate. Now he's in the Oval Office. There are many reasons for his success, but persistence is certainly one of them.

In his first 60 days in office, Obama has nearly overwhelmed Washington with his proposals to stimulate the economy, fix the credit crisis, help struggling homeowners, regulate the financial industry, reform the health care system, initiate a potentially costly program for alternative energy and push to revitalize the nation's education system. Too ambitious, too costly and too much at once, his critics have said.

Yet there is another side to this president-in-a-hurry and that was the Obama the nation saw Tuesday night. It might be too much to call him the plodding president. But there is a distinct clash between the culture of cable, which demands instant action from and renders instant judgments on politicians, and the style of the new president, which is to try mightily to resist succumbing to those pressures.

It's easy to think of this president as the embodiment of the Internet age. His campaign skillfully exploited new media to build a nationwide network of donors, volunteers and advocates. This is the president who demanded that he keep his BlackBerry, which is symbolic of the always-on, always-connected culture that accelerated the flow of information.

But he learned from his campaign that the velocity of information can instantly change the conventional wisdom, for better or worse, and that there is no more to be gained from trying to anticipate those shifts than from trying to time the market.

snip//

Obama's answers on Tuesday night did not fully address all the concerns that exist about his budget, the projections of massive deficits or whether the public should have confidence in his administration's capacity to handle everything it is doing. Just as he took time to adapt to the rigors of running for president, so too is he now adjusting to the presidency itself.

Whether things are truly moving in the right direction -- and whether, if they are, it is thanks to his policies or other, larger forces at work in the economy -- are questions that can't yet be answered. Obama's message Tuesday was interpreted as "trust us and give us time" -- but what he really seemed to be saying was, "I trust myself."

[NYC_SKP]

1. My analogy: towing things

If pulling a stuck car or tractor out of mud, you often have to pull very slowly and with gradually increasing force.

Pull too hard and you lose traction. Worse still, you snap the chain or tow rope.

I trust our president and the manner in which he's pulling us in the right direction.

Good post.

Recommended.

[babylonsister]

2. Good analogy! We're still trying to get this country out of

that ditch, so towing is appropriate! ;)

[HopeOverFear]

3. kick and rec'd