The Obama Vision of Federal Government

[babylonsister]

The Obama Vision of Federal Government
Howard Fineman
In Katrina speech, the president tries to prove that the feds can be a source for good.


Officially—and unofficially—the Beck-Palin rally in Washington yesterday and President Obama’s speech in New Orleans today had nothing to do with each other.

But, back to back, they framed the furious argument at the core of this fall’s campaign and of the next two years: can and do we believe in the president’s vision of an activist, deeply-involved-at-the-local-level, “community”-invoking federal government?

We know what the Tea Partiers and their fellow travelers think. They are shouting “NO!” as loudly as they can, even as they rely on their Social Security and their Medicare, on their Interstates and tax cuts and credits, on student loans and weather satellites and air-traffic-control-systems and research earmarks.

Obama took the glaring, instructive opportunity of the fifth anniversary of Katrina—the deadliest and costliest natural catastrophe in American history—to try to defend the proposition that the first part of his presidency has undermined for many voters: that the federal government can actually help people.

The last 18 months have seen a hurricane of legislative activity by Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress. From bank and auto bailouts to health care to financial-services reform, the bill-passing season produced literally thousands of pages of new law.

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http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/29/do-we-believe-in-the-obama-vision-of-federal-government.html