Eating his Campaign Words – A Curiously Feeble Obama

It’s not the first time that Barack Obama has flip-flopped on his campaign promises. In today’s post, Howard Kurtz points to Byron York’s observation in the Washington Examiner regarding Obama’s total reversal on federal budget deficits:

"Barack Obama used to get very upset about federal budget deficits. Denouncing an 'orgy of spending and enormous deficits,' he turned to John McCain during their presidential debates last fall and said, 'We have had, over the last eight years, the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history. . . . Now we have a half-trillion deficit annually . . . and Sen. McCain voted for four out of five of those George Bush budgets.'

"That was then. Now, President Obama is asking lawmakers to vote for a budget with a deficit three times the size of the one that so disturbed candidate Obama just a few months ago
. . .

"I asked McCain about the president's seemingly forgotten concern about deficits. McCain doesn't like to rehash the campaign -- 'The one thing Americans don't like is a sore loser,' he told me -- but when I read him Obama's quote from the debate, he said, 'Well, there are a number of statements that were made by then-candidate Obama which have not translated into his policies.' "

Kurtz also cites the Economist’s criticism of Obama:

"Mr Obama has had a difficult start. His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters -- liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts -- have started to question him. . .

"Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.
"There are two main reasons for this. The first is Mr Obama's failure to grapple as fast and as single-mindedly with the economy as he should have done. His stimulus package, though huge, was subcontracted to Congress, which did a mediocre job: too much of the money will arrive too late to be of help in the current crisis. His budget, though in some ways more honest than his predecessor's, is wildly optimistic. And he has taken too long to produce his plan for dealing with the trillions of dollars of toxic assets which fester on banks' balance-sheets."