Are even the most liberal media members starting to realize the administration’s “Recovery Summer” campaign was a complete joke? Such appears to be the case for New York Times columnist Bob Herbert who on Saturday published a piece absolutely excoriating President Obama for not exclusively focusing on jobs after his inauguration last year: The Obama administration seems to be feeling sorry for itself. Robert Gibbs, the president’s press secretary, is perturbed that Mr. Obama is not getting more hosannas from liberals. Spare me. The country is a mess. The economy is horrendous, and millions of American families are running out of ammunition in their fight against destitution. Steadily increasing numbers of middle-class families, who never thought they’d be seeking charity, have been showing up at food pantries. That was just the beginning: Mr. Obama’s problem – and the nation’s – is that in the midst of the terrible economic turmoil that the country was in when he took office, he did not make full employment, meaning job creation in both the short and the long term, the nation’s absolute highest priority. Herbert almost sounded like a conservative: We were going to spend staggering amounts of money in any event. There was every reason to use those enormous amounts of public dollars to leverage private capital, as well, for investment in projects and research that the country desperately needs and that would provide enormous benefits for many decades. Think of the returns the nation reaped from its investments in the interstate highway system, the Land Grant colleges, rural electrification, the Erie and Panama canals, the transcontinental railroad, the technology that led to the Internet, the Apollo program, the G.I. bill. Herbert crescendoed to a conclusion: President Obama missed his opportunity early last year to rally the public behind a call for shared sacrifice and a great national mission to rebuild the United States in a way that would create employment for millions and establish a gleaming new industrial platform for the great advances of the 21st century. It would have taken fire and imagination, but the public was poised to respond to bold leadership. Indeed it was, Mr. Herbert. The problem is the presidential candidate folks like you helped get elected had absolutely no leadership experience whatsoever. None. Zero. Zip. Despite this, Herbert and his ilk fell hook line and sinker for “Hope and Change” without any examination into the possibility the person they were backing could pull it off. Now, almost nineteen months in with unemployment at 9.5 percent and likely about to head higher, those that aided and abetted the clothesless candidate are beginning to finally question his abilities. If they had done so when an unqualified junior senator from Illinois first tossed his hat into the ring in February 2007, maybe our country would be in far better shape. Makes you wonder when enablers like Herbert will start apologizing to the nation for shamelessly assisting its downfall.
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NYT’s Herbert Rips Obama: He Should Have Exclusively Focused On Jobs
