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Stop Levitating, Start Governing: Kristol

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Feb 14, 2009 1:35 PM CST

(Newser) – One of William Kristol’s favorite highlights of the new stimulus is the $8 billion reserved for a high-speed levitating train connecting Disneyland and Las Vegas. It wasn’t in the House bill and got just $2 billion in the Senate’s version, so they “compromised” on $8 billion. And where was Obama amid this grand compromise? “He’s not amid it,” Kristol writes in the Weekly Standard. “He seems to be magnetically levitating” above it.

Indeed, Obama seems to be the “missing player” of his administration. He let Congress write the stimulus, let Geithner go ahead with his disastrous financial rescue non-announcement, let Richard Holbrooke and Jim Jones cast him as a foreign-policy outsider, and let Joe Biden send mixed signals on Afghanistan. These missteps should cheer Republicans. “But not much. The country needs a president capable of exercising leadership.”

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (2)]

The world's only commercially operating maglev railway arrives at a station Tuesday May 23, 2006, in Shanghai, China. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

In this Jan. 21, 2009, file photo President Barack Obama speaks to his senior staff to assert expectations on ethics and conduct on the White House campus in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

President Obama delivers remarks to members of the Business Council, Friday, Feb. 13, 2009, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

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Barack Obama has had a charmed career. He's been the magnetic-levitation train of politics, skimming over the surface at great speed without having to slog through the mud that slows down normal politicians. -

Who would have thought the missing player in the first month of the administration would be Barack Obama? -

« Prev« Prev | Next »Next » Slideshow

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