JFK had the guts Obama doesn't have to take on Wall Street

[Terry Mauro]

JFK HAD THE GUTS OBAMA DOESN'T HAVE TO TAKE ON WALL STREET

Jan. 24 (LPAC)--Liberal columnist Frank Rich warns, in the New York Times, Jan. 24, that Obama does not have the guts or the brains of John F. Kennedy, and because of that, there will be many more ``Massachusetts,'' if the White House ``fails to reboot,'' and does not rid itself of Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. ``The White House clearly knows this duo is a political albatross,'' Rich says, and nobody will find this ``Harvard-trained lawyer [Obama] credible when slinging populist rhetoric at fat-cat bankers.''

Frank Rich doesn't have a clue about the mass strike phenomenon and the Massachusetts election, but he does know how to twist the knife in comparing Obama to JFK and FDR.

Summers is a symbol of the "deregulatory orgy that helped fuel the bubble," says Rich, and things are so bad that in Massachusetts, the Republican Senate Campaign Committee successfully pinned the "bailout" label on the Democrats.

Rich blows a massive hole in the White House fairy tale that they had been planning a "Volcker rule" attack on the big banks since October, saying that only after Massachusetts did the White House call Volcker "out of exile" to put on a new face.

They have to do much, much more. For one, he should study the JFK of April, 1962, and emulate JFK's attack on US Steel, as he {did not} emulate JFK's stand on Vietnam (when JFK did not send Marines into Southeast Asia).

"Kennedy was no radical...," writes Rich, "yet he, like that other Harvard patrician, F.D.R., had no hang-ups about battling his own class...."

"Kennedy didn't settle for the generic populist rhetoric of Obama's latest threats to fight unspecified bankers some indeterminate day," Rich concludes, and US Steel collapsed in about two days, after JFK threatened to turn his brother's Justice Department on them.

"Can anyone picture Obama exerting such take-no-prisoners leadership to challenge those who threaten our own economic recovery and stability at a time of deep recession and war? That we can't is a powerful indicator of why what happened in Massachusetts will not stay in Massachusetts...."

Edited January 25, 2010 by Evan Burton
Reformatted paragraph

[Christopher Hall]

JFK HAD THE GUTS OBAMA DOESN'T HAVE TO TAKE ON WALL STREET

Jan. 24 (LPAC)--Liberal columnist Frank Rich warns, in the New York Times, Jan. 24, that Obama does not have the guts or the brains of John F. Kennedy, and because of that, there will be many more ``Massachusetts,'' if the White House ``fails to reboot,'' and does not rid itself of Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. ``The White House clearly knows this duo is a political albatross,'' Rich says, and nobody will find this ``Harvard-trained lawyer [Obama] credible when slinging populist rhetoric at fat-cat bankers.''

Frank Rich doesn't have a clue about the mass strike phenomenon and the Massachusetts election, but he does know how to twist the knife in comparing Obama to JFK and FDR.

Summers is a symbol of the "deregulatory orgy that helped fuel the bubble," says Rich, and things are so bad that in Massachusetts, the Republican Senate Campaign Committee successfully pinned the "bailout" label on the Democrats.

Rich blows a massive hole in the White House fairy tale that they had been planning a "Volcker rule" attack on the big banks since October, saying that only after Massachusetts did the White House call Volcker "out of exile" to put on a new face.

They have to do much, much more. For one, he should study the JFK of April, 1962, and emulate JFK's attack on US Steel, as he {did not} emulate JFK's stand on Vietnam (when JFK did not send Marines into Southeast Asia).

"Kennedy was no radical...," writes Rich, "yet he, like that other Harvard patrician, F.D.R., had no hang-ups about battling his own class...."

"Kennedy didn't settle for the generic populist rhetoric of Obama's latest threats to fight unspecified bankers some indeterminate day," Rich concludes, and US Steel collapsed in about two days, after JFK threatened to turn his brother's Justice Department on them.

"Can anyone picture Obama exerting such take-no-prisoners leadership to challenge those who threaten our own economic recovery and stability at a time of deep recession and war? That we can't is a powerful indicator of why what happened in Massachusetts will not stay in Massachusetts...."

I find it notable that Obama has Larry Summers as his chief economic advisor.

Consider Summers' track record at Harvard where he caused its operating account to invest heavily in the stock market:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009...ard-18-billion/

It would have been worse if the Board of Regents hadn't throttled back Summers' desire, which was to invest 100% of its operating cash in the market, to a mere 80%.

Good thing Harvard only lost $1.8 billion.

And Summers is an economist!?

I guess that makes a meth dealer a pharmacist.

[Michael Hogan]

I find it notable that Obama has Larry Summers as his chief economic advisor.

Consider Summers' track record at Harvard where he caused its operating account to invest heavily in the stock market:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009...ard-18-billion/

It would have been worse if the Board of Regents hadn't throttled back Summers' desire, which was to invest 100% of its operating cash in the market, to a mere 80%.

Good thing Harvard only lost $1.8 billion.

And Summers is an economist!?

I guess that makes a meth dealer a pharmacist.

There's more to the story than what Felix Salmon wrote in that blog.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachus...stments/?page=1

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feature...currentPage=all