Obama loses two more nominees

Dr. Gupta’s withdrawl came right after he said to Obama: “You want to do what with the Health Care Industry?”.

kingsjester on March 6, 2009 at 10:01 AM

It’s obvious there is only one man suited to serve as Obama’s Surgeon General: Tom Cruise. Scientologists are famously opposed to pharmaceuticals, and Mr. Cruise has been especially outspoken in that believe. If you want to get the nation accustomed to a devastated, nationalized, stagnant pharmaceutical industry, the easiest way is to convert them to Scientology. And given the way Scientology usually welcomes high-profile celebrities, something tells me Barack Obama’s first e-meter readings would turn out to be fabulous… He’s probably a fully operant Thetan already! He was probably born that way!

Doctor Zero on March 6, 2009 at 10:38 AM

Wow. When I think of the confidence that Mitt Romney would be instilling in the market right now…

I think we missed out big time. There was a man for this moment. And it wasn’t the Sultan of Hope.

Matticus Finch on March 6, 2009 at 11:05 AM

Almost anyone would be better than what we actually got, but this does seem like it would have been Romney’s moment. Isn’t it interesting how the voters almost always nominate a Presidential candidate to solve one crisis, but a different crisis turns out to be lurking on the far side of Election Day? Republicans nominated McCain (to the extent Republicans actually selected him) because they thought firm foreign policy and military leadership were the most important qualities in a candidate, while Democrats turned to Obama on racialist/moral grounds (he’s the avatar of “hope,” it’s racist not to vote for him), a yearning for his fairy-tale solutions to foreign policy problems, and because he seemed to be the candidate least like the hated Bush.

Now we get to March 2009 and find out what we really needed was someone with sound business instincts and a good grasp of economics, someone able to rescue a government in crisis. That sounds most like Romney’s resume, and to a lesser extent Giuliani’s. (Giuliani did manage to rescue a huge city teetering on the brink of collapse from its own worse tendencies, after all.) McCain’s economic credentials were thin, to say the least, and Obama does not appear to understand what an economy is, other than regarding it as a magical ATM that dispenses cash to spend on social programs and vote buying.

It’s much like the way Clinton defeated Bush because the voters were persuaded he would be able to improve “the worst economy in the last 50 years,” and would be better than Bush I at reducing the deficit. (Don’t laugh – it’s true. Perot’s remarkably successful third party run was based almost entirely on a platform of deficit reduction. Those were the days, huh?) Once Clinton got into office, the economy rolled into a boom he had nothing to do with, based on a new technology that barely existed when he was campaigning, although he deserves sincere credit for not interfering in the new economy as much as he could have. Instead, the great crisis turned out to be foreign policy, which everyone thought was a non-issue after Gulf War I was concluded… and Clinton was a spectacular failure at this, leading to the Islamist terrorist crisis of the 2000s.

Voters are like bad generals: they always seem to be fighting the wrong war.

Doctor Zero on March 6, 2009 at 11:30 AM