Barack Obama used to insist that experience was overrated during the campaign, because what America needed was a man who hadn’t marinated in the Beltway mindset.  That’s an odd claim for a sitting Senator to make, but since Obama did next to nothing for the three-plus years he represented Illinois, it wasn’t a completely insane argument.  However, Naked Emperor News replays an interview Obama gave Air America’s Randy Rhodes in November 2004, in which he decried the rush to pass massive pieces of legislation without enough time for Congress to study them carefully, and blamed Bush for doing exactly what Obama is doing now on ObamaCare (via Stormin’s Morning Java):

OBAMA: “When you rush these budgets, that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what’s in them and nobody has read them –”

RHODES: “Fourteen pounds, it was.”

OBAMA: “Yeah, it gets rushed through without any clear deliberations or debate, then these kinds of things happen.  And I think that this is in some ways what happened to the Patriot Act.  I mean, you remember there was no real debate about that.  It was so quick after 9/11 that it was introduced that people felt very intimidated by the administration.”

Well, a declaration of war and the mass murder by terrorism of 3,000 people on American soil does qualify as an emergency for most people.  Apparently not for Barack Obama.  However, having less than 15% of Americans living without health insurance, many by their own free choice?  Big-time emergency.  That requires foot-high bills costing trillions of dollars to get shoved through Congress without any time for deliberation or debate, because as Obama put it, “the time for talk is through.”

I think Obama is fully marinated in the Beltway.  In fact, I think he’s positively stewed.

Addendum: Normally I’d put a link to Chris Muir’s Day by Day site here, but today I want to do more than that. Chris has a fundraising drive to keep his excellent cartoon alive.  Be sure to drop a few dollars in his collection to keep one of the Rightosphere’s most talented warriors in the fight!