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The Calgon President
10 March 2009, James Morrow

If I could give one piece of advice to President Obama - besides telling him to shut up and let the Dow have a good day for a change - it would be to stop trying to do everything all at once. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel may have famously said that one should never let a good crisis go to waste (and oh, imagine the outrage had, say, Dick Cheney uttered similar words!), but in trying to do everything, Obama risks doing everything wrong.

"Look, I wish I had the luxury of just dealing with a modest recession or just dealing with health care or just dealing with energy or just dealing with Iraq or just dealing with Afghanistan," Obama said recently, even as it was reported that the new president is already "too tired" to do his job properly.

And the strain is starting to show. Take foreign policy, which Obama reportedly has very little interest in even at the best of times. Whether it is the clumsy snub of British PM Gordon Brown, the even clumsier offer to sell-out Poland and the Czech Republic to buy a little leverage against the Iranians, or the absolutely cringe-making "reset button" incident (what, the State Department doesn't have any translators), one is almost wistful for the clarity of George W. Bush's with-us-or-against-us doctrines.

None of this is helping the main game, which is the economy. The New York Times reports that "events are getting ahead" of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who has so far failed to impress either the public or the share markets.

The President needs to focus all his energies on restoring credit flows and national and international confidence in the American economy and its private capital markets. Now is not the time to tackle health care reform or attempt to impose the huge inefficiencies of a carbon cap-and-trade system on the US economy, nevermind the illusory promise of so-called "green jobs".

Obama's sort of stressed out, all over the shop sort of urgency does not inspire the feeling that the US has a confident, inspiring captain at the helm for the difficult times to come.

Instead, it calls to mind thoughts of the stressed-out housewife pleading, "Calgon, take me away!"

BUFFETT: Right. And, Joe, it--if you're in a war, and we really are on an economic war, there's a obligation to the majority to behave in ways that don't go around inflaming the minority. If on December 8th when--maybe it's December 7th, when Roosevelt convened Congress to have a vote on the war, he didn't say, `I'm throwing in about 10 of my pet projects,' and you didn't have congress people putting on 8,000 earmarks onto the declaration of war in 1941.

BUFFETT: So I think--I think that the minority has--they really do have an obligation to support things that in general are clearly designed to fight the war in a big way. And I don't think you should--I don't think before D-Day on June--on June 5th you ought to have--or June 1st, maybe, have a congressional hearing and have 535 people give their opinion about where the troops should land and, you know, what the weather should be and how many troops should land and all of that. And I think after June 6th you don't--you don't have another hearing that says, `Gee, if we'd just landed a mile north.'

JOE: You might not--you might not have fixed global warming the day after--the day after D-Day, Warren.

BUFFETT: Absolutely. And I think that the--I think that the Republicans have an obligation to regard this as an economic war and to realize you need one leader and, in general, support of that. But I think that the--I think that the Democrats--and I voted for Obama and I strongly support him, and I think he's the right guy--but I think they should not use this--when they're calling for unity on a question this important, they should not use it to roll the Republicans all.

BECKY: We are back with Warren Buffett. We've got a lot of viewer e-mails that have been coming in. We've got thousands of them, so we're going to get to those right away.  But, Warren, you had one thing you wanted to clarify?

BUFFETT: Well, I was going to mention to Joe that you've heard this comment recently from some Democrats recently that a `crisis is a terrible thing to waste.'

BUFFETT: Now, just rephrase that and since it's, in my view, it's an economic war, and--I don't think anybody on December 7th would have said a `war is a terrible thing to waste, and therefore we're going to try and ram through a whole bunch of things and--but we expect to--expect the other party to unite behind us on the--on the big problem.' It's just a mistake, I think, when you've got one overriding objective, to try and muddle it up with a bunch of other things.

i think sometimes people put too much emphasis on the 1st hundred days ...

...he doesn't even have his entire cabinet together yet i don't think ..

Staff shortage in US treasury department is making preparations for next month's summit 'unbelievably difficult', says Britain's top civil servant

Downing Street is finding it "unbelievably difficult" working with Washington to prepare for next month's G20 summit because of the shortage of personnel in the US treasury department, Britain's top civil servant has said.

The continuing handover to Barack Obama's administration has severely hindered discussions over the meeting in London next month, according to Sir Gus O'Donnell.

The cabinet secretary said No 10 was having trouble even getting in touch with key personnel at the US treasury department.

"There is nobody there," he told a civil service conference in Gateshead yesterday. "You cannot believe how difficult it is."

Downing Street said that O'Donnell's comments had been "taken out of context", although his comments echoed remarks that have been made in the US about the difficulty of contacting key treasury officials.

The reported comments come after Downing Street aides were left frustrated by the White House's handling of arrangements for Gordon Brown's visit last week. The prime minister was left facing claims that he had been "snubbed" after an expected formal press conference with the two leaders was downgraded to a handful of questions in the Oval Office.

Obama phoned Brown at the end of the trip to congratulate him on his speech to Congress in what was seen as a late attempt to minimise any dismay felt by the prime minister.

At the end of the trip Downing Street officials insisted that it had been a success, although O'Donnell's comments are likely to go down badly with the new Obama administration.

In the US Obama has also been criticised for the length of time it has taken him to fill key positions in the treasury department. Recently Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, described the situation at the treasury as "shameful".

The Washington Post reports today that every key position within the treasury, with the exception of the post of treasury secretary, the equivalent of chancellor, remains to be filled, or is awaiting confirmation.

The paper says that the White House has taken its time appointing people because it is vetting them carefully, to make sure that candidates do not face the problems encountered by some of Obama's early nominations for government posts.

It also reports that some people in government and on the outside have said that "the thin ranks at the top of the department have made it a challenge to get the ear of senior Treasury staff". It quotes the head of one government agency as saying: "There are a couple of go-to people there trying to do five different jobs."

Asked to comment on O'Donnell's remarks, the prime minister's spokesman said: "You have to take Gus O'Donnell's remarks in their proper context. He was talking at a public service conference and his remark was taken out of context. He was explaining the benefits of the British system of having a permanent civil service and the benefits that brings when there's a change of administration.

"We have a very good relationship with the Obama administration on both the G20 and other issues. Last week what you saw was an administration that was fully engaged on the G20. That is certainly the sense that we got."

The US embassy in London said that Washington was actively preparing for the G20 summit. An embassy spokesman said that two senior officials were in the UK last week for a G20 preparatory meeting and Timothy Geithner, the treasury secretary, would be flying to London for a meeting of G20 finance ministers at the end of this week.

O'Donnell made his views known as he criticised the US system of new administrations appointing their own senior civil servants, saying it would be "absolute madness" to introduce similar rules here.

The Whitehall & Westminster World website, whose publisher, Dods, organised yesterday's event, reported that O'Donnell stressed the importance of continuity for projects such as the Olympics.

"You get to a certain point, and you can't go any further," O'Donnell said.

"If there's a change of administration, you're out, and a whole new bunch of people come in who probably haven't been in government before."

or the absolutely cringe-making "reset button" incident (what, the State Department doesn't have any translators)...

Comparing our economic crisis to World War II is just idiotic. Talk about apples and oranges compairsons.

who did that ?

Roosevelt was president ~8 years before ww2