He really has no choice but to make an appearance everyday because whenever Bush or Paulson hold these "press conferences" during which they make nonsensical one sentence statements, the markets tumble. Yesterday the two of them were flailing about, saying stupid things on the steps of the Department of the Treasury. Our economy is going through the pains of what will likely be a permanent change. The one thing Obama can do now is to restore consumer confidence and the confidence the markets and lending institutions have in our government. His regular appearances help blunt the negative affects of Bush. Wrongly or rightly, the markets here and abroad have confidence in Obama. He is being helpful by filling the void of intelligence, coherency, knowledge, and competence. At this point, the best thing Bush can do for the economy is hide in that secret bunker with Cheney.

Obama needs to be honest about the need to slash spending. Simply removing government programs that don't work efficiently will not do. The national debt makes our president weak abroad, especially when it comes to China, because he is a debtor. China has the keys to the castle and Obama wants to continue to borrow and borrow. Currently, 18 cents of every tax dollar goes towards servicing the national debt (not to be confused with paying it). And, like it or not, the Department of Defense needs to have its budget slashed. Though the Congressional Budget Office's figures for the fiscal year claims that military spending is only 20% of the budget, that figure is inaccurate. It does not figure in the military costs of other departments which totals in the hundred of billions of dollars. Few disagree that runaway spending on the military is the reason behind our ever ballooning national debt. It is simply untenable. We cannot try to keep taxes as low as they are and pay as much as we do on the DOD. All of Obama's lofty goals of health care for all, funding research and schooling for the "green revolution" (which has passed us by because the Koreans and Japanese beat us to developing auto technology), and public works projects cannot be attained without plunging us further and further into debt.

The US does not really export anything or manufacture anything. Ours is a consumer society. Over the past few decades, we have taken the easy way out for short term gains. We stopped focusing on the importance of educating our population, thereby saving on spending. The auto industry managed to resist fuel standard regulations and pushed jeremiads that such regulations would cause the collapse of the auto industry. Congress went along with it and look at where we are now. The government neglected and abandoned major cities. The government allowed our infrastructure to decay and collapse in many cases. Rather than trying to streamline our military spending, we spent lavishly in order to break the Soviet Union's economy because they would try to keep up. Now, our military is not equipped or trained to deal with modern forms of combat. Republicans cannot claim fiscal responsibility because they have pushed this agenda.

Obama needs to seize this moment now. He is installing some people who are directly implicated in the collapse of the lending institutions. For someone who denounced everything Clinton, he is bringing in an awful lot of them (and do not hand us this "he needs people who know how things work" crap, his line throughout the campaign was that good judgment is all that matters). I am puzzled as to why Obama is appointing people from an administration he spent nearly two years denouncing or downplaying any progress it made on the economy. I cannot recall when Obama himself brought up the prosperity of the Clinton years. He did, however, praise Reaganomics and the transformative Reagan administration. More confusing, many of the people he is picking from the Clinton administration are directly implicated are directly implicated in the collapse of financial institutions (Larry Summers and CitiGroup, for example).

Unfortunately for Obama, he is starting his first 100 days now, when he is not in power. But, he ran on all of this lofty rhetoric that was not grounded in the reality of governing and the reality of the situation of the US. Obama is now trying to lower the bar and some of his groupies are trying to do that too. Most of the country seems to be doing that too. According to one poll by a Democratic pollster, 67% of late Obama converts are "enthusiastic" about his presidency, 59% of them are excited, and another 61% feel hopeful. I must wonder what all of you will do when it is revealed that Obama cannot, in fact, feed 7000 men (not counting the women and children) with five loaves of bread and a single fish, nor turn water into wine. How long are you guys willing to give him before you come to this realization and stop giving him a pass on it?