Sam Smith - When I started out covering Washington,
journalists used to report on what politicians actually did. These days
they seem obsessed with what they say.
Part of the
reason for this may be that there now is a much higher percentage of
college grads in journalism and college is a place where you learn to
dissect phrases better than how to detect actions and their true
meaning.
Thus, the hysterically positive reaction to
Obama's inaugural speech wasn't all that surprising, which doesn't mean,
however, that it wasn't also misleading.
For
example, it is rare for a politician to reverse course in just one
speech. They prefer to try a little here and little there, test it and
move on. Thus to claim that Obama has become a real Democrat may be a
bit premature. For example, he still thinks it's all right to kill
innocent foreigners (and Americans) with his pet drones, which I don't
believe ever made it into the party platform.
Unmentioned
in all the inaugural rhetoric - media and otherwise - was that in the
coming weeks Obama is going to have to reveal just how far he plans to
walk the talk, in the form of his new budget.
And,
according to Roll Call, "The Obama administration’s fiscal 2014 budget
is widely expected to arrive late on Capitol Hill, possibly not until
sometime in March, primarily as a result of uncertainty created by
fiscal cliff negotiations . . . A Pentagon official said that as of the
end of last week, departments and agencies had not yet been told by the
White House how much money they will have to work with in their fiscal
2014 budgets... That information is usually conveyed in late November,
after the administration has reviewed the agencies’ budget requests.
"By
this point in the budgeting process, the administration has typically
communicated to departments the changes it has decided to make in their
budget requests, and the agencies have responded by appealing decisions
they do not like or by trying to work out a compromise with the OMB."
This
is not a good start towards a whole new American era in the tradition
of Martin Luther King Jr, that we were periodically promised by
inaugural pundits.
Perhaps Beyonce gave us the best hint. Just as Obama may not walk the talk, she chose not to sing the thing.
I guess we'll have to wait until March to find out for sure.
