obama

In Your Heart, You Know He's TriteThe Chicago Tribune has an amusing report on Barack Obama, who appeared over the weekend on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos":
Obama's criticism of [President] Bush for his combative rhetoric came in answer to a question about whether the senator had the capacity to act ruthlessly when necessary if elected president.
"It's not just talking tough, because the truth is nobody's talked tougher than George Bush over the last six years. Being tough means, first of all, not having to talk about it all the time," Obama said. . . .
Without going into any specifics, Obama cited his testing in Chicago politics as a sign that he had an inner toughness. "Somebody who has arrived where I am out of Chicago politics has to have a little bit of steel in them," he said. "I have the capacity, I think, to make strong decisions even if they're unpopular, even if they're uncomfortable, even if sometimes I lose some friends."
So Obama says the first test of toughness is "not having to talk about it"--and he then proceeds to talk about how tough he is. By his own standard, he is a a jellyfish.
National Journal's Hotline transcribes another bit of the interview:
Stephanopoulos: You've also said that with Social Security, everything should be on the table.
Obama: Yes.
Stephanopoulos: Raising the retirement age?
Obama: Everything should be on the table.
Stephanopoulos: Raising payroll taxes?
Obama: Everything should be on the table. I think we should approach it the same way Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan did back in 1983. They came together. I don't want to lay out my preferences beforehand, but what I know is that Social Security is solvable. It is not as difficult a problem as we're going to have with Medicaid and Medicare.
Stephanopoulos: Partial privatization?
Obama: Privatization is not something that I would consider . . .
So when Obama says that "everything should be on the table," what he means is, "Not everything should be on the table." Of course the real problem isn't privatization, it's cynicism.