It's the Economy, Stupid.

Ah, the Clinton years....seems like so long ago...remember them? There was I believe, posted on the wall of their campaign style "war room" a sign reminding them to concentrate on fixing the economy..."It's the Economy, Stupid" is what it said. I have a feeling this sign went up AFTER their Hillary-care debacle early in the first term, but I can't be sure. What I can say, is that it is a slogan worth resurrecting by the Obama Administration.

Yesterday, the President held the his latest team building session, this time on Health Care Reform. Summoning doctors, insurers, politicians, business, labor--all the usual suspects, for a day of talk, talk, jaw, jaw on health care reform. The President is further attempting to create a $654B health care slush fund, something whose details will of course, be fleshed out later.

Republicans are amiable dunces in this whole process. They head on over to the White House, they participate in the focus groups, they stand and praise the President for getting them all together to talk....and then they will be ignored. When actual legislation hits the street, it will be noxious and over-reaching, and Republicans will cry "we weren't part of the process"....and then the Administration will roll the video of Republicans at the White House...part of the process.

It is time for the Obama Administration to stop treating the economic crisis as anything but job one, or even worse, an opportunity to ram home policy initiatives that have little or nothing to do with moving the economy forward. Liberals cried "horror" when Rush Limbaugh hoped out loud that Obama would fail....and folks like me said that we disagreed, that we hoped the President succeeded. As I watch this process play out, I still want the President to succeed--and I know that diluting his efforts on things other than economic recovery is a surer path to failure--something we all don't want.

Oh and by the way, we still haven't figured out a way to deal with the bad debt on the Wall Street books--the single biggest impediment to recovery that there is.

UPDATE: Read THIS Krauthammer editorial from this morning's paper....he says it all so much better than I can...