Is Obama showing his true colors? I hope not.

I have been giving the President the traditional honeymoon because I legitamately wish him well. I would wish any new President well but Obama bears the extra weight of being the first black president and it is important he succeeds.
This past week has raised my hackles. The administration repeatedly spews protectionist rhetoric. The democratic party is sponsoring a dangerously irresponsible bill taking the secret ballot away from labor elections depriving all workers of any privacy in expressing his or her views. The only reason to disallow secret ballot is to be able to exert pressure on those who do not support leadership. As a thought experiment imagine the democrats reaction had President Bush advocated doing away with the secret ballot in presidential elections. This bill is a travesty, if union members support this they are cutting their own throats.
The stimulus was going to be about infrastructure and tax reduction because they were badly needed in the first case and have a quick effect in the second. Instead Pelosi gives us a relatively small infrastructure plan and a potpourri of political pork. Money for the endowment for the arts is popular in San franccisco, no doubt, but it stimulates nothing but the evening gown and cocktail wiener industries. The bill is an orgy of traditional vote buying, not a job creation plan.
Obama should encourage his own party to kill the bill and demand Pelosi step down in favor of someone competent. In fact someone just not up to the job would be an improvement.
I hope all these stumbles are just part of finding his footing as a new president. if not Mr. Obama will have revealed himself as Jimmy Carter and we will all have learned at very great cost that community activist is not sufficient excutive experience for the most important job in the world.

Right now Mr Obama is behaving like the far left liberal that ran against Hillary Clinton and not like the centrist who defeated Senator McCain and nothing like the president elect we saw for two months. President Obama needs to recenter and soon. I wish him success but I am using tight stops.

Update: Related article from David Brooks at the NYT

In a fateful decision, Democratic leaders merged the temporary stimulus measure with their permanent domestic agenda — including big increases for Pell Grants, alternative energy subsidies and health and entitlement spending. The resulting package is part temporary and part permanent, part timely and part untimely, part targeted and part untargeted.

It’s easy to see why Democrats decided to do this. They could rush through permanent policies they believe in. Plus, they could pay for them with borrowed money. By putting a little of everything in the stimulus package, they avoid the pay-as-you-go rules that might otherwise apply to recurring costs.

But they’ve created a sprawling, undisciplined smorgasbord, which has spun off a series of unintended consequences. First, by trying to do everything all it once, the bill does nothing well. The money spent on long-term domestic programs means there may not be enough to jolt the economy now (about $290 billion in spending is pushed off into 2011 and later). The money spent on stimulus, meanwhile, means there’s not enough to truly reform domestic programs like health technology, schools and infrastructure. The measure mostly pumps more money into old arrangements.
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