That’s about what Barack Obama is trying to do with his sweeping set of legislative proposals to stimulate the economy, as David Brooks recounts. The problem isn’t content (I think Brooks is right to call this “daring and impressive stuff”); rather,
The problem is overload. . . . His staff will be searching for the White House restrooms, and they will have to make billion-dollar decisions by the hour. He is asking Congress to behave and submit in a way it never has. He has picked policies that are phenomenally hard to implement, let alone in weeks. The conventional advice for presidents is: focus your energies on a few big things. Obama just blew the doors off that one.Maybe Obama can pull this off, but I have my worries. By this time next year, he’ll either be a great president or a broken one.
We knew the President-Elect is a gambler, but this is something else; to be specific, as Jennifer Rubin says, it’s “hubris squared.” If he goes ahead with this, I’ll be rooting for him, but . . . well, Congress will be Congress, and I’m not at all sanguine.