Presidential in Ft. Myers

In describing Obama's style during the campaign, one wag stated that while he said very little, he did so with great eloquence. He seemed to have something for everyone, but precious little when it came to specifics. Many of us wondered, especially after he was elected, how he would adjust to the responsibilities of the presidency. Turns out, he adjusted very well in that he just kept on spewing the same platitudes that got him there in the first place.

Ft. Myers is right up I-75 from Naples and, until recently, was perhaps best known as the spring training home of the Red Sox. It's also the airport you fly into to get to Naples. But today, Obama came to town to promote the Great Stimulus Plan which, while he was in town, gasped its way through the U.S. Senate. Why Ft. Myers? Turns out, this small city in Southwest Florida, according to the New York Times, is "ground zero" of the country's economic recession. Eat you heart out, Detroit.

The locals began lining up for tickets on Sunday for the event taking place at the Harborside Event Center, which holds some 3,200 people. When asked why the event wasn't held at the nearby, and much larger, Germain Arena, local Democratic officials thought that the larger venue would detract from the intimacy of the "town-hall" format.

Right off the bat (Go Sox) one third of the tickets were snapped up by the White House staff and traveling press. According to Harborside management, the distribution of tickets was handled entirely by the White House. When tickets were distributed to the general public, most of whom had been waiting in line all night, it seems only an estimated 400 tickets were given out. A spokeswoman for the White House stated that her office does not comment on the number of available tickets. So there. A lot of folks who stood in line all night, were still standing outside when the event took place.

So what exactly was going on here? Rather than an open forum to discuss the local economy, we had a staged presentation for the president to pitch his Stimulus Plan. This is troubling, especially given the fact that the members of the press allowed to put questions to the President at Monday night's nationally-televised press conference had been pre-selected. Here we are dealing with the mother of all spending bills, and no one seems to be asking him the tough questions.

The bill is massive, both in its size, scope and, of course, its cost. Moreover, it has been written almost entirely by Democrats, and is likely to be passed into law with virtually no Republican support. The bill is loaded with liberal spending programs, which are stimulative only to the extent that one could argue, as Obama has, that any money spent by the government is by definition stimulative. You want tax cuts? we'll give you tax cuts, but only if you don't pay any taxes in the first place. Gotta redistribute that wealth.

We need to do something, says Obama, because we are in the deepest doo doo since the Great Depression. Jobs are disappearing at an accelerating rate, right Nancy? So don't even think of doing nothing, says the Pres. And we may not have it 100% right, but some of it is bound to work. Just how this porker is going to provide 4 million jobs? Details to follow.

Yesterday, Obama comforted a weeping homeless woman in Ft. Myers, The Senate passed its version of the stimulus bill and Secretary of the Treasury spent the day hinting at the plan for stabilizing the financial markets. The stock market reacted by losing 5% of its value in a single day. Someone needs to tell these guys that the campaign is over