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Sunday, February 15, 2009

Obama's Policy Development Method

I found this article to be a good read on how Obama goes about the business of crafting policy.

He has a very open process where he listens to various proposals and criticisms and then adjusts as necessary. He makes a very good case and I relate to the method. Its inclusive, it invites the opposition into the process, and above all it is highly democratic. We do not get the sense its all top down hard fist do as I say.

In the end its about benefiting the people in need within the confines of opposing views.

National Journal Magazine: An Eternal Optimist -- But Not A Sap
In that spirit, Obama refused to close the door on a broad range of possibilities. One of his interviewers asked him to compare his approach to the responses to earlier banking crises in Japan -- which faced an economic "lost decade" after failing to intervene forcefully enough -- and Sweden, which temporarily nationalized its failed banks before selling them off. Obama said the administration was trying to find the "sweet spot" between those alternatives. Japan offered no model, he said, because "they sort of papered things over and never really bit the bullet." And while many on the left are urging Obama to follow Sweden's example, he thinks the scale of the U.S. problem argues against that course. "You can make a good argument for the Swedish model except for this fact: They only had a handful of banks; we've got thousands of banks," he said. "The scale, the magnitude, of what we're dealing with is much bigger."

1 comment:

Glynn Kalara said...

Yes, the scale is bigger...so? We can't deal with scale ? We need to realize that bigger isn't always better. Here's an example of the reverse of the concept of economy of scale! It might be better for farming soybeans but not necessarily for banking!