KylieM, Obama's political style is based on a smarter than thou position. Obama plays politics using feints and contradictions and when you have the power and authority of the Presidency, feints and contradictions go a long way to setting people off in one direction or another to his advantage and to the disadvantage of opponents. It is not a black and white style, truth and lies. It is an illusion making, distraction forming style that provides the President with ample time and shielding cover to do what he and his administration have planned all along in the recesses of the White House.
Obama has not revealed his intentions or plans for GSE reform. Obama's plan is as vague as it was before his recent statements.
The bone of acknowledgement thrown in the direction of the Corker-Warner bill is for the hungry dogs in the political, financial and economic circles to go running after and all those hungry dogs will come out barking, growling and biting, fighting over that bone and whatever is near it. Democrats and Republicans are included.
It has worked has it not? Suddenly there is discussion about the Corker-Warner bill and its contents and consequences and Hensarling's bill is ignored. There are articles, videos, and discussion about the 30 year fixed mortgage, increased interest rates, rental housing future's, collapse of the housing recovery, privatization, regulatory regimes, government backstop yea or nay, ideological and politcal positions and stands, history of the bailout, financial and housing associations approvals and disapprovals, pundits, academics, and financial commentators opinion and so on. It is now an ongoing fray.
Those few sentences uttered by the President have all the hungry dogs out there now. The President can now see them clearly as they display their fangs, make their growls, bristle their hackles, lunge, and bite, withdraw and lunge again. Of course their will be the timid ones just as hungry but only able to stay on the sidelines, licking wounds taken and looking for what is left. What a scene! That is how Obama plays politics. He now gets a clear idea of what he has to deal with it. He has done this consistently and the smarter than thou tactic does its job once again.
So one can choose to be an observer of those hungry dogs fighting over what meat is thought to be on that bone thrown by Obama to Corker-Warner and wait and see which of those hungry dogs lunge first and which are the the strongest and have the biggest teeth and bite. Or one can make the error of stepping into the fray without understanding what is going and getting inadvertently bit by one or more hungry dogs.
Why not let the hungry dogs fight each other over the bone and wait and see what the aftermath will be?
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