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Obama Didn’t Wait Long

[1]From the Washington Post [2]:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama [3] have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House [4] policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

All of you that were taken completely off-guard by this news, please raise your right hands.  Now smack yourself on the back of the head.

Any turmoil and angst over this should have been addressed months ago.  If you voted for Obama, and you were oblivious to the fact this was coming: yeah, that’s why Obama was elected.  You weren’t paying attention.

But let’s be candid.  Executive orders have become a transient tool for circumventing (or at times filling in for) Congress.  We all know that Congress has been slow to act many of these policies because they are constantly thinking about the next election.  As we’ve said here before [5], the real power and the real action on domestic policy needs to come from Congress.  Since we’ve succeeded in voting in a heavily Democratic Congress, I’m guessing that Obama will be able to keep the Executive Orders to a minimum and let Congress do the dirty work.  But overall, our government has become dysfunctional.

The impacts of the laundry list Obama is working on will become better understood in the next few months.  But January 21, Obama will be sitting in his office rescinding tons of Bush’s work, and will probably step out on January 22 and declare that we now have entered a brave new world.  I suspect he will make this smell less like a calm transfer of power and more like a coup, a rebellion.  All wrapped up in a mandate built on a singular promise of Hope… a mist.

Peter Hitchens at the Daily Mail [6] hit the nail on the head today when he said:

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.

Don’t get worn down by this.  Let’s keep our eyes on the ball.  We’ve got work to do.

BitHead [7] has some more comments on this, as does Ed Morrissey at HotAir [8].