Hypothetically speaking, would it have been better for President Obama if, instead of the Democratic landslide of 2008, he was elected to face an adversarial congress dominated by Republican majorities in both the house and the senate?

Strangely, this question was brought about by the excellent article "The Data Model that Nearly Killed Me" by Joe Bugajski. Go. Read the article. The whole thing. The seemingly exaggerated tear jerker about his sufferings at the emergency room. And especially his analysis of what went wrong from the point-of-view of an expert in engineering design. And read the comments. If you have time, also check out the various cited papers. I'll wait.

Done?

Let us continue then. You ask, what does this have to do with the question I asked. Well, during the past few months, I have grown slightly wary of the various programs that the President has proposed. And a growing theme that I see began to emerge, which I hope I am wrong about, is the lack of a complete vetting process for the President's aides and his policies.

The whole thing started, of course, with the nomination of Tom Daschle. One can argue that the event was blown out of proportions by the Republicans, and I do tend to take that point-of-view. But would such a thing have happened if the congress is overwhelmingly Republican? Unless President Obama is a lot more naïve about politics than I suspect him to be, the answer will be a resounding "no". The Democrat majority in congress probably led him and his aides to be more relaxed about nominations. They perhaps thought they will not have to fight tooth-and-nail. Perhaps after the Republican domination of the past years, they have forgotten that politics is not just about the simple majority in congress; it is also about your standing in the public court of opinions.

And yet, the Democrats seem to have not learned.

A few botched nominations later, they pushed through a thoroughly incomplete and inadequate economics stimulus plan. The rough idea is simple, and that rough idea I approve of: the government should spend money to get us out of the recessions. It worked with FDR and it works according to Keynesian economics. What I don't like is the implementations. The bail-out to companies (though more fault here lies with the previous president and his congress than the current one) is not in the spirit of capitalism, nor is it sufficiently socialist to my liking (not enough governmental control and oversight). Some of the money, while well-intentioned, seems to me horribly misspent for various reasons. One of the ones that particularly stood out to me was the increased funding for grants given to the NIH and NSF. In March. To be spent immediately. That to me is a particularly boneheaded move.

For starters, one do not, and cannot, spend grant funding immediately. Grants are used to pay for research work and replacement material and whatnots. The principal investigators do not, right after receiving a grant of 100 thousand dollars, go on a spending spree and buy 100 thousand dollars worth of equipment. He'll probably set 50 thousand aside to pay for his postdoc for the next year. Then of the remainder he'll spend perhaps about 30 thousand immediately on equipments, and keep the 20 thousand to be spent in the remainder of the year in case "stuff happens". He will eventually have to spend all the 100K, but not before he has to file the report at the end of the year about how the money was spent. So on the level of the recipients of the grants, the economic stimulus is a no-go.

Let us now look at the level of grant-giving institutes. The NSF directs some of the funding to places like the The Mathematical Sciences Institutes to give out. The rest it tries to spend as grants. One of the quickest ways to spend grant money is, of course, pay PostDocs. But what month is it now? March? April? This is near the end of the job-hunting season. Granted that the economics situation is a complete mess, and many PhDs are having difficulties finding jobs, would one still not naturally assume that announcing new job opportunities at the end of March and beginning of April a horribly bad idea? Because of the necessity to "spend the money ASAP", the application process is rushed, the application-reviewing process is rushed, and whether the money is well-spent becomes as much luck as anything else. What about funding for research? Again, the stipulation to spend the money ASAP means that either we will have an influx of poorly considered new applications, or that we will just have to throw money at existing projects. The former has its own problems with the quality of academics and the such. The latter, well, do you really think the money thrown and already approved projects the already has a working budget will be spent immediately?

Now President Obama has visions. Visions for energy independence, visions for healthcare reform, visions for better education for all. But all these visions requires moeny and committment, and is deficit spending really the best thing to do? (This is an honest, not rhetorical, question. I am not enough of an economist to know. But I sure hope the President gave congress a compelling reason for them to approve it.)

Yet rather than focusing on the issue of the treasury, let us ask this: why all these visions? Why all of them now? Is the President rushing in his policy initiative to take advantage of his (and his party's) popularity? Is he doing this because he is at the beginning of a two-year run of total Democratic control? I fear the answer maybe affirmative. Perhaps he is also young and eager to show us what he can do. Perhaps he wants to prove his point, the one about change. But in dividing his policy and legislative attention around so many different things at once, and trying to make decisions so quickly, I fear that he may become more like the previous president than the one I voted for.

I voted for a man known for his eloquence and his deep and intense deliberations. I voted for a thinking man, an intellectual unafraid to wield his brain. In rushing into all these initiatives, can he possibly make complete, informed decisions on all these topics? (He may be a smarter man than I, but I doubt he is that much smarter. Jed Bartlett is, and always will, remain a myth.) One may argue that he has his aides and advisors, and I know that they are the baggage that we elected along with him, but at some point, throwing on more advisors must hit diminishing returns (unlike, say, the case with George W. Bush...)

A lot of this was triggered by the fact that President Obama decided to continue enforcing the deadline envisioned by President Bush on the cutting off funding for hospitals not using the Electronic Health Record. Is setting a deadline really the best idea when the technology is still not mature? Even in the case of mostly mature technology, deadlines may need to be pushed back because of implementation and policy concerns (see the switch to digital TV broadcast). Can he really promise that the EHR will be viable? While it is true that many medical schools now incorporate the EHR into the curriculum (I know UMDNJ system for one), the technological transition for older doctors will still need to take time. Is he, perhaps, premature in pushing his grandiose visions?

Only time can tell.

But I can guarantee you that if he were facing a Republican congress, the President will be much more careful with his words, initiatives, and promises.

Also, while writing this post, I am strongly reminded of the episode "100,000 Airplanes" (Season 3, episode 12; episode 56 in the entire series). Jed Bartlett, over a dinner with a bunch of medical professionals, got excited about launching an initiative to cure cancer in ten years. Then he thought about it rationally and decided it was a dumb idea. One should never peg one's political infamy on so elusive a goal.