Opinion: President Obama’s week ahead: A Brit, a secret, healthcare and Ohio
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About to begin his seventh week in office, President Barack Obama plans more moves in his public relations offensive on both the economy and healthcare.
Spoiler Alert: He doesn’t think either are going too well.
Today, Obama’s published schedule calls for a bunch of White House meetings, in the interests of transparency all closed to the press. So they could be playing Risk in there, for all we know.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, Obama will speak at the Transportation Department, and he might mention the economy and the nation’s infrastructure, which he thinks still needs work and gobs more money from generations unborn. The president will also meet in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He’s British, not surprisingly, so we’ll see if he takes his suit coat off in there too.
Wednesday is apparently a secret; we haven’t heard about that day yet.
But Thursday, Obama will hold a healthcare reform forum in the White House to hear from a narrow range of unhappy people, including congressional members who have a really good health insurance program, about how broken the nation’s healthcare system is. So if you’re healthy and happy with your care from dedicated medical professionals driving BMWs, don’t bother trying to get in.
On Friday, the president will travel to Columbus, Ohio, to talk about how his $787.2-billion economic stimulus spending bill has already turned the nation’s economy around. Just kidding. The White House has not announced what he’ll do where there.
But presumably it has something to do with getting the economy going again and showing energetic movement trying to sell his trillions of dollars in spending while cutting taxes, fighting a war and halving the 10-digit federal deficit. The fact that his presence will dominate the news for an entire day in yet another key political state and could nudge its congressional delegation to support him some more is an obvious coincidence.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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