Does Everything, Solves Nothing

Arnold Kling points to four areas as examples of how Obama seems to want to do less with too much:

1) The stimulus failed to meet Larry Summers’ famous criteria of timely, targeted, or temporary.

2) The cap and trade legislation maximizes rent-seeking (favoritism toward particular businesses) and minimizes carbon reduction.

3) The proposed financial reforms are mostly cosmetic and fail to address the key issues of housing policy and regulatory capital arbitrage.

4) In championing health care reform, the President stresses the unsustainability of our current system, while insisting that nothing will change (you can keep your insurance, keep your doctor, etc.).

The pattern that I see is one of following the path of least political resistance, even if it means failing to make any significant contribution to solving the actual public policy problem.

In other words, Obama seems to want to let the problems take care of themselves while giving them lip service. Didn't we have that in the last administration?