ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: With President Obama accepting a slice of the blame for the world financial crisis on behalf of his countrymen, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told us today that the president should model himself on former President Reagan on the world stage.
“I think if President Obama were to act more like a Ronald Reagan, a champion of greatness of our country and of free enterprise and of what we can do, I think he would get more support and be very popular,” Issa told us on “Top Line” today. “Right now, he’s tending to say the previous administration was bad and I’m less bad, and that’s not necessarily what the Germans, the French or the British really want to hear.”
Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, took issue with Obama’s putting the blame for the crisis on the lack of regulation under the Bush administration, “rather than taking what is probably a more legitimate . . . blame . . . which is that we created these [financial] products, we exported these products.”
“I would’ve wished he would have said that because it wasn’t a secret or an absence of regulation; it was something America was, for better or worse, proud of until we realized the downside of it,” Issa said.
He also hinted at the dissension within the GOP ranks over the party’s alternative budget proposal, which was finally introduced by House leaders today, after they offered only the shell of a budget last week.
“I don’t think that this budget proposal that my own party is putting out is ambitious enough on the cutting back and spending and the reducing of the deficit,” Issa said. “So I would like to both on the tax side and on the spending side see a more ambitious package. But when you look at this package compared to the Democratic proposal, the Democratic proposal spends more, taxes more and pushes more onto future debt, and that’s really the challenge, is doubling the national debt in the next five years.”
Also today, we chatted with Ana Marie Cox of The Daily Beast and “Air America,” getting her take on the Ted Stevens news and how she sometimes wishes President Obama could stand in for her husband during family disputes.
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