Today we conclude our series on what Obama should do next.

And this is maybe the most important step: he needs to return to being the Obama of 2008. On the campaign trail, Candidate Obama promised a new kind of politics, where he would focus on solutions, not ideology. Sadly, as  President, he has not always been well-served by his staff or by his friends in Congress who have pushed him to the left.

It’s time to return to a solutions-based politics. Now that would be change we can believe in!

What else should Obama do now?

He should confront his base. Every great political leader has the courage to tell his/her followers when they are wrong. Think of Reagan negotiating with Gorbachev when most conservatives were furious about it. Turns out Reagan was right.

Unfortunately, in the first 12 months of the Obama presidency, we have not seen many examples of this kind of presidential leadership. In fact, we’ve seen the opposite. Perhaps the best example was the stimulus package, where the White House essentially let Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid write the bill.

If President Obama will start being more forceful with his own party, he will start to win back some of the independent voters that he has lost in the past year.

There has been a lot of talk about what the House Democrats’ health care bill does.

It creates a government-run health insurance option.

It raises taxes on wealthy Americans.

It requires all Americans to purchase health insurance.

And prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

But here’s something it doesn’t do: it doesn’t factor in the rising cost of health care. When you hear that the House bill will cost $1.2 trillion, remember that this number does not include health care inflation. And we all know that health care has gone up about 10% a year for many years now. So the real cost of the House bill is likely to be closer to $3 trillion.

So the House Democrats bill does a lot of bad things; but it also doesn’t do the one good thing it was supposed to do: control costs. Of course, only the market can control costs. But the House Democrats weren’t interested in that.

The good news is that Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats seem to be reconsidering their plans to fund contraception services in the stimulus package.  Apparently, they couldn’t quite make the case that this would create new jobs:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/01/27/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4756202.shtml

However, the bad news is that there is still a lot of pork getting cooked in this stimulus package.  More than $800 billion in new spending.  And yet so much of it will be wasted on programs that won’t create jobs.  In this present economic crisis, the test should be: will it create new jobs? Take a look at the list below of pork items that are currently in the stimulus package.  And ask yourself if any of these will create new jobs:

• $6.7 billion to renovate and improve energy efficiency at federal buildings
• $2.5 billion to upgrade low-income housing
• $1.1 billion to Amtrax
• $1.8 billion to repair National Park Service facilities
• $800 million to clean up Superfund sites
• $600 million for General Services Administration to replace older vehicles with alternative fuel vehicles
• $426 million to construct facilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• $400 million for NASA scientists to conduct climate change research
• $400 million to replace the Social Security Administration’s 30-year-old National Computer Center
• $360 million for new child care centers at military bases
• $276 million to update technology at the State Department
• $200 million to rehabilitate the National Mall
• $150 million for the Coast Guard to repair or remove bridges deemed a hazard to navigation
• $50 million for the Endowment for the Arts
• $44 million for repairs at the Agriculture Department headquarters in Washington

-Randy Hill