| I arrived that morning at the overflow parking lot outside the YMCA building near the airport, and hiked the quarter mile to the main entrance, then spent the next half-hour trying to find the media check-in area at the Airfield Operations building. This was stymied by the fact that the Airfield Operations building is hidden way back beyond many other similar looking buildings, and past high fences whose gates were flanked by signs reading "Do not enter, police only." (Some sort of temporary signs pointing where to go would be much appreciated next time.) As it was, I attracted the attention of more than a couple police officers due to randomly wandering around. Finally I got pointed in the right direction and checked in. After a short security screening, we were bused over to the flight arrival area. Invited guests (mostly military families and some others) were down by the cordon line on the right, while we media people were stationed on the back of a flatbed truck trailer. TV cameras to the front, print and radio people milling about to the back. I myself hung out with some of the independent media people a little behind and to the right of WGRZ-TV.
Shortly before the scheduled arrival of Air Force One, Congressional reps Louise Slaughter and Brian Higgins showed up along with Buffalo mayor Byron Brown to roll out the welcome wagon for the President.
Unfortunately, the instigator of the trip and the person most deserving of the photo op was nowhere to be seen. Senator Gillibrand had been the one to initially convince the President to add Buffalo to his planned trips in order to get up close and personal with the western New York economy and discuss what he, she, and the rest of us all consider priority number one: jobs, jobs, jobs.
However, both Gillibrand and Senator Schumer were notably absent from the greeting party. Word filtered down to us that the Senate had taken up some vital votes on the Wall Street financial reform bill, and that Gillibrand and Schumer were being good soldiers and staying in Washington in order to do their jobs. It may be ironic to describe a US Senator as an unsung hero, but arranging a Presidential visit to your home turf-upstate New York no less-and then not even getting to participate because you're back at work comes pretty close.
The official White House schedule put the wheels-down time for Air Force One at 12:25 PM. Knowing how these tend to slip, it's no surprise that the plane was a bit late, but only by a few minutes, landing just after 12:30. The landing was quite uneventful, and might have been mistaken for any other aircraft landing, except for the fact that the runways conspicuously shut down for a good fifteen minutes before and after.
It's probably been said before, but Air Force One looks in person pretty much exactly the way it looks on TV, except for a sense of scale. Based on the 747-200B model, it's an impressively large aircraft even from 150 feet away, and it's even more so when you know something about the power and requirements of such a piece of hardware-such as the airborne command center, the medical facility, and the 12 years that it takes someone to become a member of the maintenance crew... after a two year background check. In some ways, the vehicles and the equipment bring home the reality of a presidential visit even better than the fact that we had four sharpshooters and two spotters covering us from two different rooftops.
We got a fairly good view of the motorcade as it approached the plane, including the two new presidential limos. These are the models referred to as "The Beast," with the 8 inch thick armored doors, and all the latest improvements. The downside is that they're so heavy they need to be flown in on an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III heavy-lift transport plane, which we could see parked nearby. Well, that and the fact that their 8 liter engines reportedly give them an efficiency of 8 miles to the gallon, which I'm sure made all the local gas station owners very happy.
By the time AF One got parked, the light, cold cloud cover had decided to turn into light, cold rain. And of course, most of us hadn't tried to bring an umbrella through security. The POTUS didn't seem overly inclined to get wet, so after a brief greeting with the welcoming committee, he hopped in the limo, and the motorcade moved on out to the President's first schedule item, a meeting with the families of those who had died in the crash of Flight 3407 in Clarence early last year. No press was allowed, but afterward the families gave a press conference, talking about the President's support of them and of the airline safety bill that's working it's way through Congress.
From there, the POTUS' next scheduled event was a tour of Industrial Support Inc, followed by a speech to the employees there and some guests. Each employee got to bring one person, plus there were some other invitees. I gather this latter list was mostly Buffalo grassroots groups who had worked with Obama, and a handful of well connected people there at the behest of Byron Brown.
I don't have any particular feelings about Byron Brown, since he's well outside my usual sphere of operation. But I think that this divide between who the President's office invited, and who the Mayor of Buffalo invited, shows two very different political philosophies. I'm not going to wax lyrical here about activism versus inside baseball, or pick fights with Buffalo political establishments that I neither know nor care to. But with a handful of potential invitees, the White House chose community groups like PUSH Buffalo over political bosses and big donors. I believe that that speaks louder even than the sound of Air Force One landing in Buffalo.
Before getting started in earnest on the speech portion of the ISI event, the President mentioned something that some of us had already heard, specifically that he stopped between events to sample the city's world famous Buffalo wings. "And I can vouch for Duff's crispy medium -- that's what I had. (Applause.) Very nice. Outstanding."
Actually I'm told he had five crispy and five hot wings, but the Duff's hot wings supposed to be VERY hot, so those may not have gone over as well as the crispy. And with that, Mr. President, you just added a new and perhaps decisive chapter to the ongoing "battle of the bird" between Duff's and the Anchor Bar for best wings.
Of course, chicken wings weren't the only Buffalo stereotype on the President's mind as he started his speech. The White House transcript records it thusly:
So this is my first visit to western New York as President. And so it is just a thrill to be here. I'm glad that it's not snowing. Thank you. (Laughter.) Last Sunday, right? You guys still got snow? Sheesh. (Laughter.) I thought Chicago was bad. This is worse.
"Laughter" would be a generous way to describe it. "Murmurs" would be better. Seriously, you visit Buffalo and open with a snow joke? Are you going to follow this up on your next trip to Kansas City with a joke about tornadoes? This isn't just a matter of pique--Buffalo's public perception as the border of the Arctic Circle is part of what discourages people and businesses from coming here and establishing themselves. Despite the fact that we have a climate comparable to most other northeastern cities like Boston and New York, and the fact that we get less snow than Flagstaff, Arizona, we get a reputation for perpetually being in the middle of a natural disaster. And believe me, people around here are sensitive to that sort of thing. Nobody with an ounce of decency is going to heckle the president over it, but you can bet that there were people both inside and outside the room who were offended.
So seriously, coming from someone who voted for you (twice), volunteered for you, and contributed about 8 percent of my 2008 income to your campaign... could you please not do that again? Thanks.
Despite the dubious start, President Obama came back and did a good job on the speech. None of what he had to say was terribly new to anyone who has been following politics: think of it as a recap, or possibly a greatest hits tour. After talking for a minute about using these trips to get outside the bubble of Washington, he swung the discussion back around to the economy, reminding everyone of the dire condition of the economy at the beginning of 2009. "I want everybody to remember, because sometimes we've got a selective memory here-when I took office, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. Our economy had shrunk the quarter I came in 6 percent. Experts of all political stripes were warning of another Great Depression. That wasn't that long ago, but it's easy to forget just how fragile things are and how scared people were."
While never mentioning the Republican Party by name, the President laid down a strong criticism of their behavior over the past year, noting that those who had created the problem had also done their best to stop him from fixing it: "I had just inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from the previous administration... And, frankly, I had one side of the aisle just sit on the sidelines as the crisis unfolded."
This was not a pep rally speech though, and it wasn't a political harangue. The President emphasized the importance of doing what was necessary, even when unpopular, rather than "making calculations based on what's good for the next election instead of what is good for the next generation."
Yes, he implicitly criticized the people who play politics with the economy. With healthcare. With equal pay and earned income credits. But directing scorn at those who can't bring themselves to place people above partisanship isn't a political hit. It's the truth. If you're too busy keeping your job to actually DO your job, then you don't deserve the trust that the public has placed in you.
"So we met our responsibilities -- we did what the moment required. And I won't stand here and pretend that we've climbed all the way out of the hole.... I read too many letters each night from folks who are still hurting, they're still out of work, so I know things are still tough out there for a lot of folks."
"I want to just say to Buffalo-I want to say to all of you and I want to say to America, we can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, today we are headed in the right direction."
The tone of the speech wasn't surprising given where it was. I imagine that the White House advance team must have nearly had a collective stroke when they were told about the venue, because Depot Street is not exactly Buffalo's finest district. Even the presence of practically every police officer this side of Rochester, plus the Secret Service, didn't do anything to conceal the broken down shabbiness of the infrastructure, the overflowing storm drains because there's no money for maintenance, or the garbage lining the roadside. Depot Street is in many ways the image of the "rust belt," where even when businesses are hanging on, it hasn't brought the broader economic energy that would revitalize the communities around them. But despite the busted sidewalks, the empty buildings, and the protesters with their poorly spelled signs, the President of the United States came there, to stand on that ground and tell the people of Buffalo about his commitment to creating a better future.
For not being a "long" speech, there was a lot of content there: small business loans, tax incentives, write-offs for healthcare, the works. "Last year we enacted seven tax cuts for America's small businesses, as well as what we call the Making Work Pay tax credit that goes to the vast majority of small business owners. So, so far, the Recovery Act has supported over 63,000 loans to small businesses -- that's more than $26 billion in new lending. More than 1,200 banks and credit unions that had stopped issuing SBA loans when the financial crisis hit are lending again today. More than $7.5 billion in federal Recovery Act contracts are now going to small businesses." He talked about extending more credit to small businesses, and having the Small Business Administration go out and look for companies to help instead of waiting for companies to come to them.
"That's our small business agenda. That's our jobs agenda -- empowering small businesses so they can hire. I hear a lot of noise from some of our friends out there that say, this is nothing more than "big government." I want everybody here to understand, I don't -- I personally don't think that giving tax cuts to businesses is big government. I don't understand how helping businesses get loans so they can grow and hire more workers is big government."
"I want everybody here to know, in Buffalo and all across the country, we are on a course that is working. This company makes me want to double down and work even harder, because I'm absolutely confident that if we continue to take responsibility to invest in our future that our brightest days are still ahead of us."
After the speech was over, Obama paused for a few minutes to take questions from the audience, the first of which was surprisingly complex. I had expected something along the lines of asking when the economy is going to be better, but what we got was "[W]ill Buffalo see the transit system improvement for this country arrive here in Buffalo?"
Maybe Louise Slaughter slipped the question to the audience member or something, because it almost immediately steered the conversation to high-speed rail, for which Slaughter has been the loudest proponent not just in New York, but practically anywhere. After giving a short mention to the Recovery Act including the biggest investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower and the Interstate Highway System, Obama went on to point out the importance of high speed rail, and the fact that it's much more efficient than an airplane for shorter distances. "[S]ay, where I'm from, Chicago, where you've got Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Indianapolis-you've got all these cities that are pretty close by, that are a half-hour, 45-minute flight, but if you had a high-speed rail system, a lot of people would end up using the rail system instead of flying. It would be more convenient for a lot of folks, and you wouldn't have to take off your shoes."
The second question covered a comment that Orrin Hatch had made calling healthcare "the Europeanization of America." The President did the usual polite dismissal of the comment, including referring to Hatch as "a gentleman." Not the word I would have used, but whatever. This prompted the Pres to launch into his spiel about the benefits of healthcare reform: to individuals and families, but particularly to small business. Earlier in his speech, he had recounted meeting a woman in Duff's that day who was a small business owner who said to him that healthcare for herself and her workers was her biggest challenge-but that this year she's going to be getting a 35% tax break on her healthcare costs to help pay for it. That was the character of the healthcare portion: a detailing of all the benefits coming for people who need them.
Question 3 dealt with the Alternative Minimum Tax and a proposal for a flat tax system, which sent the POTUS off onto explaining first the need to adjust the AMT for inflation, to prevent middle class and upper middle class people from being hit by restrictions meant for the very wealthy. And then to one of the better explanations of a progressive tax system that you're likely to see, summarizing a flat tax as a big tax cut for Warren Buffett at the expense of secretaries and factory workers. "I made a lot of money last year because my book sold a lot, and so I wrote a really big check to Uncle Sam. My rate was higher than somebody who made $40,000 a year. ... And the question is does that 10 percent take a bigger bite out of the cashier at the supermarket than it does out of Warren Buffett? Because she is paying more of her income in food and rent and just basic necessities, and so does it make sense for Warren Buffett to be paying a little bit more?"
The last question of the day dealt with help for small businesses, and what the President plans to do in the future. While the first part dealt with the Small Business Administration, the POTUS swung pretty quickly over to education, and providing for a future of highly skilled jobs by creating the next generation of engineers, scientists, machinists, and others
"[T]hey used to say something wonderful about why [Wayne] Gretzky was so good, and it was because he didn't think about where the puck was, he thought about where the puck was going to be, right? ... We've got to be thinking, where are the jobs of the future? What are the need s of the future -- whether it's in terms of transit, whether it's in terms of health care, whether it's in terms of education, business? ... [W]here is America going to be 10 years from now, 20 years from now?"
I don't know the answer to that, and I'm certain that the President doesn't either. But I for one am very glad that we have someone in the Oval Office who thinks that way. For a very, very long time we as a country haven't thought long term, whether that was past the next election, or the next quarterly stock report. Not caring about what comes next is how we got to be where we are, and finding our way back is going to require all of us to think not just about the here and now, or even what's good for our kids, but rather about the good of our entire country and our entire world. The Great Law of the Iroquois says that "in every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation... even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine." For the first time in awhile, I think we have a leader who meets that test. |
