Worse, maybe, but much worse? Look at Bush II's many "signing statements" where he blatantly changes a bill dutifully passed by Congress. Watch also how both parties tolerated it. Two sides of the same coin, and if Obama's the worst then the next Republican President will almost certainly be worse.
Just - wow.
We condemn this, but look at the alternative - using only career government or academia. If you think this is better, look at the roll out of Obamacare.That's because government is mostly a revolving door from industry and back again. Obama basically had Goldman Sach's boardroom in his administration. I'd argue that this not some anomaly, but has always been this way. The desire to influence government has always existed. The money interests just have not had the immense wealth that they have now. Getting money out of politics is nearly impossible since they are firmly entrenched. The only way to fix it starts with the letter R and ends in N.
Hard to know since it was crafted behind closed doors and emerged as whole cloth. But if so, either they were incompetent in implementation or they managed to recruit only the dimmest bulbs in the respective industries.
