Battleground Economy
There is no surprise. None. Today’s news that a majority of Americans say they are worse off now than under the younger Bush sets the battleground for the next election. Obama had better hope he is running against one of the more extreme Republicans – that’s a relative term since most of them are very extreme nowadays – because his record on the economy won’t help much. In fact it will hurt him.
I have bashed away at him enough since 2009 not to have to repeat myself. His failure has been, and appears to continue to be, one of ordinariness, timidity, and half measures.
The crisis was epic. His response was small scale.
He thought himself hemmed in by politics. But leaders re-define politics.
His reform of banks and health care were laden with bureaucracy and impenetrable red tape. We needed clarity and action. We got committees and reports.
So here we are two long years later and the voters are annoyed that no one is doing much of anything. We are stuck in permanent political infighting with no imminent break out expected.
Just today the Fed released its updated forecast which is for moderate growth and no sign of real improvement in unemployment. And yet they also gave no indication of more policy support for the economy. This is despite the fact that Congress is hell bent on austerity and thus shrinkage. The Fed has given up. Congress adds fuel to the fire.
This is a mess folks. A real mess.
Our elite has taken leave of its senses. Or it has just taken leave. It has certainly abandoned the economy to its own fate. The impression emerging from Washington is that we have done all we could to heal the economy. Sticker shock has set in. Apparently no one realized how expensive fixing three decades of accumulated error would be. No one, that is, on the inside. Plenty out here did.
It has taken a very long time for our media, raised and fed as it is on free market dogma, to understand that this recovery was always going to be long, slow, and very difficult. It required strength, vision, and hard nosed policies to break out. Instead we slipped into a political quagmire.
How astonishing is it that the Republicans are now bashing Obama for running expensive wars? These are their wars. How odd is it that we are being spoon fed stories about the failure of the stimulus? Or that it was simply a “sugar rush” that produced no long term effects? This is from the party that created the largest ever peacetime deficits. This is from the party that gave us the worst ever decade for employment, wages, and economic activity.
How odd is it that the Republicans blame the Fed for printing excessive amounts of money and creating the recent rise in commodity prices – as if China and its rapid growth in demand didn’t exist – but ignore the real estate bubble that blew up on their watch and which continues to devastate the economy?
How odd indeed.
The world is upside down.
But voters are correct to assign blame to Obama. He is a failure.
His lack of direction and tenacity is astonishing. His willingness to accept half measures has come home to roost – as many of said it would.
He fought the great fire with a garden hose and then wonders why the flames still roar.
He didn’t fix the banks. He didn’t pump up demand. He allowed the Republicans to frame each and every debate.
So here we are talking about slashing all the most important middle class programs and yet we cannot get any sensible discussion about why that may be necessary. We are talking about a radical restructuring of American society, and yet Obama voice is drowned by the incessant chatter of his opponents. Does he have a view on what we should do? Who knows?
It appears that the extreme nihilism of the Republicans is working. They simply stall. They have learned how to fight Obama: just start off with a position way out on a limb, and he will climb out to meet you instead of cutting it off. His obsession with compromise and discussion has undermined his ability to fight back. For some reason he sees himself above the political fray. So the progressive cause is left leaderless.
There is, of course, a long way to go. He might yet pull it off. But it seems odd to rely on a stagnant economy as your primary weapon in an election.
The battleground is set. They have tanks. We have horses. This does not bode well.
