by Deb Cupples | During the primaries, we blue-faced bloggers at Buck Naked Politics repeatedly pointed out clashes between then-Candidate Obama's rhetoric and his record. Thus, we're not surprised that many Obama supporters now battle a salmonella-style case of buyer's remorse.
I voted for Obama only after McCain became the other choice, BUT I hope that a few years from now I'll have to admit that my doubts about Obama had been unfounded (i.e., that he will have solved some problems).
Admittedly, I've enjoyed watching friends who last year hammered us for not blindly believing in Obama now question their past True Believerism -- with downcast eyes and a much softer voice.
But now that Obama is president, I aggressively hope that he succeeds at cleaning up the many messes that President Bush left on many executive branch carpets.
I suspect that the folks at The Economist similarly want to see President Obama succeed, which is why I find some of the comments in a recent article so bizarre. Here's how piece starts:
Isn't it just a tad late to be wondering whether then-Senator Clinton was right? The primaries ended before summer 2008 began. The Economist sort of answers its own question in the next two paragraphs:
"Not altogether. In foreign policy in particular Mr Obama has already done some commendable things. He has held out a sincere hand to Iran; he has ordered Guantánamo closed within a year; he has set himself firmly against torture. He has, as the world and this newspaper wanted, taken a less strident tone in dealing with friends and rivals alike.
"But at home Mr Obama has had a difficult start. His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble." (Economist)
In other words, Hillary Clinton had been right, but Obama hasn't been a total failure.
You'd think that intellectual folks such as those working for The Economist would have enough perspective and patience to give President Obama more than a couple months before passing judgment on his performance.
President Bush did, after all, devote eight years to defecating on the carpets. For the first six of those years, there was no one around to housebreak Mr. Bush or clean up the mushy brown piles, because the Republicans controlled Congress for those six years -- and they let the puppy run the house (more accurately, both houses).
Another thing: the Democratic Party does not have a "solid majority" in the U.S. Senate. After Senate Republicans re-discovered the filibuster in 2007, a "solid" Senate majority required at least 60 votes, which the Dems do not have.
And yes, it still takes two houses of Congress to pass a bill; thus, the truly solid majority in the House is meaningless without a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
This reminds me of something else that The Economist article states:
"Mr Obama has mishandled his relations with both sides in Congress. Though he campaigned as a centrist and promised an era of post-partisan government, that’s not how he has behaved. His stimulus bill attracted only three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. This bodes ill for the passage of more difficult projects, such as his big plans for carbon-emissions control and health-care reform. Keeping those promises will soon start to bedevil the administration. The Republicans must take their share of the blame for the breakdown. But if Mr Obama had done a better job of selling his package, and had worked harder at making sure that Republicans were included in drafting it, they would have found it more difficult to oppose his plans.
"If Mr Obama cannot work with the Republicans, he needs to be certain that he controls his own party. Unfortunately, he seems unable to. Put bluntly, the Democrats are messing him around." (Economist)
The Economist wants a President to "control" Congress? Our nation's Constitution suggests that the Framers had something else in mind: things like checks, balances, and struggles between Congress and the President. (See Constitution, Articles I and II)
In fact, one reason that our nation's economy and financial system and foreign policy are so severely troubled is that Congress failed to act as a check and balance against President Bush for his first six years in office (i.e., during the years that Republicans controlled Congress).
To The Economist, I say Be careful of what you wish for.
Yet another point: it's not fair to say that President Obama "cannot work with Republicans." Obama came into office wielding a huge olive branch and promoting a co-operative spirit -- something that I, as a progressive, resented.
Most congressional Republicans greeted President Obama with swords and daggers.
Instead of putting partisanship aside and trying to actually solve our nation's severe problems, most congressional Republicans took an obstructionist stance -- the same way they did when the Democrats sort-of took control of Congress in 2007.
Of course Republican politicians seek to obstruct progress. Republicans have strong political incentives to "help" Democrats fail to solve our nation's problems. If the Dems have noticeable successes, then Republicans will have little chance of keeping congressional seats in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Republican politicians know this, and they are acting accordingly and without shame.
The Economist also says some positive things about the Obama Administration, though I'm not sure that I agree with those assessments:
"There are some signs that Mr Obama’s administration is learning. This
week the battered treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, has at last come up
with a detailed plan to rescue the banks....
Its success is far from guaranteed, and the mood of Congress and the
public has soured to the point where, should this plan fail, getting
another one off the drawing-board will be exceedingly hard.
"But the plan at least demonstrates the administration’s acceptance that it must work with the bankers, instead of riding the wave of popular opinion against them, if it is to repair America’s economy. And it’s not just in the domestic arena that Mr Obama has demonstrated his willingness to learn: on Iraq, he has intelligently recalibrated his views, coming up with a plan for withdrawal that seeks to consolidate the gains in Iraq while limiting the costs to America." (Economist, paragraph break added)
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman seems to think that Secretary Geithner's plan has little if any chance of actually working. He thinks that high-level Obama Administration officials are placing blind faith in the "Market Mystique" (and in the frauds standing behind the market curtain):
"Underlying the glamorous new world of finance was the process of securitization. Loans no longer stayed with the lender. Instead, they were sold on to others, who sliced, diced and puréed individual debts to synthesize new assets. Subprime mortgages, credit card debts, car loans — all went into the financial system’s juicer. Out the other end, supposedly, came sweet-tasting AAA investments. And financial wizards were lavishly rewarded for overseeing the process.
"But the wizards were frauds, whether they knew it or not, and their magic turned out to be no more than a collection of cheap stage tricks. Above all, the key promise of securitization — that it would make the financial system more robust by spreading risk more widely — turned out to be a lie. Banks used securitization to increase their risk, not reduce it, and in the process they made the economy more, not less, vulnerable to financial disruption." (NY Times)
In other words, Dr. Krugman thinks that Administration officials are buying into the same-old sound bites and chants despite solid evidence of their falseness. Oddly, The Economist seems to be leading cheers for false sound bites.
Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs was similarly blunt about his opposition to the Administration's new plan, as he explained in London's Financial Times:
"The Geithner-Summers plan, officially called the public/private investment programme, is a thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks, by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value. It is dressed up as a market transaction but that is a fig-leaf, since the government will put in 90 per cent or more of the funds and the “price discovery” process is not genuine...."
Simply put, Prof. Sachs sees the plan as a sham.
I'll quit criticizing The Economist after I cover one more offensive point:
"They [Dems] are pushing pro-trade-union legislation (notably a measure to get rid of secret ballots) even though he doesn’t want them to do so; they have been roughing up the bankers even though it makes his task of fixing the economy much harder.... Worst of all, he is letting them [Dems] get away with it." (Economist)
Note that The Economist implies that (but doesn't explain how) personally enriching a relative-few bankers would help our nation's economy -- or why protection for workers would harm our economy.
The more money that masses of ordinary folks have to spend, the more money businesses can make -- which could lead to increased employment and even more money for the masses to spend, and so on. That seems to be what our nation's economy needs in order to recover.
Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans are losing jobs each month -- which means fewer people spending money to support businesses, which will lead to more layoffs, which will likely lead to even less money being spent at businesses, and so on.
Meanwhile, a relative few bankers (and corporate executives) use tax dollars or shareholder dollars to fatten their personal bank accounts.
We've already been through more than eight years of that, and what has been the fallout? Exactly the economic crises we're facing right now.
Precisely how is it that doing the same old stuff that caused our nation's problems will help solve said problems?
Memeorandum has commentary.
Other Buck Naked Politics Posts
* Save Jobs by Cutting Executive Pay
* Real Executive Bonuses Based on Fake Profits
* Wall Street Execs Got Billions While Driving Economy Toward Cliff
* Two Execs Sentenced to 20+ Years for Fraud
* Miami Doctors Plead Guilty to $10 Million Medicare Fraud
* Executives Skate out of Economic Disaster with Millions
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