I think Barry owes Bill a beer, because there’s one thing I will definitely say it’s that the President didn’t build that. Here’s something interesting Jim Geraghty noted this morning’s Morning Jolt:
Either way, one of the fascinating facets of the polling during Obama’s presidency has been the fact that the monthly unemployment report has little if any discernible effect on Obama’s approval rating or head-to-head numbers against Romney in the tracking polls. This may meant that nearly half of Americans don’t blame Obama at all for the high level of unemployment for the past four years.
Are the American People suddenly getting educated on matters of economics, and realizing the President can’t do a whole hell of a lot about the economy? That’s quite encouraging if that’s actually the case. Maybe they believed Bill? Probably the most effective part of Clinton’s speech was that historically, we don’t just bounce right back from financial crises, which is true. What Barry rightly deserves condemnation for was ramming through a major new entitlement at a time of declined government revenues, and major deficits. He deserves condemnation for wasting our tax dollars pushing through a failed stimulus package. He definitely deserves condemnation for letting the regulatory agencies all run roughshod over the American economy. But I think even if you removed all that, the economy would still be rather anemic. Whoever won in 2008 was going to get to oversee a weak economy, pretty much no matter what.
I generally agree with you that we shouldn’t expect the president to create jobs. But I think this president has provably stopped 10’s of thousands of jobs from being created. And while those 10’s of thousands of jobs wouldn’t have solved the economic problem by itself, it would have helped. And not letting those jobs happen is affecting the outlook of the country overall.
I personally know of 2 large companies that are in a “let’s just try to get by with who we have and make them work harder because we don’t know where this is all going” mode, and Obama and the priorities of his administration are responsible for a LOT of that.
This President is unique in that there are large segments of society, defined in different ways, that will vote for him no matter what, and that leaves Romney fighting for the small percentage willing to change. If not for that factor I think Obama would be losing handily now.
I also agree with other posts of yours that Republican’s are held back by some socially conservative positions that help put some sections of society into the Dem camp, but given their base I don’t know what they can do about that right now.
I think it speaks more to the shameless nature of Obama supporters. Obama is a lot like John Gotti. Nothing seems to stick. His people will spin any negative into something to be blamed on Dubya or back peddle.
I wish people had more of a grasp on economics but I don’t think it’s the case.
It might also show that many don’t believe Romney offers a genuine alternative.
I think a problem with all political camps is that if they perceive that misinformation/disinformation will be more effective, politically, than legitimate arguments, they will go with the bad information. The problem of course is that the solid information never gets out, or, if it does, its credibility is blunted by the misinformation that preceded it. Every political hoax email that ever went out about Obama was a disservice to the solid information that exists about the failures of his initiatives; the people who were already persuaded are no more persuaded, while the people who need to be persuaded are no longer likely to listen.
It’s not the president’s job to create jobs, but by pushing policies that punish investment, he has created an environment where people don’t want to invest. And there is a lot of uncertainty over what the government will do, so comapnies tend to play it conservatively.
Indeed. A President can adopt “First do no harm” policies, or can be stupidly activist like Hoover and FDR and do a tremendous amount of damage, indefinitely stifling a recovery. There’s so much well established history about the above case, plus recent examples such Carter and Obama I’m surprised anyone would ignore this.
As well as counter-examples: Clinton always paid more attention to this sort of thing than the average post-JFK Democrat, wasn’t able or particularly willing to zap the 1992 recovery he inherited, and then with the Republican Congress did a respectable job on the economy.
It’s nice that you blame both Hoover and FDR for the Great Depression. While I agree with Obama, that George W. Bush started this recession (and even provided the infrastructure that holds back the economy), Obama didn’t have to double down on everything that Bush did!
I’d like to think that this would result in the death of Keynesian Economics. Fat chance, but a fellow can dream, can’t he?
Be careful with giving too much weight to “Bounces.” Just read an article this weekend that DuKakis was up 17 points after his DNC Convention.
It would be nice if people would recognize that business cycles are a law of nature and that both Congress and the Fed have more impact on the economy than the President. Don’t think it will happen though. The tendency of Congress to punt to the executive (for example, all the power given to HHS in Obamacare and to Treasury in the bailouts) is tilting the playing field somewhat toward the President. The housing collapse and inappropriate financial and environmental (the EPA is forbidden by law from considering economic impact) regulation, however, were made in Congress. And our insane (doing the same thing and expecting a different result) monetary policy is Fed made.
Business cycles aren’t as much a law of nature as we are led to think. Ludwig von Mises makes a good case that bubbles are caused by the government forcing interest rates to be unnaturally low, which encourages investment in business, which causes inflation, which then causes a collapse of all that investment that businesses were doing (because the money they borrowed wasn’t sufficient to cover their projects).
Of course, it’s probably a law of politics that no President, ever, is going to allow the market to determine interest rates, so we’re almost certainly going to be stuck with the business cycle. C’est la vie!