The Political War -- Another Take.

The Political War — Another Take. by The Elephant's Child

October 12, 2010, 9:36 pm
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Health Care, Junk Science, National Security, Taxes | Tags: The Obama Administration, The Opinions of the Elites, The Political War

Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin writes on “Why Obama is Losing the Political War.”

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters.  This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.

On Friday, after the release of the latest bleak unemployment data — the last major jobs figures before the midterms — Obama said, “Putting the American people back to work, expanding opportunity, rebuilding the economic security of the middle class is the moral and national challenge of our time.” But elites feel the President has failed to meet that challenge and are convinced he will be unable to do so in the remainder of his term. Moreover, there is a growing perception that Obama’s decisions are causing harm — that businesses are being hurt by the Administration’s legislation and that economic recovery is stalling because of the uncertainty surrounding energy policy, health care, deficits, housing, immigration and spending.

This is from a liberal writer for the liberal media. His description of the conclusions of the political elite may be spot on.  His analysis of what President Obama has done — or not done — is not.   I think Obama came into office enraged at President Bush.  Obama did not expect to be faced with a problematic economy, and was furious that he had to spend time and effort at that instead of directly beginning to transform America.  He could not stop blaming George W. Bush at every turn and in every speech, for everything.

For whatever reason, the president settled upon a vast Keynesian stimulus to give the economy a corrective jolt.  Though he talked of “shovel-ready projects’ and “repairing infrastructure” most of the money went to governmental agencies and state governments. Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer was reduced to reading print-outs from Keynesian computer programs that estimated how many jobs should be “created” from how many dollars dumped into the economy. His economic advisers were asked to “run the numbers,” not to have any influence on policy.

The economy saved, Obama turned his attention back to transforming America, and ordered up a massive reform of health care, which was not high on anybody’s list and began investing in a “clean energy economy” which was not even on anybody’s list.  The public is fairly dubious that there is any global warming.

With policies poorly considered and executed, he kept adding thousands more to the unemployment rolls; shutting down car dealers, slapping a moratorium on oil drilling everywhere,  investing in “clean energy” that sent the money to China and Spain.  With that taken care of, he turned his attention to ‘reforming’ Wall Street, building high-speed trains, wind farms and solar arrays while ignoring the very large elephant in the room — millions of Americans unable to find work. Annoying, so he went on vacation.

I don’t think anyone in the administration has any idea how jobs are created.  Things like tax-cuts are Republican things. The private business sector is something that Republicans are always talking about and Obama is out there now trying to demonize the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce!  Who does he think hires people?

I don’t think there is the slightest chance that President Obama will shift to the center after the election.  We’ll see.

About these ads

1 Comment

1 Comment so far
Leave a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI