The Honeymoon Is Over
Here is President Obama on the stimulus package:
The American people did not choose more of the same. They did not send us to Washington to get stuck in partisan posturing, or to turn back to the same tried and failed approaches that were rejected in the last election. They sent us here with a mandate for change, and the expectation that we would act.
l agree that mere partisan posturing is undesirable. But unless I missed something, the Bush Administration never addressed an economic crisis like the one we now face, so it obviously never tried an approach that failed as a remedy.
Nor did President Obama campaign on anything resembling the stimulus bill. Indeed he specifically campaigned for pay as you go, and against earmarks. Circumstances change, and it is fair that he changes his priorities to match them, but it makes no sense for him to claim an electoral mandate for this bill, even if it deserves to pass. Any illogical rhetoric to the contrary can only be posturing (or else a frightening disconnectedness from reality).
One reason President Obama campaigned against earmarks is their cost. Given that a stimulus bill consists of throwing all sorts of money at the economy, that particular objection to pork is fairly dismissed. But earmarks are also problematic because they’re a quintessential example of political gamesmanship trumping sound public policy: these items are so often stuck into important legislation as a hostage maneuver, in which the bill dies unless everyone agrees to stomach a project that isn’t justified, and wouldn’t be approved by the people’s representatives on its own merit.
Obviously this kind of hostage maneuver is particularly repugnant during a national emergency, as Democrats ought to well understand, having seethed as George W. Bush exploited 9/11 to advance his own tangentially related policy ends. Is it any wonder that Democrats using the stimulus bill for analogous ends is costing them support among some Americans?
Another Obama quote:
When you start hearing arguments, all the cable chatter, just understand a couple of things. Number one: They say, ‘Well why are we spending $800 billion. We’ve got this huge deficit.’ First of all, I found this deficit when I showed up. I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.
Think about that argument for a moment. It makes no sense. Obama and I agree that George W. Bush behaved deeply irresponsibly on fiscal matters. Is that relevant to the question of whether we can afford an expensive stimulus bill given the hole we’re already in? (And I say that as someone who thinks that some stimulus bill should pass!) Are we next going to hear that we’re invading Pakistan, never mind that our army is already overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan, because it was George W. Bush who bears responsibility for stretching us too thin? That would make as much logical sense. I wish we were in a situation where Obama got to begin with a blank slate, but guess what, he doesn’t. I hope that he is merely bloviating, because the alternative is that he actually thinks that President Bush’s mistakes are relevant defenses of his own policies, as if everyone who occupies the Oval Office is due his policy preferences regardless of the state of the nation, as a reward for being elected.
Asked about President Obama’s tenure after a week, I’d have said that I approve. Evaluating his performance on the financial crisis, my verdict is the opposite. As his approval ratings decline, perhaps some will find my reasoning of interest.
Beyond what I’ve said, I’ll quote President Obama once more, again arguing in favor of the stimulus bill:
There’s the argument that this is full of pet projects. Well when is the last time we saw a bill of this magnitude go out without one earmark in it.
Never. We’ve never seen a bill of this magnitude stripped of earmarks. Indeed, one might call this bloated bill “business as usual” — “the same tried and failed approaches we rejected in the last election.” But that fact hasn’t led, in the case of earmarking Democrats, to presidential denunciations, in which he calls out the most dastardly Congressmen by name for thwarting the will of the American people.
Let me be clear here. I haven’t followed the stimulus bill closely enough to know whether President Obama, or Congressional Republicans, or Congressional Democrats are the worst behaved. This post isn’t meant to absolve any elected official from criticism, or even excoriation, or to parcel out blame in proportion to where it is owed.
What I mean to say is that while I’d gladly lend my support to a president uncompromising in his determination to change Washington DC in consensus building ways (do all the stuff everyone agrees about first, save the rest for later), pursuing a narrow agenda focused on competence and prioritization of what a large plurality of Americans desire, I refuse to be browbeaten by a president who insists that “change” means accepting whatever parts of the broken system that he deems expedient, because to complain is to thwart the will of the people.
I’ve hoped that President Obama might be a ruthlessly empirical, competence first, zero ideology president, though I can’t say I expected it to play out that way. But he ran as Mr. Change, and much of his mandate is contingent on being different in a way that no president ever has been. The fact that he voluntarily relinquished executive power in his first week was an example of living up to his promise, but his performance on the stimulus suggests to me that he overpromised during his campaign and is underdelivering now, as I expected and feared.
It is no knock against Obama that he is unable to singlehandedly change Washington DC, but it is a bit rich for him to claim that if only conservatives would accept a bill flawed in the same old ways, he’d be succeeding.
I think you can read President Obama’s use of the phrase “same tried and failed approaches” in one of several ways. I read it as either a rejection of the politics as strategy (as opposed to politics as public service) approach, or perhaps more radically a rejection of the approach that says government should take care of the rich and let everyone else take care of themselves. I don’t read it as a rejection of the idea of spending to stimulate the economy in a recession, something governments have done for a long time.
— John Spragge · Feb 7, 01:41 PM · #
I agree with much of what you write here, Conor. My own two cents about some of the things the President has been saying:
“First of all, I found this deficit when I showed up. I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.”
This is a classic example of politics as usual. Obama is positioning himself here against the reality that, if the stimulus bill “works” or does not work, the resulting deficit issues are not his responsibility.
I would ask the President: exactly what did you do as a Senator to reduce the budget deficit? (The Answer: not much) No doubt the fiscal irresponsibility of the past decade is mostly the previous administration’s fault. However, it is negligent to pretend that as a former Senator and as our current President the massive budget deficit is not partly your problem to deal with.
I think the most telling story of this past week is the sudden change of President Obama from the “calm, inclusive, change mandate” guy to the “firey, I’m-calling-you-out, calculating politician.” I will note that two of the three Senators who eventually got the stimulus bill through the Senate were from Maine – the last bastion of Republicanism in New England (now that Judd Greg is Commerce Secretray). Obama (and Rahm Emanuel) knows that Senator Collins and Snowe are politically vulnerable in their home state, since he won there by double digits. It’s this political mandate that he is trumpeting when he denounces Republican criticism to the stimulus bill. He is in effect saying: look at the electoral map and tell me you think opposing me is going to keep you in office. Politics as usual.
Why did anyone expect anything else, though? Sure, he campaigned as a consensus seeking, practical, non-ideological change agent. Did anyone with half a brain actually buy that nonsense? I guess so. I didn’t. I read his book, I know what he wants for this country and what his vision is. He has no desire (or reason) to implement Republican-favored policy, and is going to use smart and subtle political maneuvers (if he has to) to get his way. The fact that he has a majority Congress to back him will make it much easier.
If you have any conservative political bones in your body, the manner by which this legislation is being passed – and the Presidents clear political calculations behind it – cannot impress you at all. Particularly those of you who voted for him.
At least I have Ron Paul.
— mattc · Feb 7, 02:42 PM · #
No to “stimulus” bill. Here’s why:
Since Obama’s earnest drive to convince the nation to weaken its economic strength through redistribution as well as weaken its national defense, has confirmed the very threats to our Republic’s survival that the Constitution was designed to avert, it no longer is sustainable for the United States Supreme Court and Military Joint Chiefs to refrain from exercising WHAT IS THEIR ABSOLUTE CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY TO DEFEND THE NATION FROM UNLAWFUL USURPATION. The questions of Obama’s Kenyan birth and his father’s Kenyan/British citizenship (admitted on his own website) have been conflated by his sustained unwillingnes to supply his long form birth certificate now under seal, and compounded by his internet posting of a discredited ‘after-the-fact’ short form ‘certificate’. In the absence of these issues being acknowledged and addessed, IT IS MANIFEST THAT OBAMA REMAINS INELIGIBLE TO BE PRESIDENT UNDER ARTICLE 2 OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION. Being a 14th Amendment ‘citizen’ is not sufficient. A ‘President’ MUST BE an Article 2 ‘natural born citizen’ AS DEFINED BY THE FRAMERS’ INTENT.
— Ted · Feb 7, 04:39 PM · #
“I refuse to be browbeaten by a president who insists that “change” means accepting whatever parts of the broken system that he deems expedient, because to complain is to thwart the will of the people.”
Wait a second – what’s the broken part? Is it just that you have a general feeling that something is broken, or it there, in the real world written into the real bill, something actually really bad and broken? That’s central to the bill? Lay it out.
Conor your criticisms are – very obviously when I read through this – mood-based. If the exact same bill had been proposed by a President from team red there’s no way you’d be writing this. Extrapolating and judging someone on nonspecific campaign rhetoric could have you judging every President in American history a failure. Reagan was a failure under that standard.
The leaders of your party know how to vote no and say the word “tax cuts”. Imagine someone of good will on the other side trying to save all of our asses based on the best advice from the experts and then hearing reaction like that. It’s unserious.
That’s conservatism in 2009: faith in Palin, Wurzelbacher, Limbaugh, and tax cuts. It’s no wonder we have no useful opposition in this country.
— Steve C · Feb 7, 06:26 PM · #
Connor-
Two flaws in your argument. First is that George Bush did face a crisis of this type, if not of this magnitude – the recession immediately after 9/11. And his economic answer to that crisis was the same as his economic answer for dealing with the surplus of the 90’s, and his answer for every other economic situation imaginable: tax cuts. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. The same economic answer the House and Senate Republicans are pushing right now. And insofar as Obama did campaign on change, I’d say merely moving away from Republican insistence that tax cuts are a magical cure-all is a pretty substantial change.
Second, I don’t remember Obama campaigning against earmarks in the general election – certainly not to the extent that John McCain did. And that ties in to your overselling of Obama’s mandate, and subsequent dismissal of Obama for not living up to goals he never aspired to. “much of his mandate is contingent on being different in a way that no president ever has been?” Please. Obama did get elected on a platform of change, but it was change from George W Bush and the Republicans, not a promise to completely and utterly make politics wonderful and perfect, forever and ever, amen. Insofar as he put together a largely reasonable stimulus bill that’s passing through Congress in relatively short order, one where he’s already reached out far more to the minority party than GWB ever did, I’d say he’s succeeding.
And as far as “lending your support”, I’d say if this is the kind of lame whining that comes along with said support, you can keep it all to yourself.
— Chris · Feb 7, 07:10 PM · #
I was going to write a post about how the notion that tax cuts in the face of the crisis are “more of the same from the Bush years” is thoroughly misguided, but VDH just put it better.
— Blar · Feb 9, 04:11 PM · #
Blar, VDH is even more inept at economic policy than he is at foreign policy. I understand why he’d like to lump together “massive deficits, cheap Chinese capital, low interest rates, inflated houses, and climbing food and fuel costs” as causes of the recession, but the deficits and borrowing from China don’t have nearly as much to do with the current crash as the later items. And while the deficit spending we saw under Bush certainly wasn’t a good thing, I’d far rather the federal government borrow money to keep teachers, cops, and firefighters employed than to fund Bush’s tax cuts for the rich.
That said, the term “tax cuts” wasn’t uttered by VDH once in that post – did you not realize that, or are you just under the impression that merely mentioning VDH’s name will drive liberals screaming away in fear of his intellectual prowess, regardless of the subject?
— Chris · Feb 9, 04:51 PM · #