Perceptions of the Obama Presidency and the Economy
Matt Yglesias has been harping for some time on the notion that the only reason Obama is as unpopular as he is (and he’s not that unpopular in the general scheme of Presidents in the middle of their first term – Reagan and Clinton were both doing worse at this point and got reelected, and Ford, Carter and George H. W. Bush were all doing better, and lost) is that the economy is lousy. If unemployment drops, Obama will recover; if it stays high, he’ll continue to sink.
I think this true but incomplete. I think he’s right that the most important thing driving Obama’s approval is perceptions of the economy. But a close second is perceptions of how the Administration has responded to the economic crisis.
By that I don’t mean that the public is genuinely alarmed by the huge deficit that is partly the result of the stimulus bill. Professional economists don’t agree on whether rising public debt is part of the problem or part of the solution; I can’t imagine how the general public could possibly have articulate views on the question.
But I do think that much of the public has the perception that the Administration’s responses have been targeted at favored constituencies. The bank bailout benefited Wall Street. The GM bailout benefited the UAW. The stimulus bill benefited public employees. What, the great mass of relatively unengaged independent voters wonders, is Obama doing for the rest of us? You can defend every one of those decisions on the economic merits, but the perception that favored interests are getting all the favors remains.
I’m not sure what the best way is to combat that perception. Obama doesn’t make a very convincing populist and, anyway, the public has little confidence in those initiatives that the Administration has passed that, in addition to having substantive merits, were supposed to bolster the Administration’s image of taking on enemies of the people. If I’m not sure Yglesias’ description is complete, his prescription – do whatever it takes to get the economy moving and, specifically, reduce unemployment – is probably the only one that could actually work.
One thing I’d be curious to know: what are the perceptions of Obama among members of the media, relative to their perceptions of past Presidents? I ask because while this recession has generally been much kinder to more educated professionals than to people without a college degree, the news media is going through a fundamental restructuring that is absolutely wrenching. It’s probably the worst time in memory to try to make a living as a reporter, and reporters are the people who write these stories about how badly the President is doing.
While the economy does suck and the President certainly deserves his share of the blame for it, what more was he supposed to do? Even if he could have somehow magically waved away all political opposition and passed the biggest, fattest, most effective stimulus possible…how much lower would unemployment be right now? Considering how much of the economic activity of the last 2 decades now appears to have been somewhat fraudulent, where is economic growth supposed to come from?
Mike
— MBunge · Jul 16, 03:02 PM · #
Mike, you might be right, and Millman’s post might be beside the point. I’d venture to guess the problem is not so much what people think of Obama — they’d just as soon have him president as anyone — he was voted in afterall. I doubt many people affected by the recession are giving Obama much thought at all, personally, but rather they’ve been shocked out of apathy and started paying attenion to what’s been going on in government for years and don’t like what they’ve discovered — they’re willing to go back and realize Bush’s complicity, and Clinton’s, on back — they realize this has been going on for quite awhile and government has become too powerful, too wasteful and too corrupt. It just so happens Obama is president during this awakening. Some will personally blame Obama for all of it, but Obama is just the last head of a bad system and he’s failed to come up with viable solutions — he has done what he thinks is needed to turn things around, but it’s too much of the wrong medicine. I think most people just want to limit government power and get back to a market with stable rules and fairly predictable costs. Ths is not a problem of pereption, it’s a problem of reality — there are economic realities which don’t respond to perceptions — even with high consumer confidence, the realities don’t change — bubbles have changed the idea that we can will the growth of wealth.
— Mike Farmer · Jul 16, 04:00 PM · #
Maybe you’re just talking about perceptions which aren’t based on reality, but those are strange reasons to distrust Obama. The bank bailout was done by the previous administration. The stimulus bill gave tons of tax cuts to ordinary Americans (and I wasn’t even aware of a widespread perception that it went to benefit public employees).
There is some sentiment that Obama has not done enough, but that is mixed with criticisms of everything that he has done, and accompanied by few ideas for what else he should be doing, which suggests that the root of the frustration is elsewhere and “not doing enough” is just a way to express that frustration.
— Brad · Jul 16, 09:29 PM · #
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