Lately many people have been second-guessing the Obama administration’s
political strategy. The conventional wisdom seems to be that President Obama tried to do too much — in particular, that he should have put health care on one side and focused on the
economy. I disagree. The Obama administration’s troubles are the result not of excessive ambition, but of policy and political misjudgments. The stimulus was too small; policy toward
the banks wasn’t tough enough; and Mr. Obama didn’t do what Ronald Reagan, who also faced a poor economy early in his administration, did — namely, shelter himself from criticism with a narrative
that placed the blame on previous administrations. It’s instructive to compare Mr. Obama’s rhetorical stance on the economy with that of Ronald Reagan. It’s often forgotten now, but
unemployment actually soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan, however, had a ready answer for critics: everything going wrong was the result of the failed policies of the past. In effect,
Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter. Mr. Obama could have done the same — with, I’d argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed
out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America’s economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the
Bush administration’s refusal to regulate the banks. But he didn’t. – Paul Krugman
And maybe it is good that he didn't. Maybe it is better not to adopt the politics of fear from the past as Reagan did. Indeed at the time of the election
in 2008 it seemed the entire country understood what it was facing and how it got to where it was. I thought that a general feeling of cooperation, something beyond partisanship,
existed after the 2008 election.
However once the Obama administration was in office, everyone it seems had begin to forget that the economic crisis that persists today and was present throughout 2009 clearly had antecedents in
the economic policies of the Republican administrations of George W. Bush. Everyone has forgotten that when Bush first took office, the federal budget was running a surplus instead of a
deficit and it got there because of the efforts to balance the budget by cutting federal spending in certain sectors of the economy and increasing taxes for the top 1% of the unequally
stratified sector of wealth in this country. So the politics of old reemerged, largely from Republican sources, and now there is certainly no reason that people shouldn't be
reminded how it once was.
Under Bush there were immediate tax cuts for the wealthy engendering an incredible transfer of wealth to this “top 1%” and two wars were started at the same time
that revenue from taxes was being diminished. The effect was to drastically “unbalance” the federal budget and as a result the government had to borrow huge resources from other countries, China
in particular, simply to keep operating.
And specifically everyone seems to have forgotten that the whole economy was on the verge of collapse in late 2008. This is something I wrote on October 3
2008, during the campaign for the presidency between Barack Obama and John McCain:
Eight Years Republican President, Eight Years Republican Congress, Eight Years Republican Ideology:
Fri Oct 3, 2008
* U.S. House of Representatives approves bailout
* Jobs fall the most in 5-1/2 years
* S&P 500, Nasdaq have worst week since Sept 2001
* Dow has worst week since July 2002
* National debt topped $10 trillion
Today as viewed from the mass media it would seem that we are living in an alternate reality where none of these events happened.
At the same time this diversion from the real in economics is occurring, a former member of the Republican administration
that governed the United States between January 2001 and January 2009 is going about pouring a message that the country is going to be the victim of another terrorist attack.
At the same time this diversion from the real in economics is occurring, a former member of the Republican administration that governed the United States between January 2001 and January
2009 is going about spewing a message that the country is going to be the victim of another terrorist attack. It isn’t necessary to mention this person by name. Everyone knows his
name. Everyone knows who this person is. The issue isn’t the awareness of this political ideologue, the question is what “world” does this person reside in
himself.
You see this person believes that the United States was less vulnerable to terrorism during the time he was supposedly serving the public interest in an official role.
I can remember what it was like during this time. If one traveled by air either within the United States or from another country or continent, it wasn't exactly pleasant for the
innocent traveler and based on a number of known breaches of security it could be argued that it wasn't particularly effective either. One might indeed ask has anything really changed?
Michael Hayden, the last C.I.A. director under Bush, was willing to say publicly what others
would not. “There is a continuum from the Bush administration, particularly as it changed in the
second administration as circumstances changed, and the Obama administration,” Hayden told
me. James Jay Carafano, a homeland-security expert at the Heritage Foundation, was blunter.
“I don’t think it’s even fair to call it Bush Lite,” he said. “It’s Bush. It’s really, really hard to find a
difference that’s meaningful and not atmospheric. You see a lot of straining on things trying to
make things look repackaged, but they’re really not that different.”
What we are now seeing then for the most part is a vast propaganda effort from right-wing elements of the political spectrum
attacking the current administration basically on all fronts regardless of substance. One has to ask if these people actually want something bad or disastrous to happen to the country
so it can be exploited for motives of political partisanship. Nothing "disastrous" has happened to the country since the Obama administration assumed office as yet and I see no
reason to be any more specific or dwell on this further at this time; it should be noted that the events of September 11 2001 and the post-Katrina disaster occurred with Republicans in the Executive
branch. Clearly it is now understood that threats to the United States do still exist. To imply that the U.S. government isn't aware of this and is acting
accordingly is ridiculous.
Nevertheless there is something at stake here. In the end it comes down to who runs the country. Democrats need to “jog the memory” of the American voters; most notably the failure of
the economic policies of the “borrow and spend.” Republican ideology needs to become a high-value topic in the political arena before Republicans assume power once again as a direct cause of the
failure of their economic and political blunders during the first decade of the 21st Century. How could this happen? Well it could happen if the Republican party could shift
the perceived responsibility for the situation the country faces today from themselves to the administration that succeeded them. In other words, something similar to what Ronald
Reagan did in the early 1980s. The only difference being the obvious one: Reagan was president when he performed his blame shift. Is this difficult to comprehend? I hardly
think so.
In the present era of American politics, it is quite apparent that Republicans for the most part really don’t care about anything other than their own narrow self interest and are using every means conceivable to attain these benefits. I have detailed some of the tactics being employed by Republicans to block progressive causes elsewhere. And "progressive causes" might be defined as something as simple as preventing the banking system from failing.
However history doesn’t necessarily have to repeat but reality is derived from circumstances in space and time. People need to be
reminded what the first decade of the 21st Century almost brought into existence. In terms of action, addressing the legitimacy of the reemergence of gigantic windfalls for top
level managers of the U.S. economy is a good place to start. If it doesn’t happen, this "alternative reality" now perceived as an abstraction - merely a
pseudo-reality diverted from right-wing political propaganda - could again become physically real. Examples of pseudo-reality are beliefs that (1)
Health care reform will bring “socialism” to the United States. This same paranoid delusion was promoted by opponents of Social Security and Medicare. (2) "Unregulated capitalism"
will use “free market” mechanisms to weed-out greed and corruption. There are others, the list is endless.
Right now Democrats need to think about their legacy as a party: the
ONLY reforms to unregulated capitalism have been made in Democratic administrations. Creating and augmenting a "safety net" for working and middle class Americans has ONLY been achieved in
Democratic administrations. Social Security, Medicare and Civil Rights for all are viewed as historic achievements. President Obama and Democrats in Congress can add to that list
by implementing a progressive legislative agenda. It is time to think about history not careers, what they were elected to do in 2008 needs to be completed without
further compromise or delay. Those who oppose them will only be remembered on the dark side of history.
For anyone wondering what it might be like if this doesn't happen, I've inserted a video for you.
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