A troubling article in the NYT:
Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Plouffe, and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, want him to maintain a pragmatic strategy of appealing to independent voters by advocating ideas that can pass Congress, even if they may not have much economic impact. These include free trade agreements and improved patent protections for inventors.I think there are a few problems with this strategy. First, it's going to make it harder to get re-elected if you don't start focusing on the economy. Second, I'm not sure it's a wise idea to tell people publicly, which they just did via the NYT, that you're not going to try to help the economy because it's too hard.
Now, the President probably sees this differently. He thinks that it's impossible to do anything controversial, so it's better to propose smaller thins that everyone can agree on:
So far, most signs point to a continuation of the nonconfrontational approach — better to do something than nothing — that has defined this administration. Mr. Obama and his aides are skeptical that voters will reward bold proposals if those ideas do not pass Congress. It is their judgment that moderate voters want tangible results rather than speeches.I would agree with Romer:
“If you’re talking about a stunt, I don’t think a stunt is what the American people are looking for,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, told reporters on Wednesday. “They’re looking for leadership, and they’re looking for a focus on economic growth and job creation.”
“Playing it safe is not going to cut it,” said Ms. Romer, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. “Not proposing anything bold and not trying to do something to definitively deal with our problems would mean that we’re going to have another year and a half like the last year and a half — and then it’s awfully hard to get re-elected.”What we're seeing here is the President's risk aversion having real world implications. He does not want to fight. So he's only willing to settle for easy things. But the easy things don't have as great an impact on the economy, and more generally our lives.
Just because something is hard to achieve doesn't mean it's impossible to achieve. It's difficult to see the President's strategy as some kind of "slow and steady wins the race" approach. It feels increasingly, instead, like he has a psychological aversion to conflict and avoids it all costs. That means that his decision making isn't entirely rational.
More on the fear of conflict:
But there is little support for such an approach inside the administration. A series of departures has left few economists among Mr. Obama’s senior advisers. Several of his political advisers are skeptical about the merits of stimulus spending, and they are certain about the politics: voters do not like it.Putting aside for a moment that the President's politics experts seem to now be making economic policy, how about trying to change the voters' minds with a comprehensive long-term media/PR strategy? Why is that, also, so averse to this administration? Probably because the President sees it too as "fighting." Anything that you can't agree on right away, and quietly, is bad. (And in all fairness, this is a bit of a red herring - the public was for the public option to the tune of 70% in the polls. It made zero difference to the President, he wasn't going to push for it even though he promised it.)
I understand that this is the way the President operates. It is not, however, what we were sold during the election. We were not told that he was averse to things bold, and would never actually push for anything that the Republicans didn't like. We were told he was for change. And in many ways, he tricked us. We thought he meant a serious change in the way business was done in Washington, and a serious change in policy. He meant, simply, and only, a change in the way business is done, and only that.
And even that. He didn't tell us he wasn't going to fight for anything. And he didn't tell us he was only going to push for things the Republicans could agree to right off the bat, rather than actually trying to convince them, by enlisting the aid of the public, to agree to something far more substantial.
The President's change in the way business is done tends to undercut actual change in policy. You can certainly try to have fewer political fights by agreeing to most everything your enemy says. But that's not what he told us he was going to do. We thought he was promising that via his "nice guy" routine, he was going to get MORE done, not LESS. And while I realize the President and his defenders think he's been the most successful president in decades, what a lot of us see is under-achievement. We see what might have been had the man we voted for actually become President.
