Reacting to the latest round of depressing jobs numbers, the president said that it is just like "if you got hit by a truck, it's going to take a while for you to mend." Being hit by a truck is not a bad metaphor -- but he left something out. If you get hit by a truck, you are taken to a hospital for major interventions. When you are wheeled through the emergency room doors on a gurney, people react; they move purposefully and quickly; machines are brought out; desperate measures are taken. But that's not at all what happened with the economy. Instead, the economy got hit by a truck, was wheeled into the ER, and those in charge largely left the patient to heal on his own while they went into a back room to talk about the long-term building plan for the hospital. You know what might help speed along the mending? Surgery.The chorus is building. Criticism of the President, for not doing enough to address then nation's lackluster economy, is growing - and it's coming from the left. This is going to be an issue. It's only a question of when it hits critical mass. And whether it hits critical mass in time to be turned around before it potentially dooms Obama in the 2012 elections.
That's another theme you may start hearing more about soon. Joe and I are both convinced that the certitude of re-election is not as rosy as it seems, and the blame goes to the economy. We had a bad feeling a year before the 2010 election, in which we lost the House. And we're starting to get another bad feeling about next year. The President needs to, uncharacteristically, start focusing on an issue early rather than late. More from Arianna:
As our Business Editor Peter Goodman puts it, the conditions underlying these numbers are "already familiar beyond the realm of professional economists and policymakers." This is what most Americans, Goodman writes, "know in their bones, not from government reports and the abstract musings of economists, but from the everyday fears that accompany glancing at their checkbooks and their latest credit card bills: There is no relief in sight. No one in a position to influence this depressing picture is expending real energy to improve it, and least of all inside the White House, where leadership is imperative."It's an excellent piece by Arianna. Much longer than the excerpt above. And it contains some interesting tidbits from other former administration officials. Read it.
Instead, the White House embraced the GOP message that the deficit is a bigger problem than jobs, kneecapping its ability to push for additional ways of stimulating the economy. And now the president and his team wanly claim there's not much they can do. But what they don't mention is how complicit they were in creating the conditions that have left them with not much to do. They gave away all the ammo and now plead helplessness because of... a lack of ammo.
The conventional wisdom is that "there is no appetite in Congress" for additional stimulus measures. But, in fact, members of Congress have an appetite for whatever their constituents have an appetite for.
