Well that was quick. I'd just written this morning that Joe and I were perhaps alone in beginning to worry about Obama's chances in 2012. Next thing you know, Salon's Andrew Leonard is worrying about the same thing.
[A]side from what should be the over-riding government responsibility to deal as forthrightly as possible with massive unemployment and economic hardship, there's also a realpolitik issue that Geithner seems to be missing. Voters care more about how the economy is faring when they head to the ballot-box then they do about the state of the deficit. And as is already clear from the initial campaign salvos from credible Republican presidential candidates such as Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, the 2012 election is going to be a referendum on the economy.
By ruling out any further stimulus -- and, even worse, by abandoning efforts to keep the economy growing far too early -- Geithner has helped to make Obama and the Democrats extremely vulnerable in 2012. If Republicans take the White House and the Senate in 2012, then it really won't matter whether Geithner's deficit pivot could have preserved "the capacity to do a whole range of things that are really important." Healthcare reform will be dead. Banking reform will be dead. Medicare and Medicaid will face a deeply uncertain future.
[T]he electoral problem for Obama may not hinge on whether or not the president has the actual power to make manifest his will on job creation, but rather on whether he is perceived to be trying. Is he giving it his best shot? Is he making it clear to the general public what constraints have been placed on him by the opposition party and external events?That's been our number one complaint about the President from the beginning. He doesn't even try. Namely because, post election, he has it in his head that if the numbers are against you at the git-go, you'll never change them for the better. Had candidate Obama believed that - that it is impossible to ever woo the public to your side if they're not there already - he would have quit the race at the beginning, and Hillary would be President.
The answers are no, and no. And judging by Goldfarb's Geithner profile, the White House is fine with that. It's going to be a tough platform to run on, if the economy continues to slump as the campaign heats up.
Where is candidate Obama, the guy who tried (though even during the campaign it was clear that not trying, not fighting, was already a problem)? We miss him. And we may be missing him a lot more come January of 2013 if he keeps this up.
