What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?
By FRANK RICH
NYT
PRESIDENT Obama, the Rodney Dangerfield of 2010, gets no respect for averting another Great Depression, for saving 3.3 million jobs with stimulus spending, or for salvaging GM and Chrysler from the junkyard. And none of these good deeds, no matter how substantial, will go unpunished if the projected Democratic bloodbath materializes on Election Day. Some are even going unremembered. For Obama, the ultimate indignity is the Times/CBS News poll in September showing that only 8 percent of Americans know that he gave 95 percent of American taxpayers a tax cut.
The reasons for his failure to reap credit for any economic accomplishments are a catechism by now: the dark cloud cast by undiminished unemployment, the relentless disinformation campaign of his political opponents, and the White House’s surprising ineptitude at selling its own achievements. But the most relentless drag on a chief executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous. It’s the country’s fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more entrenched and powerful than ever.
No matter how much Obama talks about his “tough” new financial regulatory reforms or offers rote condemnations of Wall Street greed, few believe there’s been real change. That’s not just because so many have lost their jobs, their savings and their homes. It’s also because so many know that the loftiest perpetrators of this national devastation got get-out-of-jail-free cards, that too-big-to-fail banks have grown bigger and that the rich are still the only Americans getting richer.
This intractable status quo is being rubbed in our faces daily during the pre-election sprint by revelations of the latest banking industry outrage, its disregard for the rule of law as it cut every corner to process an avalanche of foreclosures. Clearly, these financial institutions have learned nothing in the few years since their contempt for fiscal and legal niceties led them to peddle these predatory mortgages (and the reckless financial “products” concocted from them) in the first place. And why should they have learned anything? They’ve often been rewarded, not punished, for bad behavior.
(More here.)
NYT
PRESIDENT Obama, the Rodney Dangerfield of 2010, gets no respect for averting another Great Depression, for saving 3.3 million jobs with stimulus spending, or for salvaging GM and Chrysler from the junkyard. And none of these good deeds, no matter how substantial, will go unpunished if the projected Democratic bloodbath materializes on Election Day. Some are even going unremembered. For Obama, the ultimate indignity is the Times/CBS News poll in September showing that only 8 percent of Americans know that he gave 95 percent of American taxpayers a tax cut.
The reasons for his failure to reap credit for any economic accomplishments are a catechism by now: the dark cloud cast by undiminished unemployment, the relentless disinformation campaign of his political opponents, and the White House’s surprising ineptitude at selling its own achievements. But the most relentless drag on a chief executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous. It’s the country’s fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more entrenched and powerful than ever.
No matter how much Obama talks about his “tough” new financial regulatory reforms or offers rote condemnations of Wall Street greed, few believe there’s been real change. That’s not just because so many have lost their jobs, their savings and their homes. It’s also because so many know that the loftiest perpetrators of this national devastation got get-out-of-jail-free cards, that too-big-to-fail banks have grown bigger and that the rich are still the only Americans getting richer.
This intractable status quo is being rubbed in our faces daily during the pre-election sprint by revelations of the latest banking industry outrage, its disregard for the rule of law as it cut every corner to process an avalanche of foreclosures. Clearly, these financial institutions have learned nothing in the few years since their contempt for fiscal and legal niceties led them to peddle these predatory mortgages (and the reckless financial “products” concocted from them) in the first place. And why should they have learned anything? They’ve often been rewarded, not punished, for bad behavior.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Well, Frank, I can answer that for you - it was an empty promise by a candidate you and your colleagues did not vet for his bona fides to serve as president. There was no action, just hype. Hate to tell you this, but you were duped. You bought in to the rhetoric and didn't even bother to see if the rhetoric could even possibly match reality. Maybe now you have a better grasp of reality. To claim Obama adverted a depression is a false negative - something you cannot prove because you cannot know with any degree of certainty that was the outcome without the stimulus. ON the contrary, it can be argued that the stimulus has served to exascerbate the economic downturn, not turn it around. And thse 3.3 million saved and/or created jobs? Where will those jobs go when the government money runs out?
I think it's fairly reasonble to admit that the country has awakened to the fact that they handed the presidency to someone so woefully qualified to be president they are chomping at the bit to reverse this tragic mistake and return someone to office who isn't completely lacking in the most basic economic principles and who will not sit back like a tweeny and blame everyone else for their problems. Talk about inheriting a mess, we should pre-empt sainthood for the successor to Obama because that person is in for an economic calamity that will make what Obama inherited look like a church picnic.
What did Einstein say was the definition of insanity - do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result? Well, Obama must be insane because he hasn't learned anything about his mistakes. Obama is so convinced that the outcomes will materialize by his policies that he is willing to gamble with the financial health of the nation to prove his beliefs. The rest of us aren't so willing to sit at the poker table with the president and he blames us for not willing to put the nation in such financial peril.
"Change you can believe in" was never a rallying cry for the destructive course of action we he has taken the country. No, "change you can believe in" was far less dramatic - it was a rallying cry to just win an election.
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