Does Obama Get It?

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06herbert.html?adxnnl=1&ref=opinion&adxnnlx=1254841271-bq4/P8++ysXeq1+h79aVcQ

<snip>
The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over. Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness.

Even Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Times, gave short shrift to the idea of an additional economic stimulus package, telling John Harwood a few weeks ago that the economy had likely turned a corner. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

The view of most American families is somewhat less blasé. Faced with the relentless monthly costs of housing, transportation, food, clothing, education and so forth, they have precious little time to wait for this lagging indicator to come creeping across the finish line.

....more

[xchrom]

1. it's a muddle -- not unlike the 'push'

for 'health-care reform'.

and that muddle is starting to have consequences.

[brentspeak]

2. If Obama does get it, he's too meekly accepting of the status quo to do anything about it

[BobRossi]

3. No, however.

Neither does anyone eles in Washington.

[madrchsod]

4. no he does`t...

no trade negotiations,buy american only,and financial regulations. until those three are dealt with we will never recover

[Hidden Stillness]

5. Not Even Slightly--Smile and Wave for the Camera!

I think what we are now witnessing is the bitter end result of the too-long era of corporate consultants and "framing" having replaced the real, rank-and-file running of the Democratic Party, starting with the Clintons, etc., and their Republican lobbyist "D"LC during the 1990s. The era of pandering to us with phony acts and pseudo-"angry" attacks against Republicans--then doing nothing different when they get power--and the era of "spinning" and sloganeering to us, and only really talking to and dealing with connected corporations, is now becoming intolerable, because they really have dismantled and destroyed the foundations of the economy, and people can't continue this way even if they wanted to.

Despite many people's willful prejudice, there is no idication whatsoever that Obama ever understood any of this and ever had any more than a superficial, glib sense of things. There are quotes going back years--"I believe in the free market," praising Ronald Reagan (!)--that indicate disaster ahead. Obama not only appointed Geithner, Summers, Clintons, Rubin, and all the rest, but actually fought the people and defended Geithner recently, when there was getting to be a move to have Geithner removed; so this is willful. A certain sad way, I actually already consider Obama to be gone and failed, and this whole Administration did it to themselves. This could have been a glorious new New Deal era.

[Romulox]

6. He understood perfectly when the banksters put their hands out.

Funny how he's having so much trouble "getting" the needs of regular people. He's surrounded himself with so many advisors with solid liberal credentials!

[Blue Meany]

7. The next question is he willing and able to turn things around?

We are faced with a confluence of bad ecnonomic trends that, IMHO, eclipse those of the Great Depression:

1) Our economic infrastructure has been exported and looted by Wall Street. We make and export very little except debt and
derivatives. We cannot just "rev up" the economy to what it was, because much of the 1990s economy was an illusion, a bubble
that was skimmed of the productive economy of the world by the finance, insurance and real estate industries, none of which
actually produce anything. The economy needs significant restructuring and that takes time.
2) Both individals and the government are massively in debt. Paying these debts off will take a lot of time.
3) The dollar is sinking and is on the verge of being replaced as a reserve currency. When this happens it will crash, we will
have significant inflation, and credit will become very expensive. On the upside, it will be easier to pay of debts on which
there is a fixed interest rate and US labor will then become globally competitive. But it will be difficult for businesses
to get credit so that they can expand and hire people.
4) We no longer have enough domestic oil to supply our own needs for energy and agricutlural inputs; paying for these with
deflated dollars will raise the price of everything, but without importing them we may not be able to feed ourselves, as long
as agriculture depends on oil for fertilizer and pesticides.

GWB and Obama took steps to mitigate some of the symptoms of the problem, but have not yet addressed the problem itself. We need to restructure the economy with a massive program to move to sustainable farming, creat public transportation, and build a sustainable energy infrastructure. We need to shrink the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sector and diminish its influence over productive sectors of the economy. In addition, the govt. needs to step in ans help all the people who are being displaced by the economy and those will be displaced by the changes that are necessary. And we need to do all of this quickly and simultaneously before our public resources are squandered on ineffective endeavors and before the crash of the dollar and the rising price of oil makes it impossible for us to build the infrastructure we need.

These changes are at least comparable to the New Deal programs, and arguably even larger. But it's not even clear, at this point, that the govt. could borrow enough money to do what is needed. The political will is not there to significantly raise taxes on top earners, which is the only other source of funding other than just printing money. And I don't think there is political will to do more than make token efforts to build a sustainable energy infrastructure and there is almost no will to change the way agriculture is done.

Whether or not he understands the depth of the crisis, I question whether he can push through the radical changes that are needed. What he could do is begin educating Americans about the real situation, but this would conflict with his message of hope. Unfortunately what we need right now is another FDR and what we have is someone more akin to Clinton.

[Echo In Light]

8. An actor doesn't need to fully comprehend the director's approach in order to fill the role

... or, in his case, perhaps agree with it, anyhow ... cause he's definitely intelligent enough to comprehend it.

[Cleita]

9. If he doesn't, then we bought ourselves a handsome empty suit.

My hope is that he is being cautious and that this early in his administration he isn't playing all his cards up front. Many of those who helped create the mess he stepped into are still players in this little drama like the media and members of the Justice Department, who still have power and could do damage to him if he doesn't move cautiously. That is my hope anyway.