New Deal 2.0: "Saving the Economy (and Obama's Presidency)"

[amborin]

The Budget Chronicles: Saving the Economy (and Obama’s Presidency)

Tuesday, 08/16/2011 - 12:51 pm

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.......President Obama had better be spending his time at Martha’s Vineyard thinking through a fundamental reset of his administration’s direction. There are two important reasons: the U.S. Economy is headed toward that lost decade unless we change course and, absent a change, this is beginning to feel like a one-term presidency. The President must explain to the American people where we are and offer a picture of economic renewal he is willing to fight for. There is no — I repeat: no — finesse move out of the corner into which the President is now boxed.

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First, the reset has to be real. From the rumors I hear, right now the White House is — completely predictably — debating two of the three choices Presidents face when they are caught in positions like this.

• Choice 1: Do nothing. This is normally camouflaged as improved communications and a tougher focus on the opponent. Both fine things, but the White House has to be capable of massive self-deception to see this as a sufficient strategy right now.
• Choice 2: Make small changes and talk about them as big deals. This is always the choice of the White House pragmatists. This was Dick Morris’ strategy for Bill Clinton. But it works better with a 5% unemployment rate than a 9% one. And does anyone in the known universe think the Republican House will give this President anything? In any case, given where we are, small, low-risk proposals will disappear without a trace.
• Choice 3: Go long. Fight the next 18 months on big, meaningful ideas: directions involving real risks, but, more importantly, real returns for the nation. This is, of course, not being debated. No one inside the White House can ever propose this kind of direction — that person would be eaten alive in meetings.

But to accomplish a real reset, President Obama is going to have to go long and do something big.

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...... let’s call it “The Project for American Renewal” — could provide direction for a campaign. And it could galvanize an electorate.

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And if you are President Obama, how do you want to spend the next 18 months? Skirmishing about the debt, the deficit, further downgrades, and government shutdowns while you try to convince the nation that a couple more modest proposals are actually game changers? Or do you want to go to war over the future of America? Right now, I put reelection at only very marginally more than a 50-50 proposition. If you find yourself flying home on January 20, 2013, don’t you want to leave knowing you fought the real fight, that it meant something, that you left a marker behind? And if you find yourself giving that speech on January 20, 2012, don’t you want your inaugural to launch the Project for America’s Renewal, knowing that you put down its foundation in your campaign?

http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/08/16/the-budget-chronicles-saving-the-economy-and-obamas-presidency-55266/

[rfranklin]

1. The acronym can be T-PARty

That should get somebody's knickers in a twist.

[qb]

2. All he has to do is push the House to pass a jobs bill & talk it up from now until November 2012.

The House Republicans will fail and it will be on their heads.