Paul Krugman generally approves of the President’s jobs proposal, and you know that Krugman is not easy to impress.
I was favorably surprised by the new Obama jobs plan, which is significantly bolder and better than I expected. It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world. But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment.
Of course, it isn’t likely to become law, thanks to G.O.P. opposition.
My sense of things is that the President offered the boldest plan that he thought he could sell to the American people. Had he not thrown in some twinkle and glitter about deficit reduction it would have been political suicide for him, and the entire proposal would have been buried under scorn and ridicule as soon as it left his lips, no matter if Krugman loved it.
And yes, Republicans in Congress will try to bury it under scorn and ridicule, anyway, but as Nate Silver suggests, the plan as it is could be salable to the American people. And here is something Nate said that progressives who are trashing the plan need to get in their heads — while the American people like to hear about job creation, when they are presented with the choice between deficit cutting and stimulus spending —
In polls that employ the term “spend†or “spending†in describing the additional stimulus, its support drops to an average of 44 percent, with 50 percent saying that deficit reduction is the higher priority
Whether we like it or not, the people have been well conditioned to think that out-of-control government spending is the source of all our ills and must be fixed before anything else can be put right. And UN-conditioning them of that mistaken idea, even if possible, would take years. We don’t have years.
The President, I suspect, realizes as much as anyone that Congress will obstruct this. But if he can sell the plan to a large part of the American electorate and persuade them that the obstructionist Republicans are the ones standing between them and jobs, this will change the political landscape in the upcoming election year.
I’m glad that we’re trying to do something about the unemployment and lingering economic crisis, small as it might be. That being said:
My biggest frustration is the fact that the President not only hasn’t worked to un-condition the public on this misconception, he’s actively reinforced it. It’s a framing that essentially guarantees right-wing outcomes as hewing to this results in inadequate government response to events and that reinforces the “government doesn’t work” dogma that conservatives push.
People didn’t initially walk into the “debate” on this economic calamity with the (mis)belief that it was caused by government debt/spending. It was pushed by the right wing as part of their standard “neuter the dems” strategy (run up big deficits and then hammer on debt once a democrat gets power). It’s become “common wisdom” that this is the case since both parties have now adopted it to frame the debate. Since no-one serious is arguing against it, who can blame the public for buying this as an explanation?
I understand, but I don’t think he has a choice. It’s going to take a lot more than a little “re-framing” to change how people think. It’s going to take several years of messaging and a massive amount of media reform to change how people think. In the meantime, to deal with things that must be dealt with right now, the President has to walk a very fine line between appealing to a brainwashed public and not pissing off progressives too much. And he tends to lean toward the former rather than the latter.
Chuckles Todd, of all people, on MSNBC, had a good point. And that was that the President didn’t use wonky terms like “infrastucture.” And specifically not THAT word.
And I agree maha, that people seem to have been conditioned to flinch when you mention “stimulus. ”
And that’s why it was smart for the President to stay away from both words.
And as I said in the earlier post, I like that it’s simply called “The American Jobs Act.”
It puts the Republicans on the spot. Go ahead, be AGAINST jobs!
Then, Obama can come back and say, ‘Here, folks, is the Republican philosophy of government TODAY:
‘For Republicans, ‘The nine most dangerous words in the English language are: “I’m here IN the government and I won’t help.†I don’t think that was what Ronald Reagan meant in the long run, do you? Why run for government if you don’t like it, or think it can do any good?’
And that can set the stage for his talking about more government ‘involvement,’ instead of the Conservative view of government apathy.
The more I think about the speech, the more I like it. And on so many different levels.
Ooops, that should read:
“For the rest of us, the 9 most dangerous words the Republicans believe in are, “I’m here IN the government and I won’t help!”
Sorry….
Now he’s just got to go out and promise the American people that “guaranteed” help is on the way…Act as if it’s a done deal…Let the repugs try to shake it off. He put it in their court. The critical element is that he’s got to pound the issue of jobs and reinforce the idea that he’s done all within his power to break the economic stagnation.
I don’t know if it’s gonna help with the jobs situation.. but it’s not gonna hurt Obama’s political image. When I hear a fraud like Michele bachmann saying in her whiney voice..”Obama is a failed President”…It really grates on me. No matter what kind of bullshit the repugs try to smear on Obama…I’ll never accept it because I absolutely know that the situation we are in today is not of his making..I commend him for even taking the job as President…The question I asked back in 2008 is who in their right mind would want to step into that job after Bush and his repug minions did such a thorough job of messing up our economy.
“Spending” is a term that they need to stop using entirely. When you spend money, all that you know is that it’s gone – there’s no sense of what you got for it. I’d suggest rebranding as government buying, government purchasing, or even government investing. Those give a sense that you are getting something of value in return for the money.
FYI – David Frum’s take:
http://www.frumforum.com/obamas-cunning-speech
It looks like Obama has painted the Republicans into a corner.
This was politically a very masterful speech, “cunning” to use Frum’s term.
A really, really good next step towards November, 2012!
While listening to the Diane Rehm show on NPR several hrs ago, one female caller said the government never “created” any jobs.(????)
Those visiting this site have the brains to know that governments own and operate airports and seaports, transportation systems, police and fire departments, schools, agencies like agriculture, weights and measure, systems of locks and dams, fish and game, and the military .
People forget there is more to government than the federal, we have city /town, county, and state. all of these own stuff that must be maintained and built and staffed.All are “job creators”. If you need a new bridge, you don’t go to GE or Walmart and say please buld me a new bridge, you go to the city, county, or state government. After that, the Federal government helps with the funding to build, maintain, and inspect the structure.
Like Madge used to say, “you’re soaking in it!”
Completely off topic, but did anybody just hear that the US vetoed the UN declaration recognizing Palestinian statehood? But maybe not really off topic because it’s when the president orders something like this, in my narrow judgement a completely political move and completely unnecessary and completely divorced from a recalcitrant Congress that I wonder about the guy.
erinyes – people will ‘get’ the necessity of government when their toilets start to back up because those parts of our 100-year old power grid fail and the pumps at the local sewage plants won’t work. ‘Infrastructure’ includes far more than roads, bridges, dams what-have-yous.
My now-deceased husband was a civil engineer and the picture he used to paint of a collapsed infrastructure were really grim. He used to say that people think that chances they won’t be on a bridge when it collapses are pretty good, but everybody has a toilet.
Felicity, Israel owns the congress…..
http://glossynews.com/society/human-interest/201004140610/world%E2%80%99s-last-palestinian-dies-in-an-israeli-zoo/
Felicity, I think I’m falling in like with you.
How right you are.
I’m a bridge inspector. The toilets will indeed fail before the bridges fall.
I’m watching FOX right now; they’er going ballistic over the longies protesting in Wa. State.
Let the FOXes unload the ships; drop one container, and get a spankin’!
Like Madge used to say, “you’re soaking in it!â€
LOL! So true. 🙂
The first step to de-condition Americans’ thinking is to get rid of Murdoch and Fox News altogether.
Hi Maha,
You’re correct, but the box that Obama finds himself in is largely of his own making, and that’s maddening. Reinforcing “deficit fever” over the past year pretty much assured that we’d find ourselves in a place like this.
Much of the reason that low-information voters tend to believe that the deficit is of such importance is that both major political parties are saying so. If no-one bothers to fight the republican framing and offer an alternative, why would we expect these people to think anything different?
The box was mostly built by thirty years’ of right-wing propaganda by the Noise Machine seeping into the American brain . You can argue that Obama hasn’t been as skillful as he might have been to counter the Machine, but to say that the box is of his own making suggests to me you’ve been asleep for the past several years.
It’s not the existence of the box that I attribute to Obama, it’s that he chose to get into it. It might have tactically been easier to try and adopt republican framing to his own ends, but it’s a massive strategic failure. It forces the entire debate, such as it is, into that framework as no-one is offering an alternative one.
That’s why we’re essentially talking about how much to slash “entitlements” rather than expand them, and why it’s impossible to create a sufficient government response to alleviate the economic disaster that we’re mired in.
I don’t think that anyone expects that we can counter 30+ years of republican economic programming overnight, but it’ll never happen if no alternative is offered. So, instead of fighting against this, by adopting it defensively, we end up with “like the republicans, just not as much” policy prescriptions (well, like the republicans before they went totally bonkers, that is).
I think he could have done a better job of messaging, also, but by himself I don’t even a president can make much of a dent in 30+ years of right-wing programming. and even if he’d chosen some different words I don’t think it would have made much tangible difference at this point.
maha, your comment reminds me of parent conferences when I was teaching. Parents had pretty much ignored their children’s progress in school, or lack of it, until their children were in a grade the record of which would affect their children’s admittance into university. It took years of performing below grade level for their children to arrive in the upper grades unprepared. The chances of ‘correcting’ (leaping over night from reading at the third grade level to the ninth grade level) were slim if non-existent.) I always wanted to say, but never did, “You’re a little late.”