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To be or not to be … a second term for Obama

Posted: June 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign | Tags: , |42 Comments

I’m watching the Economist Debate on US elections with the proverbial jaundiced eye. It’s not exactly a good sampling of folks that will most likely be voting in the election.  However, the comments are extremely interesting and as of this moment, Obama’s being judged by the readership as worthy of a second term.  Why I bring this up is that there are two think tank guys arguing the opposing sides and their fascinating arguments reveal a lot about why we can’t get a decent conversation about issues going on in this country at most levels of policy making.

Michael Barone  is arguing the Republican side of things.  He’s a Senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.  This is supposedly the ‘brains’ of the conservative movement and one of its mouthpieces wrapped up in “research” and “journalism”.  Let’s just say he’s a propaganda tool and leave it at that.  As such, this is the level of his argument.  Death Panels!!! Liberal Elites!!!  Socialism!!!!  If this is the brains behind the conservative moment, be very afraid.  Let me offer up a sample.

America needs to reform its industrial-age entitlement programmes, especially Medicare, to better suit our information-age society. Entitlements are on a trajectory to gobble up all federal revenues and more, and their centralised command and control design leaves no options but death panels and default. Unfortunately, Mr Obama has shown no serious interest in entitlement reform. He ignored the recommendations of his own Bowles–Simpson commission and sabotaged the “grand bargain” negotiations by suddenly demanding $400 billion more in tax increases. He has responded to Republican proposals such as Paul Ryan’s budget plan with campaign demagoguery of the crudest sort.

I’m no Obama fan but this characterization is about as real as the pictures of Obama riding the Unicorn while wielding the rainbow sword. Paul Ryan’s budget plan was full of unsubstantiated number fudging. The grand bargain always included tax increases on the uppermost bracket and Romney/Dole/Chaffey Care–a brain child of the conservative Heritage Foundation–is anything but command and control.  Well, unless you want to consider Insurance and Drug companies having command and control over everything the basis for “command and control”.  I found Obama way too eager to sell off social security and medicare so that criticism is just delusional.  So, basically, the argument against Obama is just more lunatic fringe propaganda here.  It’s not an argument.  It’s a mythic diatribe.  The only thing it needed was a reference to “who is John Galt”. Frankly, the liberal arguments against Obama are much more compelling including the ones that find his extensions of the Patriot Act and use of drones positively Cheneyesque. But, Glaston is not going to argue against the Bushy Cheney imperialistic presidency so that’s no where to be found.

So, is the argument for Obama any more compelling?  Again, I’m looking at the folks here.  I’m not making any case either way on my own terms.William A. Galston  provides the counter argument.  He’s the Ezra Zilkha Chair for the Governance Studies Program at the Brookings Institution.  This is the supposed liberal counterpart to AEI.  Here’s what Galston believes are Obama’s accomplishments-to-date.

But Mr Obama’s most notable achievements have come in the three wars he inherited. He engineered a military withdrawal from Iraq phased so as not to surrender hard-won gains, and he has devised a reasonable timetable for ending the decade-long war in Afghanistan in a manner that safeguards our core long-term interests As for the war on terrorism, Mr Obama has proceeded with focus and verve, and the results have been more than satisfactory. The bold mission that killed Osama bin Laden was the frosting on a very large cake. American drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen have decimated al Qaeda’s leadership. While the international terrorist network continues to pose a substantial threat, its leaders are on the defensive and in hiding as a result of Mr Obama’s policies.

Back at home, Mr Obama’s social policies have produced similarly good results. In the area of education, he chose a reform-minded secretary and backed him to the hilt. The result: a number of useful initiatives, including the “Race to the Top” programme that catalysed substantial change at the state and local level at modest cost. Mr Obama has also done more for gay rights than any president in history. But when looking at the president’s non-economic domestic record, the focus inevitably falls on health-care reform.

Mr Obama’s reform has long been unpopular and remains so today. But this does not mean it is bad policy, or that it will remain unpopular. If the legislation is fully implemented, it will succeed in expanding insurance coverage and in ridding the system of some of its worst defects, such as denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It also includes attempts to restrain health-care costs, now growing at a rate that portends fiscal disaster if allowed to proceed unchecked. Even its most controversial aspect, the mandate, is a policy conservative Republicans once supported (and Mr Romney included in his reform of Massachusetts’s health-care system). It is for good reason that health-care reform represents a signature accomplishment for Mr Obama, one that had eluded previous Democratic presidents for three-quarters of a century.

I come, finally, to the economy, the issue on which—barring a military confrontation with Iran—the election will turn. To assess the president’s record accurately, some context is essential. As economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart have shown, financial collapses differ from even deep cyclical downturns. Growth and household incomes are slower to recover, while unemployment, deficits and public debt are higher. And these effects persist for many years. So putting Mr Obama’s record up against Ronald Reagan’s is to make an apples-to-oranges comparison.

The real question is how Mr Obama has done in relation to previous financially induced crises. And the answer is: not badly. He averted an all-out meltdown of the American and global financial system and the onset of a second Great Depression. His stimulus programme, though imperfect in design, helped to stem job losses at a crucial moment in the downturn. (A majority of American economists concurs in this view, as does the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.) His intervention saved two American car firms and as many as 2m auto-dependent jobs. His programme to recapitalise the banking sector, which was necessary but unpopular on the left, has left America’s financial system better off than its European counterparts. And his new architecture for financial regulation, which was necessary but unpopular on the right, addresses many of the excesses and imbalances that had crept into the system.

So, you can go read all the comments and the longer arguments by both these guys.  Frankly, the more I know about Romney, the more I am resigned to vote for Obama.  I’m not sure that’s a particularly compelling argument for any one to make but as far as things I really care about, Romney is anathema to them all. What’s worse?  Obama’s pathetic retreat from conflict over important issues or Romney’s do and say anything just make me King manner?  Frankly, I’m sticking with the known quantity at this point.  Huzzah!

42 Comments on “To be or not to be … a second term for Obama”

  1. northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
    June 12, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    Link for women’s focus group who thought Romney was snobby.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/mitt-romney-women-voters_n_1588088.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

    USA Today article had something about the topic at the link below — I can’t find the USA Today article — I’ve divided up my links. See below.

    • northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
      June 12, 2012 at 2:10 pm

      Top Democratic strategist James Carville and two leading pollsters from his research group Democracy Corps have released a new strategy memo warning that President Barack Obama needs to change his campaign narrative or “face an impossible headwind in November.”
      Based on focus groups with independent voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the research document lays out exactly why the Obama’s economic message isn’t resonating.

      http://www.businessinsider.com/james-carville-democrats-obama-economic-campaign-message-memo-2012-6

      The gist is that people don’t believe that the economy is improving — the day-to-day reality of struggling to find a job and pay for retirement, rent, groceries, and gas just doesn’t gel with the idea that things are getting better. Attempts to try to convince voters otherwise are futile.
      Here’s the key paragraph:
      “It is elites who are creating a conventional wisdom that an incumbent president must run on his economic performance – and therefore must convince voters that things are moving in the right direction. They are wrong, and that will fail. The voters are very sophisticated about the character of the economy; they know who is mainly responsible for what went wrong and they are hungry to hear the President talk about the future. They know we are in a new normal where life is a struggle – and convincing them that things are good enough for those who have found jobs is a fool’s errand. They want to know the plans for making things better in a serious way – not just focused on finishing up the work of the recovery.”
      The strategists go on to argue that what voters really want from Obama is some empathy — and a plan for how things will get better in the future. They don’t want to hear about what he thinks he’s already done.

      • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
        June 12, 2012 at 2:46 pm

        I agree with both of these assessments. Both of these guys seem out of touch with real people. Obama has connected in the past. Romney has never shown the ability to do this. You wonder what’s going to happen when they get into the debates. I think Romney’s thin skinned aristocratic demeanor will bring him down. I think Obama needs to get out of the West Wing and face the drama. He can’t be no drama Obama when there’s so much anger out here in the hinterlands.

      • Northwestrain's avatar Northwestrain says:
        June 12, 2012 at 3:10 pm

        Yes there is a whole lot of anger in the heartland. I heard it from so many people in the RV camps. They know that the lost money in the economic melt down. Many newly retired know they can’t survive without a second job. Most of them did save and invest only to see their hard earn money looted by Wall streeters & bankers. Then there were the families with young children — moving. from job to job. People want someone to blame — and they see 0bama protecting the bank robbers.

        Both 0bama & Romney lack empathy. I can see this lack in Romney’s forced happy face. His eyes aren’t smiling.

        There are also the elite in the RV camps — I’ve seen photos of what the interior of their palace on wheels looks like. They’re the ones with the Van from the high end take out parked next to their rig.

        I’ve seen no Anthropology or Soc research on the sub culture of the RV parks.

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        June 12, 2012 at 3:53 pm

        Very interesting, Northwestrain. Thank you for the links!

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        June 12, 2012 at 4:18 pm

        Here’s a lost cause for you:

        The strategists go on to argue that what voters really want from Obama is some empathy — and a plan for how things will get better in the future. They don’t want to hear about what he thinks he’s already done.

        Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/james-carville-democrats-obama-economic-campaign-message-memo-2012-6#ixzz1xcGOqDz2

  2. Northwestrain's avatar Northwestrain says:
    June 12, 2012 at 3:21 pm

    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/times-have-changed-its-ok-lie

    Lying is now accepted behavior? So if a person does by chance tell the truth — who is going to know the difference?

  3. minkoffminx's avatar JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
    June 12, 2012 at 3:37 pm

    I know this is a big OT but it is very important to me…

    Please Sign the Petition!

    Human Rights Petition: Don’t Let the KKK Adopt a Highway | Change.org

    • minkoffminx's avatar JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
      June 12, 2012 at 5:08 pm

      Hurray!

      CNN: KKK application to adopt highway denied | 11alive.com

      • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
        June 12, 2012 at 5:11 pm

        That’s great … they’ve tried to do this before. I think it was in Iowa and they got denied too. Actually, I think it was on the interstate in Missouri and it was there for awhile and it generated outrage and the took it away. I’m going to have to goggle that. I know they’ve tried to look like they’re just like the Kiwanas or the Rotarians or something.

        • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
          June 12, 2012 at 5:29 pm

          Yeah … I found it. It was just south of St. Louis … I remember seeing it when I drove to NOLA from Omaha.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adopt_a_Highway

        • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
          June 12, 2012 at 5:30 pm

          The Adopt-A-Highway program allows any organization to participate, which became a point of controversy when the Ku Klux Klan adopted a portion of Interstate 55 just south of St. Louis, Missouri. While legally the program had to uphold the groups’ rights to participate, the public outcry and repeated destruction of their sign was a cause of concern. In November 2000, the section of highway was designated as the Rosa Parks Freeway, named after the famed civil-rights heroine.

          KKK sponsorship was later dropped from the program for its inability to fulfill its obligations, and the Missouri Department of Transportation adopted specific criteria to prohibit hate groups from future participation. However, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that any attempt to bar the Klan from participation in the Adopt-a-Highway program on the basis of the group’s purpose is a violation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so the ruling stood.

          In January 2005, the American Nazi Party adopted a stretch of the rural Sunnyview Road NE outside Salem, Oregon. Two signs were put up along the road that bore the names of the American Nazi Party and NSM. The signs, which cost $500 of taxpayer’s money and were almost immediately subject to vandalism, have since been removed. The American Nazi Party’s chair, Rocky J. Suhayda, claimed to have no association with the Adopt a Highway program.

          In 2009, the state of Missouri renamed a section of highway after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, because it had been adopted by a neo-Nazi group. Rabbi Heschel fled the Nazis’ advance in Europe and became a prominent theologian and civil rights advocate in the United States before his death in 1972.[1] Rabbi Heschel’s daughter opposed this decision[2]

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        June 12, 2012 at 5:30 pm

        That’s great news!

      • Seriously's avatar Seriously says:
        June 12, 2012 at 6:05 pm

        That’s brilliant, Georgia should do the same thing, they can out up huge signs proclaiming The Rosa Parks Memorial Highway, and if the KKK appeals and the court rules in their favor, then the signs will say The Rosa Parks Memorial Highway for Racial Justice is being maintained by the KKK. Way to outsmart these cretins, Missouri!

      • Fannie's avatar Fannie says:
        June 12, 2012 at 6:16 pm

        Super

  4. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    June 12, 2012 at 3:48 pm

    May I just point out that there were no official recommendations from the Catfood Commission, because Simpson and Bowles failed to the get enough votes for approval? Just because those two went ahead and released their recommendations does not mean there was an official report!

    I’m getting a little tired of reading about the “report of the commission” in the corporate media.

    Thanks for an interesting post, Dak.

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      June 12, 2012 at 3:52 pm

      As you imply, the Brookings Institution is hardly “liberal,” as their approval of Obama’s Rockefeller Republican “accomplishments” demonstrates. Truly liberal views simply aren’t permitted to be aired in public anymore.

  5. Joseph Cannon's avatar Joseph Cannon says:
    June 12, 2012 at 4:17 pm

    Obama is unworthy of a second term. Romney is unworthy of a first term. Let us have the wisdom to choose wisely.

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      June 12, 2012 at 4:41 pm

      Not a choice I’m making from my moral high ground; that’s for sure.

    • Woman Voter's avatar Woman Voter says:
      June 12, 2012 at 5:02 pm

      Should we toss a coin, what to do, what to do… argh.

      • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
        June 12, 2012 at 5:04 pm

        I can’t reward anything the Republican Party does any more. They’ve gone to the nuthouse. The religious fanatics have taken over.

    • prowlerzee's avatar prowlerzee says:
      June 12, 2012 at 6:35 pm

      Jill Stein. Green Party. Nader ruined it, we can resurrect it.

    • minkoffminx's avatar JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
      June 12, 2012 at 7:12 pm

      In my Banjoland State of Georgia, things are pretty set already. We are nowhere near purple, it is red all the way. But if I was voting in a state that did matter, no way am I voting for the GOP. My vote as a woman must account for something, and there is no GOP nut out there that support any, I repeat, any women’s issues.

    • Caro's avatar Caro says:
      June 14, 2012 at 1:26 pm

      The Supreme Court. THAT is the deciding factor.

      Carolyn Kay
      MakeThemAccountable.com

  6. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    June 12, 2012 at 4:42 pm

    They just arrested ZImmerman’s wife for lying to the judge.

  7. Woman Voter's avatar Woman Voter says:
    June 12, 2012 at 4:58 pm

    Economist Testifies: Unthinkable to Hit in 2013, Prepare.

    The Aftershock Survival Summit is a gripping, no-nonsense presentation that’s quickly becoming a financial beacon in an uncertain economic environment.

    Featuring an exclusive interview with famed economist and best-selling author Robert Wiedemer, this disturbing presentation exposes harsh economic truths along with a dire financial warning — a prophetic message that’s spreading across America like wildfire.

    http://www.smarterlifestyles.com/2012/04/25/economist-testifies-unthinkable-to-hit-in-2013-prepare/?fc_id=36751&fc_app_id=6225

    ‘Scared the Hell Out of Me. It Was a Great Wake-Up
    Call (Although I Wasn’t Really Asleep)’
    http://w3.newsmax.com/a/aftershockb/video47.cfm?PROMO_CODE=EBD9-1

    EAAAK

    • Woman Voter's avatar Woman Voter says:
      June 12, 2012 at 5:01 pm

      You know Dak, they make it look like real news rather than an advert for the sale of the book via Yahoo. 😯

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      June 12, 2012 at 5:29 pm

      NewsMax? That has been floating around for months. I never click on anything from far right sites like that.

  8. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    June 12, 2012 at 5:52 pm

    Judge Lester today issued a statement of his reasons (pdf) for revoking Zimmerman’s bond. It doesn’t sound like the Judge will be anxious to let him out again.

    There are several factors that weigh against [George Zimmerman’s] release: this is a serious charge for which life may be imposed; the evidence against him is strong; he has been charged with one prior crime, for which he went through a pre-trial diversion program, and has had an injunction filed against him. More importantly, though is the fact he has now demonstated that he does not properly respect the law or the integrity of the judicial process.

    The only positive the judge mentions is that Zimmerman turned himself in after the original warrant came out and that he let authorities know how to reach him.

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      June 12, 2012 at 6:27 pm

      Self-appointed vigilantes have contempt for our rule of law. I’m glad the judge is making an example of his lying.

    • NW Luna's avatar NW Luna says:
      June 12, 2012 at 6:35 pm

      More importantly, he does not properly respect the law

      Bwahahaha!

      Never piss off the judge.

  9. ecocatwoman's avatar ecocatwoman says:
    June 12, 2012 at 6:27 pm

    OT – must listen to this story about Rocky Flats, CO & the plutonium plant there. Fresh Air, today’s show: http://www.npr.org/2012/06/12/154839592/under-the-nuclear-shadow-of-colorados-rocky-flats The author interviewed, grew up in Rocky Flats and she & her family knew nothing about what was really going on at the plant. It was operated by Dow & her mother thought they were making Scrubbing Bubbles, not the triggers for atomic weapons out of radioactive, highly flammable plutonium.

  10. NW Luna's avatar NW Luna says:
    June 12, 2012 at 6:43 pm

    He engineered a military withdrawal from Iraq phased so as not to surrender hard-won gains

    That’s what I call a back-handed compliment. And Galston fails to mention that Obama’s Iraq withdrawal was done the timetable established by Bush.

    Oh, it’s a sad choice: Unthinkable vs Incompetent. Obama is so damn tepid and languid I fear he won’t connect with voters in any way.

    This time around they know he won’t deliver Ponies For All. Couldn’t he at least rant on about 2% Less Evil?

  11. mjames's avatar mjames says:
    June 12, 2012 at 7:38 pm

    There is no way in hell I could ever vote for Obama – first time or this time or any time in the future for any office anywhere. First time, because: he had no proven record of standing for ANYTHING; he was a flop in the debates, essentially showing he knew NOTHING; and he (and his DK Bots) called me a racist and a post-menopausal whining hag for seeing through his Madison Avenue post-partisan schtick. I don’t want a “godlike” (in his mind only) conciliator; I want a partisan. (Also, I have always suspected that he is CIA.)

    Second time, because, for starters and I really can’t get beyond this, he is a war criminal; he picks out baseball cards of those he decides to kill. Eeeny meeny miny mo. Who shall I kill today? (And that, of course, includes not only the target about whom we know exactly nil, but tons of other presumed innocents, like, oh, you know, children.) Then he brags about it (while prosecuting anyone who dares to leak unflattering information). What cojones!

    Evil is evil. He is not a lesser evil. He is evil. He is a cold-blooded murderer. Don’t fall for his sales pitch, please. The faster we get rid of this huckster, the sooner there is any hope (of which I have none, BTW) of reclaiming the Democratic Party as the party of democrats.

    [Of course, Romney is unacceptable. I can’t vote for him and I won’t. But that does not mean Obama is the default position. I can drop out entirely by staying home, which means I’m done with the whole lot of ’em. All vile, contemptible whores and murderers. Or I can vote third party. Both are respectable positions, IMO.]

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