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Go Home Obama’s Speech Was Too Much of a Humblebrag

PLANK SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

Obama’s Speech Was Too Much of a Humblebrag

BY TIMOTHY NOAH

Watching President Obama give his nomination speech last night, it occurred to me for the first time that he might actually lose.

Rereading the speech this morning, I find that (as Mark Twain once said about Wagner) it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. It lacked poetry, but it managed a reasonable balance between acknowledging that the economy stinks, asserting that we’re on the right track, and pointing out that the Romney presidency would make things worse for everyone but the rich. But the speech still possessed several glaring faults.

The biggest was the short shrift it gave Obamacare. In general commentators are marveling at how much Obamacare got talked up at the convention, given that it doesn’t poll well. But Obama didn’t do much of the talking. Rather than describe the health care law as an affirmative triumph, he talked about it as a part of the status quo—somebody pushed it through Congress, he can’t remember who exactly—that the GOP wants to take away: “If you can’t afford health insurance, hope that you don’t get sick.” That’s no way to talk about your single greatest accomplishment. Obama would have done better to follow the lead of San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who said in his keynote speech, “Seven presidents before him—Democrats and Republicans—tried to expand health care to all Americans. President Obama got it done.” I was also mystified by Obama’s failure to boast about his second greatest accomplishment, the Dodd-Frank financial-reform bill. The law is far from perfect, but it marked what could be the start of an historic reversal of decades of regulatory indulgence that led to the 2008 crash. Even Republican rank-and-filers don’t much like Wall Street these days, and talking up Wall Street reform would have been an excellent way to underscore that Obama’s opponent is captive to Wall Street’s poisonous culture. But again, Obama talked about Wall Street regulation only as a part of the status quo that Romney wants to reverse (“I don’t believe that rolling back regulations on Wall Street will help the small businesswoman expand, or the laid-off construction worker keep his home”), and not as his own proud accomplishment.

Since the start of the financial crisis, I’ve been hungering for my president—first George W. Bush, then Obama—to demonstrate a little FDR-like ebullience, some reassurance that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Bush could offer nothing but the frozen stare of a deer caught in the headlights. Obama at least seemed to know what he was doing, but he’s never projected the necessary air of “we’re all going to be fine.” That sort of aristocratic confidence is not (to repeat the convention’s most popular rhetorical cliche) who he is, and I get that. But it wasn’t pleasant hearing Obama talk, in his nomination speech, about how hard it’s going to be:

I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades. It will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one. And by the way—those of us who carry on his party’s legacy should remember that not every problem can be remedied with another government program or dictate from Washington.

We’re dangerously close to Jimmy Carter territory here. First, there’s the boast (“You elected me to tell you the truth”) disguised as an expression of humility (“I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy”). Later, I actually winced when Obama humblebragged, “And while I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved together, I’m far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, ‘I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.’” Just because our greatest president was a bit depressive, that doesn’t mean we want the present one to lacerate himself over his failures, and we certainly don’t want to hear him tell us about it. The mention of FDR only served to remind us of how different, temperamentally, Obama is from the Democratic party’s “happy warrior” tradition. Worst of all, though, was Obama’s statement that “not every problem can be remedied with another government program or dictate from Washington.” It combined an opportunistic (and probably insincere) echo of Bill Clintons irritating pronouncement in 1996 that “the era of big government is over” (which wasn’t even true) with a hint of Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech assertion that the country’s crisis of confidence was too big a problem for a president to solve on his own. Even when it’s true that the fault lies in our selves, not in our stars, who wants to hear it from the country’s biggest star?

The malaise echo was also audible in Obama’s repetition of his 2008 theme, “You’re the change.” I don’t mind being the change if the change is the legislative triumph that was passage of the Affordable Care Act—and, to his credit, Obama did say, “You’re the reason there’s a little girl with a heart disorder in Phoenix who’ll get the surgery she needs because an insurance company can’t limit her coverage.” I’m also the reason, Obama said, that a young man can get his medical degree (I guess because of Obama’s student-loan policy, though he didn’t really make that clear) and that a young immigrant won’t be deported (thanks to a recent policy shift by the department of homeland security), and that there’s no more Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and that there’s no more Iraq war. I’m happy to share the credit for all that. But I don’t like being the change if that means I’m responsible for the continuing drop in median income, or persistent unemployment, or Obama’s own subdued state of mind.

“I’m hopeful because of you,” Obama said at the end of his speech. He then recited a litany of inspiring examples of people showing grit under various kinds of adversity. But yikes, who wants that responsibility? What if I’m feeling grumpy (as I became, for instance, while listening to this speech)? I need a president who can cheer me up, not a president who needs me to cheer him up. The president can’t afford to outsource his optimism.

Yes, it’s going to be hard. The economy is in a dire state, and relatively high unemployment is likely to persist for another whole decade no matter who gets elected president. But a lot of the choices before us are easy. We’ve got to make taxation fairer (not through the kind of tax-reform compromise—somewhat lower rates in exchange for somewhat fewer deductions—that Obama seemed to be signaling support for in his speech, but rather by raising marginal taxes on the rich so that when we also raise taxes on the middle class, as we’ll eventually have to to lower the deficit, it doesn’t further distort the income distribution). In the short term, some additional government stimulus will likely be necessary. An increase in the minimum wage, which hasn’t been discussed in this campaign at all, would be extremely helpful about now. Politically, we have to block the Republicans from implementing their disastrous plan to slash government spending and further cut taxes on the rich. That’s not exactly easy, but the evidence suggests that on taxes, at least, Obama has acquired an unexpected advantage over Romney. The Democrats actually said the word “tax” at their convention (149 times) significantly more often than the Republicans did at theirs (89), which may signal the start of an historic paradigm shift. Shouldn’t Obama demonstrate a little satisfaction about that?

Years ago, I took my daughter Alice to see a rope-tricks demonstration. The guy who did it was very good. But he came very near to spoiling it by telling us, as he performed the tricks, how very difficult they were. It was like hearing Fred Astaire say that his feet were killing him. I later explained to Alice that part of doing something well should be disguising, or at least minimizing, how difficult it is. The guy doing rope tricks should have made us feel as though this was so simple even we could probably do it, even though we’d know in our hearts that we can’t. Obama’s speech reminded me of that rope-trick guy. Don’t tell me how hard it is. I already know that. Make me feel that you have the confidence to get it done, and make that confidence contagious. That’s what Obama’s having trouble doing, and if he doesn’t get better at it soon the results could be catastrophic for him and for the entire country.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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115 comments

I think you, Mr. Noah, are becoming too much of a nitpicker. I realize that you and your cohort must proclaim your official judgements of the work of presidents and their aspiring successors. Wouldn't it suffice to say that the president's speech, at a minimum, summarized his view of government's role in American society, thus enabling the audience and viewers to compare it to his rival's position? That's just about all anyone can ask him to do, and he did it. You might also point out that Mr. Romney has yet to let us know exactly which of his many positions on this subject he currently favors. President Obama made a compelling case for re-election, but Mr. Romney has not set the bar very high.

- robinette

September 7, 2012 at 12:23pm

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President Obama is honest and like so many of us, tired and wounded not only by the challenges of the past few years - by economic loss, by sorrow and by war - but by the obvious fact that the opposition would see the nation fail before reaching out to help, by lifting a finger or contributing a penny or a vote to help. We are in a pickle, and indeed the whole planet faces enormous challenges. But, things here are improving regardles how slowly - this past few years has taken a real toll on average Americans and many of us are still suffering economically. Meanwhile, the GOP has gone perilously close to reactionary, even fascist territory. They rely upon enormous floods of money from the few who will benefit from slashing our rights, human rights, worker rights, the environment, our safety nets, our health and welfare and our infrastructure. Their outright lies and obstruction of anything that would help the American people are scary. Their misogyny and at times xenophobia and racism are terrifying. Winston Churchill didn't lie to the British people during WWII. They wouldn't have believed him anyway. Had Obama gone around dancing up and down it wouldn't have resonated with the gravity of our losses and our challenges. So - I had the opposite impression of Obama's speech, Mr. Noah. But then all along I've had the real fear that we could lose - whether they win straight up or not they will do whatever - whatever - it takes to win and we must acknowledge this - the voter suppression, the lies, the floods of money, demonstrable ruthlessness and near lawless ambition - and the awful precedence of Bush v Gore. And if we do, it will mean life and death for those on the edge - children, seniors, disabled people, people who are ill, the working people and the poor - in fact - for the environment. The Republicans openly joke about climate change and seek to shred what environmental protections we have. The have no problem destroying endangered species here or abroad, in destroying habitat, in releasing poison into air and water. And they have no fear of turning people against each other, in starting wars, in playing deadly games with the lives of people and of nations. What I saw last night gave me hope - hope in my fellow Americans, in the social contract between us which despite attempts by bigots and fearmongers to shatter, manifestly lives on. Our courage lives on too and mine got a big boost last night. It wasn't just the speakers, though they were great. No. It was seeing those faces, the faces of our fellow citizens - this is the real American dream. Where else in the world will you see Muslims, Sikhs, Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, Latinos, Christians, Jews - people of all faiths or no faith - people who'd maybe be at war anyplace else in the world - who've struggled for each other and against each other even here - in Civil Rights struggles - in civil war and revolutionary war - in wars for the land itself - standing shoulder to shoulder. We heard from - better yet we saw women's rights advocates, nuns, Scandinavian blonds from the upper Midwest, patrician New Englanders and proud union workers, soldiers and veterans and rich people and middle class people and poor people standing together shoulder to shoulder because we have an overarching dream. And it isn't just a dream about money and power, which is the GOP's idea of success. It's the dream that the success of any one of us must be reflected in the success of our neighbors, and that much of work IS for the future, for the future of our children and for our planet too. President Obama, like every speaker before him but especially like the people in that hall, put a human face on the American dream and reminded us that regardless of how hard things get, we can and must keep working to make things better, to walk through the doors of the future - together - no matter what. And if we lose, if we lose, we must keep struggling nonetheless.

- Sophia

September 7, 2012 at 12:41pm

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Hey, how did William Galston get Noah's byline?

- cspencef

September 7, 2012 at 12:42pm

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The somberness didn't work for me either, but the "You're the change" bit did, and even more so the riff on citizenship. Connecting to policies to real people's daily lives and our shared responsibility to each other, that's good stuff. Not new, but good.

- amayi

September 7, 2012 at 12:45pm

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Well put, Sophia. One of the best summaries I've seen of what's at stake in this election and what the Democrats stood for at their convention.

- VAliberal

September 7, 2012 at 12:46pm

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I'm sorry, but everything else seems superficial to me. Until the President punches a hole in the notion that lowering the top rate is going to help us, everything else is unsatisfying. More investing by the wealthy from tax cuts means more investing overseas where labor markets are cheaper and it means more trading money with other investors. It does not mean more jobs here (unlike stimulus spending). Same with the nonsense of zero taxes on someone who does not work but earns up to $200,000.00 in interest, dividends and capital gains.

- Nusholtz

September 7, 2012 at 12:48pm

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I'll go with Mr. Scheiber's view of the speech!

- glenlacher

September 7, 2012 at 1:46pm

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I wanted him to make me happy and he didn't! Waaaaaah! Ya know, in retrospect Carter was right. Watch the malaise speech on YouTube.

- Mikelawyr22

September 7, 2012 at 1:59pm

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Timothy Noah inhabits the wonder world of pundits and DC belt-way word-smiths. Obama didn't need to spend 30 to 40 minutes of laying out Obamacare. Clinton did that, as did others. The benefit of having proxies do that, is that it gives another voice to it that helps legitimize its existence. It's like your wife asking you about how she should cut her hair. You suggest a bob, knowing she won't take the advice (even if it's good), until she gets similar advice from her sister or best friend, then she shows up at dinner with a bob. Bill Clinton and Julian Castro where those "second opinions" on Obamacare and Obama's other policy successes. They were there to sway the undecided and independents, that yes, even though Obama has said ACA is good for you, we also say it's good for you too. Noah would have Obama talk with sweet honey about a light over the hill if we just clasp hands and wish upon a star, click our heels three times and say "I wish we were better, I wish we were better, I wish we were better" Obama did was he was supposed to do. Deliver a sober and serious speech about why continuing the policies he's put into place are slowly working but that everyone has to have a stake in the rebuilding effort. That it isn't just tax and benefit cuts but investments and shared sacrifices to get everyone moving in the same direction. That digging ourselves out of this mess isn't going to happen in 3 years (despite the GOP roadblocks to the contrary and Geitner & Summers mamby-pamby approach to stimulus). That we have to contend with a narcissistic and greedy GOP party that wants to suck the life-force out of America doesn't help, but if we want to make things better we can't put them back in charge. The Romney/Ryan/GOP plan of action is 'more of the same' of the previous 30 years of trickle down bull-shit that has done little in the way of expanding the middle class except hollowing it out. Yeah the road ahead is rock, rough and unknown. But we can't simply stop and turn around and pretend things will be the same or will return to the days of yesteryear. Obama told it like it is. Yes it was a bit down and yes it was serious and yes it was truthful. But that's what I want a President to do. Be straight forward with the American people instead of telling us to go shopping and pretend nothing difficult has to be done.

- singlspeed

September 7, 2012 at 2:02pm

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sophia...excellent comment btw.

- singlspeed

September 7, 2012 at 2:06pm

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Seems to me Noah is grumpy because the president didn't give the speech he wanted to hear. Obama has two constituencies to win over in order to win in November: Undecided independents and apathetic/disheartened Obama '08 voters. I think "You're the change" was an effective pitch to the latter group. As for the undecideds, Obama is positioning himself as a battle-hardened CIC (that was the significance of the Lincoln reference) dealing with a bunch of griping, incompetent commanders (Republican leadership). As the campaign heats up, he won't be a happy warrior, strutting his stuff or whining about their obstructionism. He'll be calling them on the carpet as fools and charlatans, painting Romney-Ryan as the face of defeat, even cowardice. At least, that's the speech I'm wanting to hear. BTW, I re-read FDR's First Inaugural ("nothing to fear, etc."): "It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure." Oh, those ebullient Thirties.

- koppgeo

September 7, 2012 at 2:09pm

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And ditto on Sophia's comment (you should pardon the expression).

- koppgeo

September 7, 2012 at 2:11pm

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I agree with amayi. The concept of citizenship that Obama invoked is what living in society should be about. Republicans don't want to be citizens. That want to stand apart, because they're so special. Sophia defined citizenship well. It's cheering the success of others, not only one's own. "It's the dream that the success of any one of us must be reflected in the success of our neighbors, and that much of work IS for the future, for the future of our children and for our planet too."

- magboy47.

September 7, 2012 at 2:23pm

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Is it possible to take a middle position? I don't think the speech was as good as Scheiber did, but I don't believe it was bad as Noah thinks. It was somewhere around a B+. It could have been an A or A- if Obama had included just a few more programmatic notes, particularly about jobs, but then maybe they took that stuff out when they learned today's jobs numbers in advance of the rest of us. Then again, if they knew the numbers ahead of time, I would have thought that should lead to more talk about employment, not less. Still, I think he helped himself overall.

- timteeter

September 7, 2012 at 2:47pm

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I'm with timteeter, though I would have graded the speech a bit lower, perhaps B or B-. I would have loved to see Obama be more specific in contrasting what his second term would be like compared to Romney's first, in terms of taxes, health care and especially jobs and the economy. As well as Clinton put the case, it could only have helped for Obama to repeat and reinforce it. On the other hand, he made a great point in pointing out how this election will largely be decided by how much all of us put into it, in terms of money, time, persuading friends and relatives and even strangers to vote, etc. And he ended well, even rising to be inspiring, after a somewhat dour opening and middle of his talk. Interesting and understandable that he focused a fair amount on foreign policy, given that it's a strength of his and a weakness of Romney's. But it also made me wonder just a bit whether he knows something might well be coming, in terms of an Israeli attack on Iran. I hope and suspect that I'm being a tad paranoid in that regard.

- Thunderroad

September 7, 2012 at 3:18pm

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thunderroad....in regard to the foreign policy aspect and your nagging suspicions...2 words. 'October Surprise' Not that I wish it, but I suspect Israel attacks Iran, the US is drawn into the matter and we end up having to deal with Syria (for real) and the American people decide changing horses mid-stream might not be a good idea.

- singlspeed

September 7, 2012 at 3:35pm

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Thanks guys - October surprise, G*d forbid. Actually I am more worried about the GOP pulling a November surprise a la Bush v Gore. PS, Clint Eastwood, oy. Where do people come up with this stuff about Obama being a "fraud?" In what way?

- Sophia

September 7, 2012 at 3:45pm

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Actually, singlspeed, walking back away from my paranoid path, one reason there might not be an October Surprise is because Netanyahu does not want to do anything that increases Obama's chance of winning in November. Triggering a crisis that lets Obama wear his Commander in Chief hat, and that diminishes the economy as an issue, does not square with that. Now, that won't stop Netanyahu from making lots of noise about how Iran, with one purpose (though certainly not the only one) being to call Obama's foreign policy credentials into question.

- Thunderroad

September 7, 2012 at 4:11pm

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Last night I was at Shabbos dinner and my 79-year-old Egyptian-born, francophone, Jewish-Australian father-in-law said to me, "Aaron, I saw your O-ba-ma give his 'oration' today. I saw the whole thing." (It's always "your Obama" with Harry, I suppose because I'm the only American at the table, and for some reason he thinks it's cute to over-enunciate the syllables in the president's name.) "It was rubbish! It was all about the little girl who cannot walk, this, and the old man who needs a heart transplant, that... All for emotion. Where is the policy? Feh!" With the caveat that I haven't seen the speech myself, only read some commentary on it here and elsewhere, I'll answer Tim Noah the same way I answered my father-in-law: "The purpose of Obama's speech was singular: to get him reelected. And if its appeal to emotion was a strong as you say it was, then I'm thinking it answered that purpose just fine."

- AaronW

September 7, 2012 at 4:15pm

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The speech was everything it needed to be. Clinton's speech was much better, yes, but Obama couldn't make that speech because he's the candidate. The only way Romney wins is through GOP election tampering, which very well might happen, but if it's a fair fight Obama wins.

- jaime100

September 7, 2012 at 4:26pm

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I thought it was ironic or just poor taste schadenfreude for the president to make fun of Romney's naivete. When he smilingly described Romney as not ready for the job of commander in chief and mocked him (pettily) for his gaffe in London, I thought, well, really, look who's talking. 4 years ago he had to defend himself against Hilary Clinton's explicit suggestion that he was not at all ready for the presidency in her three o'clock in the morning call campaign ad. What did he know about being Commander-in-chief? And what about all his gaffs as a president? At least Romney knows what it means to run a billion dollar corporation and has actual experience in governance. As for Obama's self-humbling rhetoric, I thought Golda Meir's brusqueness might be just right: “Don't be so humble, you're not that great.”

- noga1

September 7, 2012 at 4:33pm

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...“Don't be so humble, you're not that great.”... The jury in my head is still out on Obama's speech, my assessment of which I find hard to fight to the ground. But the above I like in any event. What a tart line!

- basman

September 7, 2012 at 4:49pm

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I totally disagree with TN. I would much rather hear a president level with me than give me exaggerated expectations.

- maxhencke

September 7, 2012 at 5:12pm

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Geez, Obama's biggest problem is that he didn't hype Obamacare? You mean the legislation that a lot of people don't like (even if you do, Noah) and that caused a huge 2010 shift to the GOP? That's terrible advice there. And financial reform? Since when is that a political winner? Obama talked about what he needed to--student loans, auto companies, foreign policy. He acknowledges things have been hard--but also said things will get worse under the Republicans. It was a great speech--it was just given in hard times.

- polcereal

September 7, 2012 at 5:23pm

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FWIIW, I agree with AaronW that it was effective and achieved what it was meant to achieve. Someone had composed a mini toccata and fugue, from Michelle's to Clinton's speech, culminating with Obama's. I presume it was conceived by David Axelrod, who seems to simply and intuitive understand American crowds and how to reach them. The criticisms hurled at Obama's speech are exactly, I suspect, what was aimed at: appeal to emotion, ridiculing the enemy, confessing to some failings but only temporary ones, expressing "presidentiality", hinting at the past magic and nudging the listeners into joining the final lap of the journey. You and I are in it together, he said. And the crowd loved it. My favourite moment was after he finished and his wife and two daughters surprise him from behind. His younger daughter always the first to cling to his hand and not let it go. After his inauguration speech, the same scene happened; his younger daughter ran to him first and he picked her up. I guess now, 4 years later, she has grown and can't be picked up so easily. They are such a lovely family.

- noga1

September 7, 2012 at 5:24pm

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Maybe Joe Scarborough had the best line: "Obama said nothing better than Romney said nothing."

- basman

September 7, 2012 at 5:31pm

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Noah makes some good points but on balance and on reflection I find his complaints whiny and strategically and tactically silly for the reasons people have set out well on this thread.

- basman

September 7, 2012 at 6:14pm

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"At least Romney knows what it means to run a billion dollar corporation and has actual experience in governance." And Obama has no experience in governance, noga? And I think it's pretty well proven that business people make bad presidents (e.g., Hoover, Bush 43). A billion dollar corporation is a thousand times less complicated than the U.S. government is. I had Obama's speech on, but didn't pay too much attention to it. Almost no policy content--nothing to perk my ears up. I hope he's saving some substance for the debates. Why did neither Romney nor Obama talk about policy? Maybe their advisers know something we don't. Or maybe their advisers don't know that the public wants to hear some policy. I sure do.

- magboy47.

September 7, 2012 at 7:31pm

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Magboy 47 According to bits I've "pre-read" of Woodward's new book, Obama's lack of executive experience marred his first term, which I understand is Woodward's conclusion. Has there been a less experienced man take office? Your knowledge of American presidential history exceeds my own, but who had less than he did?

- basman

September 7, 2012 at 8:22pm

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basman, Here's noga's quote: "At least Romney knows what it means to run a billion dollar corporation and has actual experience in governance." The key word is "has." At this time, Obama has almost 4 years of actual experience--as president. Romney was a governor. And former governors don't necessarily make good presidents. I give you Jimmy Carter and G.W. Bush.

- magboy47.

September 7, 2012 at 9:46pm

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My point is that when Obama came into office, he was to my understanding the least "experienced" in U.S. history to assume high office and it., Woodward, I understand, concludes, it marred his first term. If he wasn't the least experienced, I'd like to know who was. On that basis, to extend the point, it was rich for Obama to be taking a shot at Romney and Ryan's foreign policy inexperience. After all, both Romney and Ryan would come to high office with more relevant experience than Obama. What, finally, relevance is it to any point that some governors make bad presidents? The point remains that Romney, the substance of his politics set to the side, would come to office shovel ready, owing to his political, business and even public good works experience, that is to say, the Olympics turn around, to assume office where Obama was not. And whereas inexperience was a plausible reason originally to discount Obama, it's not for Romney.

- basman

September 7, 2012 at 10:56pm

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magboy: "A billion dollar corporation is a thousand times less complicated than the U.S. government is." While I love your point and I should know better, I cannot help but point out that the U.N. estimated the total wealth of the U.S. as 118 trillion in 2008. This makes the ultimate responsibility of the U.S. government a hundred and eighteen thousand times more complicated than running a billion dollar corporation. .... sorry... too many years of working with numbers.... and you were underselling your extremely valid point.

- jamesson

September 7, 2012 at 11:51pm

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Yes, Basman, that was the point I was making. I thought it would be clear enough.

- noga1

September 8, 2012 at 12:21am

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As a matter of interest, from Conn Carroll citing Woodward et al: ...Arrogant, aloof, and unprepared is how Bob Woodward portrays President Obama in his new book The Price of Politics, set to be released next week, The book recounts Obama’s troubled relationship with Congress, from his inauguration through last summer’s failed debt-limit negotiations, with Woodward concluding, “It is a fact that President Obama was handed a miserable, faltering economy and faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition. But presidents work their will — or should work their will — on important matters of national business. . . . Obama has not.” Snippets of the book, as reported by The Washington Post, include: The book portrays Obama as a man of paradoxical impulses, able to charm an audience with his folksy manner but less adept and less interested in cultivating his relationships with Reid and Pelosi. While the president worries that he can’t rely on the two leaders, they are portrayed as impatient with him. As the final details of the 2009 stimulus package were being worked out on Capitol Hill, Obama phoned the speaker’s office to exhort the troops. Pelosi put the president on speakerphone so everyone could hear. “Warming to his subject, he continued with an uplifting speech,” Woodward writes. “Pelosi reached over and pressed the mute button. They could hear Obama, but now he couldn’t hear them. The president continued speaking, his disembodied voice filling the room, and the two leaders got back to the hard numbers.” … In the same vein, Woodward portrays Obama’s attempts to woo business leaders as ham-handed and governed by stereotype. At a White House dinner with a select group of business executives in early 2010, Obama gets off on the wrong foot by saying, “I know you guys are Republicans.” Ivan Seidenberg, the chief executive of Verizon, who “considers himself a progressive independent,” retorted, “How do you know that?” Nonetheless, Seidenberg was later pleased to receive an invitation to the president’s 2010 Super Bowl party. But he changed his mind after Obama did little more than say hello, spending about 15 seconds with him. “Seidenberg felt he had been used as window dressing,” Woodward writes. “He complained to Valerie Jarrett, a close Obama aide. . . . Her response: Hey, you’re in the room with him. You should be happy.” ABC News also reports: As debt negotiations progressed, Democrats complained of being out of the loop, not knowing where the White House stood on major points. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, is described as having a “growing feeling of incredulity” as negotiations meandered. “The administration didn’t seem to have a strategy. It was unbelievable. There didn’t seem to be any core principles,” Woodward writes in describing Van Hollen’s thinking. … Larry Summers, a top economic adviser to Obama who also served as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, identified a key distinction that he said impacted budget and spending talks. “Obama doesn’t really have the joy of the game. Clinton basically loved negotiating with a bunch of pols, about anything,” Summers said. “Whereas, Obama, he really didn’t like these guys.” … Woodward portrays a president who remained a supreme believer in his own powers of persuasion, even as he faltered in efforts to coax congressional leaders in both parties toward compromise. Boehner told Woodward that at one point, when Boehner voiced concern about passing the deal they were working out, the president reached out and touched his forearm. “John, I’ve got great confidence in my ability to sway the American people,” Boehner quotes the president as having told him. … With the nation facing the very real possibility of defaulting on its debt for the first time in its history, David Krone, the chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told the president directly that he couldn’t simply reject the only option left to Congress. “It is really disheartening that you, that this White House did not have a Plan B,” Krone said, according to Woodward....

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 12:50am

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At The Theater Review by eMish A Tale of Two Conventions: two oppositional plays presented in cycle Both of these productions are set almost entirely in America, with few foreign characters to consider. Those that do appear, with one exception, are relegated to either minor roles or nebulous vagueries. The physical accoutrements of the stages were unmemorable, with these differences: set designer R had either not gotten the digital memo or was intentionally trying to evoke some past period. That constant stage decoration - semi-circular tri-colored bunting hung from the balustrades and balconies - was made of textile, which nobody uses anymore. Set designer D took the more contemporary approach of LED's, used to good effect to heighten the action on the stage. They shimmered electronically, casting their own glow on the audience below. Lighting technique also differed. R is illuminated subtly and statically as an Ibsen play. When the applause lines came, it was a simple order of "house lights up" to showcase the theater-goers' reaction. I say "reaction" in the singular purposely--part of the aim of both these vehicles is to display only one unified expression of the crowd--huzzahs for heroes and hisses for villains. The pulsing, rotating lights scanning the crowd at D were more akin to a rock concert, and like the LED bunting, served to propel the narrative to its multiple climaxes. D contained many elements of the rags-to-riches trope, scrappy characters battling up from the bottom in order that they may distribute their hard-won sagacity outward as communitarians to lift up the bedraggled. One cannot say this of R, in which a rich man inspires by virtue of his example. Each one of us individually can rise according to his own aspirations, and when we arrive, can serve as pathfinders for those that wish to follow. The Casts In R, a memorable performance by C, playing the portly, bare-knuckled man from Jersey. He has a commanding stage presence by virtue of his sheer physicality and no-nonsense attitude. So much for the good. His portrayal was so self-serving (not even mentioning the main character until late in his soliloquy) that it undermined the main theme of the whole piece. He seemed to be auditioning for a better role in a future production. He deflected his tepid reviews by calling the house "flat." Mrs. R (as played by AR) turned in a warm if somewhat confined portrait of the supportive wife and mother and adequately evoked that standard character in a way that successfully communicated the traditional mores of the archetype. Still, one has to say this type of performance sometimes seems a bit antiquated when presented as it was here, without irony. R (as the lead role R) had obviously studied his part well, knew his lines, and delivered them accurately, if somewhat perfunctorily. The essence of being an actor is to disappear into the character, so the crowd suspends disbelief and is unaware of the artifice. Mr. R. is not practiced enough in his craft to pull this illusion off, and his performance, while earnest, disclosed this fact. He may have been miscast for this particular production. In any event, some time spent in summer stock may improve his ease with future roles. His portrayal was by no means the strongest of this piece, and his character's primacy was achieved only by virtue of arriving at the reveal, the pinnacle of the narrative, as if deposited there. The most interesting character by far, the one the crowd no doubt left the theater chattering about, was the buffoon, exquisitely rendered by E. His twelve minute solo was equal parts improvisation, avant-garde, and surreal non-sequiter. It created quite the stir, though it again side-tracked the narrative, as in C's turn. On the other hand, his creative visualization of the invisible villain O may have in fact been the main focus of the entire production. If so, I must admit I missed the point. There were many strong performances in D. Among them was M, wife of the main character. Her costume was gorgeous, reminiscent of the style and grace exhibited by the late great JO. Gleaming smile, an athletic and dignified carriage, a direct and competent gaze. She was able to convey an emotional immediacy of connection supporting the main character. I don't mean to suggest that this character is any less circumscribed by the iconic wife-and-mother meme--but it is a contemporary type, a more youthful one, better turned out and better suited for our contemporary theater of the moment. JB, as the loyal aide to our hero, conveyed a down-home earthiness, a man-in-the-street sense of commonality while extolling his knight. He ended with an entirely believable endearment to his wife, and when he teared up and his voice broke, the illusion was so complete I felt myself swept along. Bravo. The odious villain BL must be mentioned. This character had the advantage of being based on the truly evil actions of an historical figure, and so possessed a reality of maleficence lacking in the invisible villain in R. One could not ask for a better antagonist, and the hero O's destruction of him continually punctuated the narrative--a bit too much. We got it already. O's performance was more mature than much of his previous work, deliberately structured to convey the gravitas the character requires, holding back a bit on the insurgent zeal with which he first played this role. The play describes serious times, and a certain restraint is indicated. But the kudos belong to BC, who stole the entire show with his blend of wit, folk wisdom, and simple storytelling. He is one of the finest actors of our time, beloved by the American Theater, his checkered accomplishments rendered hazy by the affection that comes with time. The aim of a critic of theater is to critique theater qua theater--whatever connections or applications an audience may make to their own visceral lives or topical events is their own business. This is illusion, after all. Therefore, I limit my commentary here to which show was more effective at entertaining the crowd, we groundlings--for in these sorts of spectacles, the vicarious thrill and confirmation and release of all our most fervent affective desires may be achieved, whatever those desires may be. We come to have them stroked and to realize a catharsis. Substance is never the question in these sorts of programs. That is not their purpose. Facts diminish in importance. Contrary to the popular saying, we seem entitled these days to our own. These are not weighty dramas or high comedies. They are equal parts melodrama and light farce and romance which nevertheless enrapture millions, for that is the popular taste, as can be observed in many other media besides theater. The pity is that we are so eager to embrace the romance of belonging that we have exchanged critical thinking, which demands specifics, diligently ferrets out facts, weighs substance, and arrives at a determination, for the ease and vicarious satisfaction of the ecstatic thrall or the easy enemy, both the domain of all who are confident in their own righteousness, the righteousness of the crowd. The play has indeed become the thing, but not as old Will meant it. Given all that, these shows are produced by Parties, and I wanted one. I enjoyed (virtually, of course) dancing to Springsteen under the swirling lights more than sitting through the drear and doom of Nordic shadows. And that's entertainment.

- eMish

September 8, 2012 at 12:51am

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"Good works" Basman? Maybe if Bob Woodward would write you a book about the leveraged buyout business your posts wouldn't be so tedious and blinkered.

- Pnaut

September 8, 2012 at 1:37am

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basman, Every U.S. president and every leader of every country in history has serious flaws, and so do his or her opponents and his or her allies. I've read an awful lot about political leaders in history, and it's been a terrible struggle to get anything done for every one of them, even the dictators. LBJ is considered to be the best president at handling Congress (although he didn't have a 50-foot-high GOP stone wall in his face like Obama does), and when he quit in frustration in 1968, the country and his presidency were in shambles. I know. I was at the Democratic Convention in Chicago that year. There was anarchy in the streets, and not just in Chicago. I was in the Great Detroit Fire in 1967, too. So much for handling Congress. LBJ got the Civil Rights Act passed, but what about the civil rights of American soldiers sent to Viet Nam to die, so LBJ wouldn't be the first president to lose a war? Most presidents get some things done and fail to get other things done. Are you saying that if Obama didn't have his obvious personality flaws, the country would be in better shape than it is? The odds are very high that it wouldn't be. Imagine if Romney had gotten the presidency in 2008. He would have certainly let GM fail, and he might have let the banks fail, too. "Bottom out" is one of his favorite terms. He even wants the housing market to bottom out. Would America bottom out under him? Probably. Does Romney have personality flaws, too, that keep him from being a strong and wise leader? You betcha. Bob Woodward is a gossip monger. That's how he makes a very good living. If only he had a sense of humor. His books would be more interesting and entertaining. He's no Doris Kearns Goodwin. She has a sense of humor and can therefore see some strengths in complicated leaders. She will not write a book about G.W. Bush. She may write one about Obama.

- magboy47.

September 8, 2012 at 2:48am

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Sophia writes: "But, things here are improving regardles how slowly - this past few years has taken a real toll on average Americans and many of us are still suffering economically." Improving? Wrong. As of today, we have fewer men working than any time every since the government started keeping track of this in the 1940's. This is staggering by itself. But the report today also showed that job creation rates in 2012 has fallen below 2011 levels. Good god. By most every measure, this is getting worse. And president hasn't a clue how to turn this around. Not one person here can outline what will be different. You just assert that things will be worse with Romney. How on earth do you know that? The middle class was better off under Bush than Obama by most any measure. How much more pain can you wish on folks in the name of ideology? Enough already.

- seattleeng

September 8, 2012 at 3:24am

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". . . it was rich for Obama to be taking a shot at Romney and Ryan's foreign policy inexperience. After all, both Romney and Ryan would come to high office with more relevant experience than Obama." I don't understand, basman -- where in their record do you find such experience (for either individual)?

- ironyroad

September 8, 2012 at 3:48am

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Of course things will be worse with Romney because he wants to do even more of the utterly failed economic policies that created this economic disaster -- increasing the income share of the wealthy and starving the government of resources, further eroding the effective demand that drives the economy. Better off under Bush? Bush inherited a booming economy with high growth and a high rate of job creation. He trashed it with the absurd economic policies that seattle (and Romney) advocate. Obama then inherited an economic disaster, courtesy of Bush, an economy in free-fall. Go look at the job loss charts again, seattle. See the free-fall right down to the end of the Bush administration. See the recovery under Obama. Try for once in your bloody life actually to pay attention to reality. In other words, enough of your bloody lies. The middle class was better off prior to the Depression too. By the perverse light of seattle, that should be laid at the feet of FDR. What do we need to do? Simple. Raise taxes on the rich, at least letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and turn the revenue over to the states to fund public hiring. As we teeter on the edge of recovery, that alone would make the difference. The single reason why this recovery has stalled is that public employment has fallen even as private employment has risen. According to idiotic, flat-earth libertarian economic theology, this is precisely what is supposed to lead to a burst of prosperity. It doesn't, as actual economic history has shown us time and again. But fabulists like seattle and the Republican party are immune to reality. The way out is simply to stop implementing failed libertarian economic austerity policies that are leading to declining public employment. In every prior recession, including the Reagan and Bush recessions, aid to states to enable them to maintain employment was a key element of recovery. The Republicans have prevented that essential tool from being employed this time, insisting instead on their completely idiotic austerity. Obama's task when, not if, he is re-elected (as thank god he will be) will be to find the political key that forces the libertarian, Tea-party Republican savages to bend, so that the levers of economic policy are far, far away from the hands of these nuts who are dragging us down. Would it be useful for Obama to say that out loud? No, it would not. Fortunately, he seems to have learned what winning the political battle requires of him. But for Republican obstructionism, we would be out of this recession by now. But the Republicans have had an affirmative and openly admitted policy of making things worse in the hope that they can thereby defeat Obama. That isn't even pain inflicted in the name of a failed ideology. It is pain intentionally inflicted on the country by such as seattle for the sake of power. Ugly. Enough already.

- roidubouloi

September 8, 2012 at 8:52am

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You're kidding me, of course, ironyroad: But here ya' go: "Mitt Romney After going to both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School simultaneously, he passed the Michigan bar exam, but never worked as an attorney. In 1984, he co-founded Bain Capital a private equity investment firm, one of the largest such firms in the United States . In 1994, he ran for Senator of Massachusetts and lost to Ted Kennedy. He was President and CEO of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. In 2002, he was elected Governor of the State of Massachusetts where he eliminated a 1.5 billion deficit. Bain Capital, starting with one small office supply store in Massachusetts , turned it into Staples; now over 2,000 stores employing 90,000 people. Bain Capital also worked to perform the same kinds of business miracles again and again, with companies like Domino’s, Sealy, Brookstone, Weather Channel, Burger King, Warner Music Group, Dollarama, Home Depot Supply, and many others. He was an unpaid volunteer campaign worker for his dad’s gubernatorial campaign 1 year. He was an unpaid intern in his dad’s governor’s office for eight years. He was an unpaid bishop and state president of his church for ten years. He was an unpaid President of the Salt Lake Olympic Committee for three years. He took no salary and was the unpaid Governor of Massachusetts for four years. He gave his entire inheritance from his father to charity. ¬More Specifically Private equity For more details on this topic, see Bain Capital. In 1984, Romney left Bain & Company to co-found the spin-off private equity investment firm, Bain Capital.[74] Bill Bain and Romney spent a year raising the $37 million in funds needed to start the new operation, which had fewer than ten employees.[60][64][70][75] Romney initially had the titles of president[76] and managing general partner[77][78] or managing partner.[79] He later became referred to as managing director[80] or CEO[81] as well. He was also the sole shareholder of the firm.[82] At first, Bain Capital focused on venture capital opportunities. Their first big success was a 1986 investment to help start Staples Inc., after founder Thomas G. Stemberg convinced Romney of the market size for office supplies and Romney convinced others; Bain Capital eventually reaped a nearly sevenfold return on its investment, and Romney sat on the Staples board of directors for over a decade.[60][75][83] Logo of Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 Romney soon switched Bain Capital's focus from startups to the relatively new business of leveraged buyouts: buying existing firms with money mostly borrowed from banking institutions and using the newly bought firms' assets as collateral, and selling them off in a few years.[60][70] Bain Capital lost most of its money in many of its early leveraged buyouts, but then started finding deals that made large returns.[60] The firm invested in or acquired Accuride, Brookstone, Domino's Pizza, Sealy Corporation, Sports Authority, and Artisan Entertainment, as well as lesser-known companies in the industrial and medical sectors.[60][70][84] Much of the firm's profit was earned from a relatively small number of deals; Bain Capital's overall success–to–failure ratio was about even.[nb 10] Romney discovered few investment opportunities himself (and those that he did, often failed to make money for the firm).[86] Instead, he focused on analyzing the merits of possible deals that others brought forward and on recruiting investors to participate in them once approved.[86] Within Bain Capital, Romney spread profits from deals widely within the firm to keep people motivated, often keeping less than ten percent for himself.[87] Romney was generally data-driven.[60][83] He wanted to drop a Bain Capital hedge fund that initially lost money, but other partners prevailed and it eventually gained billions.[60] He also personally opted out of the Artisan Entertainment deal, not wanting to profit from a studio that produced R-rated films.[60] Romney was on the board of directors of Damon Corporation, a medical testing company later found guilty of defrauding the government; Bain Capital tripled its investment before selling off the company, and the fraud was discovered by the new owners (Romney was never implicated).[60] In some cases, Romney had little involvement with a company once acquired.[75] Bain Capital's leveraged buyouts sometimes led to layoffs, either soon after acquisition or later after the firm had left.[67][75][88] How jobs added compared to those lost due to these investments and buyouts is unknown, due to a lack of records and Bain Capital's penchant for privacy on behalf of itself and its investors.[89][90][91] In any case, maximizing the value of acquired companies and the return to Bain's investors, not job creation, was the firm's fundamental goal, as it was for most private equity operations.[75][92] Bain Capital's acquisition of Ampad exemplified a deal where it profited handsomely from early payments and management fees, even though the subject company itself ended up going into bankruptcy.[60][83][92] Dade Behring was another case where Bain Capital received an eightfold return on its investment, but the company itself was saddled with debt and laid off over a thousand employees before Bain Capital exited (the company subsequently went into bankruptcy, with more layoffs, before recovering and prospering).[89] Bain was among the private equity firms that took the most fees in such cases.[70][83] In 1990, Romney was asked to return to Bain & Company, which was facing financial collapse.[74] He was announced as its new CEO in January 1991[77][78] but drew only a symbolic salary of one dollar[74] (he remained managing general partner of Bain Capital during this time).[77][78] He managed an effort to restructure Bain & Company's employee stock-ownership plan, real-estate deals and bank loans, while rallying the firm's thousand employees, imposing a new governing structure that included Bain and the other founding partners giving up control, and increasing fiscal transparency.[60][64][74] Within about a year, he had led Bain & Company through a turnaround and returned the firm to profitability without further layoffs or partner defections.[64] He turned Bain & Company over to new leadership and returned to Bain Capital in December 1992.[60][93][94] Romney took a leave of absence from Bain Capital from November 1993[95] to November 1994[48] in order to run for the U.S. Senate. During that time, Ampad workers went on strike, and asked Romney to intervene; Bain Capital lawyers asked him not to get involved, although he did meet with the workers to tell them he had no position of active authority in the matter.[96][97] By 1999, Bain Capital was on its way to being one of the top private equity firms in the nation,[88] having increased its number of partners from 5 to 18, with 115 employees overall, and $4 billion under its management.[70][75] The firm's average annual return on investments was 113 percent.[64][98] Bain Capital's approach of applying consulting expertise to the companies it invested in became widely copied within the private equity industry.[27][75] Economist Steven Kaplan would later say, "[Romney] came up with a model that was very successful and very innovative and that now everybody uses."[83] Romney took a paid leave of absence from Bain Capital in February 1999 to serve as the President and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee.[99][100] Billed in some public statements as keeping a part-time role,[99][101] Romney remained the firm's sole shareholder, managing director, CEO and president, signing corporate and legal documents, attending to his interests within the firm, and conducting prolonged negotiations for the terms of his departure.[99][102] He was not involved in day-to-day operations of the firm, nor was he involved in investment decisions for Bain Capital's new private equity funds.[99][102] He retained his position on several boards of directors during this time and regularly returned to Massachusetts to attend meetings.[103] In August 2001, Romney announced that he would not return to Bain Capital.[104] His separation from the firm was finalized in early 2002;[99] he transferred his ownership to other partners and negotiated an agreement that allowed him to receive a passive profit share as a retired partner in some Bain Capital entities, including buyout and investment funds.[87][105] Because the private equity business continued to thrive, this deal brings him millions of dollars in annual income.[87] Governor of Massachusetts Tenure, 2003–2007 When Romney was sworn in as the 70th governor of Massachusetts on January 2, 2003,[182] both houses of the Massachusetts state legislature held large Democratic majorities.[183] He picked his cabinet and advisors more on managerial abilities than partisan affiliation.[184] He declined his governor's salary during his term.[185] Upon entering office in the middle of a fiscal year, he faced an immediate $650 million shortfall and a projected $3 billion deficit for the next year.[163] Unexpected revenue of $1.0–1.3 billion from a previously enacted capital gains tax increase and $500 million in unanticipated federal grants decreased the deficit to $1.2–1.5 billion.[186][187] Through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and removal of corporate tax loopholes,[186] the state ran surpluses of around $600–700 million for the last two full fiscal years Romney was in office, although it began running deficits again after that.[nb 12] Romney supported raising various fees, including those for driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and gun licenses, to raise more than $300 million.[163][186] He increased a special gasoline retailer fee by two cents per gallon, generating about $60 million per year in additional revenue.[163][186] Opponents said the reliance on fees sometimes imposed a hardship on those who could least afford them.[186] Romney also closed tax loopholes, in the interests of both better fairness and revenue increases, that brought in another $181 million from businesses over the next two years and over $300 million for his term.[163][192][193] He did so in the face of conservative and corporate critics that considered them tax increases.[192][193] The state legislature, with the governor's support, also cut spending by $1.6 billion, including $700 million in reductions in state aid to cities and towns.[194] The cuts also included a $140 million reduction in state funding for higher education, which led state-run colleges and universities to increase tuition fees by 63 percent over four years.[163][186] Romney sought additional cuts in his last year as governor by vetoing nearly 250 items in the state budget, but all were overridden by the heavily Democratic legislature.[195] The cuts in state spending put added pressure on localities to reduce services or raise property taxes, and the share of town and city revenues coming from property taxes rose from 49 to 53 percent.[163][186] The combined state and local tax burden in Massachusetts increased during Romney's governorship but remained below the national average.[163] Romney sought to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state. This came after Staples founder Stemberg told him at the start of his term that doing so would be the best way he could help people.[196] Another factor was the federal government, owing to the rules of Medicaid funding, threatening to cut $385 million in those payments to Massachusetts if the state did not reduce the number of uninsured recipients of health care services.[197][198] Although he had not campaigned on the idea of universal health insurance, Romney decided that because people without insurance still received expensive health care, the money spent by the state for such care could be better used to subsidize insurance for the poor.[196] After positing that any measure adopted not raise taxes and not resemble the previous decade's failed "Hillarycare" proposal, Romney formed a team of consultants from diverse political backgrounds.[197][198] Beginning in late 2004, they came up with a set of proposals more ambitious than an incremental one from the Massachusetts Senate and more acceptable to him than one from the Massachusetts House of Representatives that incorporated a new payroll tax.[184][197][198] In particular, Romney pushed for incorporating an individual mandate at the state level.[23] Past rival Ted Kennedy, who had made universal health coverage his life's work and who, over time, had developed a warm relationship with Romney,[199] gave the plan a positive reception, which encouraged Democratic legislators to cooperate.[197][198] The effort eventually gained the support of all major stakeholders within the state, and Romney helped break a logjam between rival Democratic leaders in the legislature.[197][198] On April 12, 2006, the governor signed the resulting Massachusetts health reform law, commonly called "Romneycare", which requires nearly all Massachusetts residents to buy health insurance coverage or face escalating tax penalties, such as the loss of their personal income tax exemption.[200] The bill also establishes means-tested state subsidies for people who do not have adequate employer insurance and whose income is below a threshold, with funds that were previously used to compensate for the health costs of the uninsured.[201][202] He vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including a controversial $295-per-employee assessment on businesses that do not offer health insurance and provisions guaranteeing dental benefits to Medicaid recipients.[200][203] The legislature overrode all eight vetoes, but the governor's office said the differences were not essential.[203] The law was the first of its kind in the nation and became the signature achievement of Romney's term in office.[198][nb 13] At the beginning of his governorship, Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions, but advocated tolerance and supported some domestic partnership benefits.[198][205][206] Faced with the dilemma of choosing between same-sex marriage or civil unions after the November 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision legalizing same-sex marriages (Goodridge v. Department of Public Health), Romney reluctantly backed a state constitutional amendment in February 2004 that would have banned same-sex marriage but still allow civil unions, viewing it as the only feasible way to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.[207] In May 2004, the governor instructed town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. However, citing a 1913 law that barred out-of-state residents from getting married in Massachusetts if their union would be illegal in their home state, he said no marriage licenses were to be issued to out-of-state same-sex couples not planning to move to Massachusetts.[205][208] In June 2005, Romney abandoned his support for the compromise amendment, stating that it confused voters who opposed both same-sex marriage and civil unions.[205] Instead, he endorsed a ballot initiative led by the Coalition for Marriage and Family that would have banned same-sex marriage and made no provisions for civil unions.[205] In 2004 and 2006, he urged the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.[209][210] In 2005, Romney revealed a change of view regarding abortion, moving from the "unequivocal" pro-choice position expressed during his 2002 campaign to a pro-life one in opposition to Roe v. Wade.[198] He subsequently vetoed a bill on pro-life grounds that would expand access to emergency contraception in hospitals and pharmacies (the veto was overridden by the legislature).[211] Romney generally used the bully pulpit approach towards promoting his agenda, staging well-organized media events to appeal directly to the public rather than pushing his proposals in behind-doors sessions with the state legislature.[198] He dealt with a public crisis of confidence in Boston's Big Dig project – that followed a fatal ceiling collapse in 2006 – by wresting control of the project from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.[198] After two years of negotiating the state's participation in the landmark Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that instituted a cap and trade arrangement for power plant emissions in the Northeast, Romney pulled Massachusetts out of it shortly before its signing in December 2005, citing a lack of cost limits for industry.[212] During 2004, Romney spent considerable effort trying to bolster the state Republican Party, but it failed to gain any seats in the state legislative elections that year.[163][213] He was given a prime-time appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention, and was already being discussed as a potential 2008 presidential candidate.[214] Midway through his term, Romney decided that he wanted to stage a full-time run for president,[215] and on December 14, 2005, announced that he would not seek re-election for a second term.[216] As chair of the Republican Governors Association, Romney traveled around the country, meeting prominent Republicans and building a national political network;[215] he spent all, or parts of, more than 200 days out of state during 2006, preparing for his run.[217] The governor had a 61 percent job approval rating in public polls after his initial fiscal actions in 2003, but it began to sink after that.[218] The frequent out-of-state travel contributed to a decline in Romney's approval rating towards the end of his term;[218][219] at 34 percent in November 2006, his rating level ranked 48th of the 50 U.S. governors.[220] Dissatisfaction with Romney's administration and the weak condition of the Republican state party were among several factors that led to Democrat Deval Patrick's 20-point win over Republican Kerry Healey, Romney's Lieutenant Governor, in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial election.[219][221] Romney filed to register a presidential campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission on his penultimate day in office as governor.[222] His term ended January 4, 2007. Paul Ryan A few months after Kasten lost to Democrat Russ Feingold in the 1992 election, Ryan became a speechwriter for Empower America (now FreedomWorks), a conservative advocacy group founded by Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and William Bennett.[15][43][44] Ryan later worked as a speechwriter for Kemp,[45] the Republican vice presidential candidate in the 1996 United States presidential election. Kemp became Ryan's mentor, and Ryan cites him as a "huge influence."[43][46] Ryan then worked for U.S. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas before returning to Wisconsin in 1997, where he worked for a year as a marketing consultant for Ryan Incorporated Central, his relatives' construction company.[6][15][47][43] U.S. House of Representatives Elections Ryan was first elected to the House in 1998, winning the 1st District seat of Mark Neumann, a two-term incumbent who had vacated his seat to make an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate. Ryan won the Republican primary over 29-year-old pianist Michael J. Logan of Twin Lakes[citation needed] and the general election against his Democratic opponent, Lydia Spottswood.[48] This made him the second-youngest member of the House.[6] Reelected six times, Ryan has never received less than 57 percent of the vote. He successfully defended his seat against Democratic challenger Jeffrey C. Thomas in the 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 elections.[49] In 2002, Ryan had also faced Libertarian candidate George Meyers. Ryan defeated Democratic nominee Marge Krupp in the 2008 election.[49] Ryan defeated Democrat John Heckenlively and Libertarian Joseph Kexel in the 2010 general election in his district. Under Wisconsin election law, Ryan is allowed to run concurrently for vice president and for Congress.[50] He faces Democratic nominee Rob Zerban in the 2012 House election. As of July 25, 2012, Ryan had over $5.4 million in his congressional campaign account, more than any other House member.[51][52] Finance, insurance and real estate was the sector that contributed most to his campaign.[53] Tenure Ryan became the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee in 2007,[54] then chairman in 2011 after Republicans took control of the House. That same year he was selected to deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union address.[55] Official U.S. Congress portrait of Ryan in 2011 During his 13 years in the House, he has sponsored some 71 bills or amendments,[56] of which two were ultimately enacted into law.[57] One, passed in July 2000, renamed a post office in Ryan's district; the other, passed in December 2008, lowered the excise tax on arrow shafts.[58][59] Ryan has also co-sponsored 975 bills[57] of which 176 have passed.[60] 22 percent of these bills were originally sponsored by Democrats.[57] The average for republicans is 19 percent.[57] In 2010, Ryan was a member of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Bowles-Simpson Commission), which was tasked with developing a plan to reduce the federal deficit. He voted against the final report of the commission.[61] In 2012, he accused the nation's top military leaders of using "smoke and mirrors" to remain under budget limits passed by Congress.[62][63] Ryan later said that he misspoke on the issue and called General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to apologize for his comments.[64] Ryan has also been on seven trips abroad as part of a congressional delegation.[65] Committee assignments • Committee on the Budget (Chairman) • Committee on Ways and Means o Subcommittee on Health Caucus memberships • House Republican Caucus • Caucus of House Conservatives Republican Study Committee[66] • International Conservation Caucus • Middle East Economic Partnership Caucus • Sportsmen's Caucus (Co-Chair)"

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 8:58am

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pnaut just beacuse you disagree with me, you needn't be insulting.

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 9:00am

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and that's so even as my comments are tedious and blinkered.

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 9:01am

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Relax magboy. I was making a simple point: the heights of Obama's chutzpah in saying Romney and Ryan have no foreign policy experience, this from the most inexperienced guy who ever took office. As I say, if there was one with even less experience, let me know.

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 9:05am

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seattle, Until your boys, the "job creators," let go of some of the multiple trillions they have in the bank, there will be no meaningful job growth. Bush crashed Wall Street (unbeknownst to some people he pushed big-time for minorities to become home owners--I saw the speeches on TV), and he crashed our economy. Since Obama took office, corporations, rich people, and Wall Street have been booming at record levels of profits. We supposedly live in a capitalist society. Record profits with trillions in the bank is the cue for many millions of good jobs to be created. And since this is not happening, that means that capitalism doesn't work, at least not now and not in America. And until it starts working again, if ever, then all of your wonky blithering is meaningless. Your boys are too cowardly to do what they're supposed to do--create American jobs. Speak to them, not us. Things were better under Bush till 2006, because there was a housing bubble that he helped to expand by deregulating Wall Street and encouraging minorities to buy homes (he wanted 7 million new home owners over 10 years, most of them minorities, because the GOP thinks that once minorities own homes, they become conservative and begin to vote Republican). Bush was one of the worst presidents ever for our economy. No leader has ever lowered taxes during the most expensive war(s) in his nation's history. A 5-year-old would know better than to do that. And here you are, praising a 4-year-old, Baby Bush, as an economic genius.

- magboy47.

September 8, 2012 at 9:30am

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George W. Bush. C student, AWOL National Guard pilot, drunk, failed oil entrepreneur, and then, his great experience, hand-shaker and Nicknamer-in-Chief for Ranger baseball and then for the State of Texas. The latter three would have been impossible without his Daddy's name.

- roidubouloi

September 8, 2012 at 9:31am

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Right, roi and all of that doesn't change one thing about the fact that Obama was so inexperienced in 2008 that his handlers refused to let him participate in too many debates and his main rival Hilary never ever stopped harping on the point that he was inexperienced. His potshot at Romney's "lack" of preparedness was strange coming from as elf proclaimed humble man and the very illustration for the saw: People sitting in glasshouses...". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yr7odFUARg BTW, of course Obama had some experience: he wrote two books, he taught at law school without a PhD something I really envy him about, he edited the Harvard Law Reviews (again, envy..), was a community organizer in Chicago (no envy there) and he served a year and a half as senator before declaring his interest in becoming a president.

- noga1

September 8, 2012 at 11:02am

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Hey, ironyroad: Have you seen the eMish comment on the dueling conventions? Theatre par excellence. Wouldn't it be more civilized and to the point to keep THAT in mind rather than joust for proof of substance where no substance was ever intended in the first place?

- noga1

September 8, 2012 at 11:19am

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Basman, I appreciate the comprehensive nature of your reply, but I was asking directly about what you had written: foreign policy experience (or absence of it). Leaving aside Obama's life experience of growing up in a very different part of the world from the U.S., and visiting Kenya on a personal quest that brought him direct contact with African reality, the most recent and relevant was he had worked closely with Dick Lugar in the Senate on Russian "loose nukes" control issues. I think you could make a good case for counting Romney's Winter Olympics achievement, but that's about what there is, and with Ryan it's slimmer pickings (unlike Joe Biden, who had been on the Sen. Foreign Relations Committee and was chair in 2001-3 and 2007-9)

- ironyroad

September 8, 2012 at 11:31am

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Noga -- yes, eMish's piece is very nice (loved his BC comment). Wish he'd show up more around these parts. But -- didn't Obama and McCain do the regular number of debates, three?

- ironyroad

September 8, 2012 at 11:47am

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"As I say, if there was one with even less experience [than Obama], let me know." George W. Bush, basman. When he was governor of Texas, the lieutenant governor ran the state. The governor was there mostly to shake hands (and sign death warrants). It's a Texas tradition. See roi comment below. "George W. Bush. C student, AWOL National Guard pilot, drunk, failed oil entrepreneur, and then, his great experience, hand-shaker and Nicknamer-in-Chief for Ranger baseball and then for the State of Texas. The latter three would have been impossible without his Daddy's name." You nailed it, roi.

- magboy47.

September 8, 2012 at 11:48am

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All I remember, ironyroad, is that there was much talk about how Obama's advisors refused to let him participate in too many debates after a certain point because he didn't do so well in them. Maybe my memory tricks me here. And I'm not at all interested enough to search for the evidence. Like grinding water.

- noga1

September 8, 2012 at 12:06pm

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And Bush 43 proved how inexperienced he was once he got in office. My favorite jaw-dropping example: I saw him on live TV when he appeared in New Orleans (late, of course) for Katrina. The first thing he told the world about one of the greatest disasters in American history? What a good time he had partying in New Orleans when he was younger (maybe when he was AWOL?). Those were the FIRST WORDS out of his mouth. Another example: he looked into Putin's eyes, saw his soul, and knew that he was a good man. The list is literally endless. We could be here talking about it till 2016, when Jeb Bush makes a run at the White House.

- magboy47.

September 8, 2012 at 12:16pm

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Roid writes: "Of course things will be worse with Romney because he wants to do even more of the utterly failed economic policies that created this economic disaster -- increasing the income share of the wealthy and starving the government of resources, further eroding the effective demand that drives the economy." Nobody out there believes the 2008 financial disaster was due to income inequality. That is your own wet dream. The 2008 housing crises was primarily enabled purely by fannie and freddie underwriting at 100% loans made to those that couldn't' afford to pay them back. Historically, fan and fred only underwrote loans at 80% that were made to those that could pay them back. Big difference. Roid writes: "Better off under Bush? Bush inherited a booming economy with high growth and a high rate of job creation." Bush inherited a bubble economy that was already cooling. It was a world in which a company that made a browser and had $50M in sales had a valuation of $2B, or roughly 1/100th that of apple. Today of course, browsers are free. It was insanity. Now, we could argue that Clinton through a huge shovel of coal on this insanity by dropping cap gains taxes. But make no mistake, regardless of slight government policy tweaks, the insanity would have occurred anyway. Most of all, the Clinton economy was famous for the sheer wealth it created for the top few %. Staggering amounts. And yes, it did trickle down. Roid writes: "What do we need to do? Simple. Raise taxes on the rich, at least letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and turn the revenue over to the states to fund public hiring. " Taxes on the rich will pull in $70B a year. Obama has a $1.3T budget problem. Ergo, you have address perhaps 5% of the problem. What is the other 95% of the solution? Think, Roid, think. You are better than this. You aren't a 5% man, you are a 95% man! Dig deep! Roid writes: "In every prior recession, including the Reagan and Bush recessions, aid to states to enable them to maintain employment was a key element of recovery." No. This is Ezra Klein crazy talk. Under Obama, the public sector is down 600K jobs over his entire term. Meanwhile, the jobs report yesterday said there was 7M people people NOT in the labor (not part of unemployment) force that wanted a job immediately (not counted as unemployed). You cannot overcome or even temper these numbers with governent hiring. Bush's government hiring came from TSA jobs. A job slightly better than working 7-11. Roid writes: "But for Republican obstructionism, we would be out of this recession by now." Hah. Laughable. Obama's job proposals are nothing but proposal after proposal to shovel enormous amounts of money to unions. Since the country was fooled with the first $800B ("turns out shovel ready isn't really shovel ready"), you can understand the concern, no? Remember, the first $800B woefully under performed the president's predictions. Not even close. And it was supposed to be a slam dunk. The man doesn't understand how the levers work. That much is clear. Magboy writes: "Until your boys, the "job creators," let go of some of the multiple trillions they have in the bank, there will be no meaningful job growth." People sit on money when they are uncertain. They spend when they are confident. The president has not instilled confidence in business. Period. What we get from that is what we are getting. You cannot just demand someone with money fork it over because you want them too. That is something the president might understand if he had a shred of real-world experience coming into all this. Roid writes: ""George W. Bush. C student, AWOL National Guard pilot, drunk, failed oil entrepreneur, and then, his great experience, hand-shaker and Nicknamer-in-Chief for Ranger baseball and then for the State of Texas. The latter three would have been impossible without his Daddy's name." And sadly, this is more experience than Obama had. Much, much more. And it shows.

- seattleeng

September 8, 2012 at 1:23pm

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Oh right. seattle even you cannot believe this stuff. Especially about Bush.

- Sophia

September 8, 2012 at 1:50pm

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Anyway, how about seattle just admits it: he doesn't want to participate in the democracy known as the USA. He just wants to make himself well off, period. The rest of us should be happy we're better off than poor goatherds in Somalia. And we should just be thrilled that we have had the greatest president ever, GW Bush, and his would be successors, Bain Likes To Fire People and Lyin'Ryan. The End.

- Sophia

September 8, 2012 at 1:51pm

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Irony, you're off my point. It was, to repeat, he high chutzpah of Obama who had, when he first ran, no foreign policy experience, as well as--I'll agree rather than argue the point, though it's an arguable point--less experience than any other presidential candidate in the history of the world save, I'm stipulating, for 43, criticizing Romney/Ryan, whatever their general experience, for not having any foreign policy experience. In my stretch of the kitchen that's pots, kettles, black and calling. I forget to add to my "comprehensive" reply, that "I approve that message." On a darker note: Ok, Magboy, I've finally had it with you. I'm catching the next thing smoking and will be in Seattle when I get there. I'll meet you at a Seattle's Best of your choice and we can have this out, a duel leading to such personal destruction as Washington law allows. Then can I sleep over and be out first thing in the morning?

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 3:32pm

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Basman posed the question, noga. I answered it. Hillary had no more relevant experience than Obama and less political experience.

- roidubouloi

September 8, 2012 at 3:34pm

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It is a flat out libertarian lie, Seattle, typical of you, that the housing crisis was caused by Fannie and Freddie. Overwhelmingly, the cause was private mortgage securitization was the cause. Subprime meant ineligible for govt backed financing. I have given you the numbers before. For a while I gave you the benefit of the doubt as someone ill-informed and painstakingly corrected your endless misstatements of fact. Eventually it became clear that you are a tendentious liar. One sentence, at least one lie. I see no point in debating you. You spout nothing but nonsense and lies. There is a purpose to be served in sticking pins in the more obvious ones merely to make clear that everything you say should be given no credibility. Bush inherited a booming economy and trashed it with exactly the bonehead economics you advocate. Obama inherited an economy in free-fall after Bush crashed it and it has been turning around since, albeit too slowly. The turnaround would be behind us already were it not for the continued libertarian wacko insistence on austerity, denying the states federal funding they received, with Republican approval, during the Reagan and Bush recessions. You are naught but a bunch of frauds and hypocrites.

- roidubouloi

September 8, 2012 at 3:48pm

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Tiny point of order: Hillary was never a presidential candidate.

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 4:01pm

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Another Seattle lie, that only $70 billion can be raised taxing the rich. The top 10% now take in 50% of GDP, up from 33% in 1980 when wacko libertarian tax cutting first became government policy. That difference of 17% in today's economy is about $2.5 trillion. Tax away half of just the increased income share of the wealthy and bye bye deficit. The $800 billion of stimulus was about half wasted because about that much was in the form of wasteful tax cuts, at the insistence of the libertarian wackos for whom tax cuts are the answer to every problem no matter the 30 year history that thy have brought us only slow growth and economic bust. We even half the counter-example, Clinton raised taxes and we had a boom. Does it matter at all to seattle that all economic history, and I mean all, shows libertarian economics to be nonsense on a par with creationism. It does not. With only something less than $500 billion of direct spending, the stimulus was about 1/3 the size it needed to be, but it still broke the fall.

- roidubouloi

September 8, 2012 at 4:04pm

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Hillary was a candidate, not the nominee. But boy could she answer the phone.

- roidubouloi

September 8, 2012 at 4:07pm

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basman, a glib and probably unwanted comment from a fellow textual person: but if you don't wish to mean "foreign policy inexperience," don't write "foreign policy inexperience" as your poor interlocutor ends up with watery brains trying to figure out the unmeant meaning. :) As noted, Obama scored in '08 at least as high as Romney now (Senate Lugar committee vs. Winter Olympics) and Ryan scores a fat zero next to Biden in that area. If you mean general experience, yes, fair enough: Romney has a load of investment management experience. Obama had a load of community organizing experience, but Romney scores over the prez in having been governor of a state. Unfortunately he's not able to run on his principal policy achievement in that state, due to circumstances beyond his control.

- ironyroad

September 8, 2012 at 5:14pm

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Roid writes: "Another Seattle lie, that only $70 billion can be raised taxing the rich. The top 10% now take in 50% of GDP, up from 33% in 1980 when wacko libertarian tax cutting first became government policy. " Do you want to talk about the top 10% or the rich? They aren't the same. The CBO says that taxing those that Obama wants to tax (>$250K) will only pull in $70B a year. Nothing to sneeze at, but again, only 5% of the problem. Roid writes: "With only something less than $500 billion of direct spending, the stimulus was about 1/3 the size it needed to be, but it still broke the fall." According to tools like Krugman, anyway. As he strokes his cat in the corner of a dimly lit room. Uh huh. The simple fact is the president asked for X, promised it would to Y. He got X, and didn't deliver Y. Not even close. pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/OBMAUNEMPLOYMENTFAILCHARTSEPT.jpg dont eat the linkdont eat the linkdont eat the linkdont eat the linkdont eat the linkdont eat the linkdont eat the linkdont eat the linkdont eat the linkdont eat the link

- seattleeng

September 8, 2012 at 5:37pm

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"People sit on money when they are uncertain. They spend when they are confident The president has not instilled confidence in business." seattle, Pray tell how corporate America has achieved record profits and savings under Obama, if he hasn't instilled confidence in business. I wonder what lie you'll make up to get around that one.

- magboy47.

September 8, 2012 at 6:07pm

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"Hitching His Wagon to Obama’s Star: a Republican Senator" By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE "CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — President Obama is appearing in yet another television commercial in the Massachusetts Senate race. This time, it was not produced by the Democratic candidate, Elizabeth Warren, but by the Republican, Senator Scott P. Brown. The advertisement, which was scheduled to start running on Saturday, shows Mr. Obama praising Mr. Brown for sponsoring a bill to end insider trading in Congress. As Mr. Obama signs the measure into law, he thanks Mr. Brown, saying, “Good job.”" Brown knows which of the two candidates makes more sense to the average voter.

- arnon1

September 8, 2012 at 6:27pm

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Yeah candidate, not nominee. I could have been clearer on that, though I think what I was trying to ask was fairly clear. Otherwise the guy for whom the rent was too damn high and the Herminator would be neck and neck for inexperience with BHO :-)

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 6:38pm

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" For a while I gave you [seattle] the benefit of the doubt as someone ill-informed and painstakingly corrected your endless misstatements of fact. Eventually it became clear that you are a tendentious liar. One sentence, at least one lie. I see no point in debating you. You spout nothing but nonsense and lies. There is a purpose to be served in sticking pins in the more obvious ones merely to make clear that everything you say should be given no credibility." Ditto, roi. You can't debate seattle. He ignores the rules of debating. One of the rules is that you can't consciously lie. He reminds me of Dick Cheney. When caught in a lie, Cheney would simply repeat the lie, word for word. Some other Republicans do this as well. seattle, Below is roi's assessment of Bush's experience, and below that is your response, the biggest of your whoppers so far. Roi: George W. Bush. C student, AWOL National Guard pilot, drunk, failed oil entrepreneur, and then, his great experience, hand-shaker and Nicknamer-in-Chief for Ranger baseball and then for the State of Texas. The latter three would have been impossible without his Daddy's name. Seattle: And sadly, this is more experience than Obama had. Much, much more. And it shows. Yes, seattle, Bush had much, much more experience than Obama--in f--king up. And he applied that experience to the fullest while in the Oval Office, much to the grief of Americans. And he's your hero. Whew! Some things are beyond belief. You should check out some of the comments of Nicomachus here at TNR. Like you, he's an Objectivist, but he knows how to debate. You don't.

- magboy47.

September 8, 2012 at 6:39pm

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...Brown knows which of the two candidates makes more sense to the average voter... In Massachusetts?

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 6:40pm

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"In Massachusetts?" In the State he hopes to represent in the US Senate.

- arnon1

September 8, 2012 at 7:18pm

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"Ok, Magboy, I've finally had it with you. I'm catching the next thing smoking and will be in Seattle when I get there. I'll meet you at a Seattle's Best of your choice and we can have this out, a duel leading to such personal destruction as Washington law allows. Then can I sleep over and be out first thing in the morning?" basman, I can't do Seattle's Best anymore, because I can't drink coffee anymore. I have atrial fibrillation. Giving up coffee is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I told people for decades that I'd like to die with caffeine in my blood. And now I can't even drink Diet Coke. Some burdens are almost too great to bear. We could debate at 10 paces in front of a crowd of insomniacs. We'll put 'em to sleep real fast. By the time we're done they'll be narcoleptics. BTW, this is a pretty peppy thread we have going here.

- magboy47.

September 8, 2012 at 7:27pm

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... from a fellow textual person... You know I was out just out having a bite with She Who Must Be Obeyed, and in between bites of frutti de mare, chased by a lively Malbec, it struck me, the original Joe Slow, that the above said fellowship may refer to a thread containining some arguments over Antonin Scalia's putative incoherence. Or did the Malbec trigger some incoherent associations?

- basman

September 8, 2012 at 9:12pm

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Oh well, if the conversation is going to veer into Dionysian unrelated topics, I'd like to post this youtube which has reached my FB page and I thought quite timely, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5C3gqIR8RoI#!

- noga1

September 8, 2012 at 10:15pm

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Thanks for the link, noga. That's an interesting You Tube page. I bookmarked it. Speaking of interesting, I'm just finishing David Talbot's (Salon founder) matchless biography of JFK and RFK called Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. I've never read more inside information on the brothers, and the writing flows. No, this book is not interesting; it's fascinating. And it pretty much settles the JFK assassination. Hint: it's the usual suspects--the Mafia, the Cuban exiles, and the CIA. But I didn't know many of the details, e.g., how the CIA passed Oswald off as a communist sympathizer, when he was exactly the opposite.

- magboy47.

September 8, 2012 at 11:50pm

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Yeah, Seattle, Krugman is a tool, because, unlike you, he actually knows something about economics and can relate evidence to claims coherently.

- roidubouloi

September 9, 2012 at 12:01am

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" . . . the above said fellowship may refer to a thread containining some arguments over Antonin Scalia's putative incoherence" I didn't join in the Scalia party, so if I think of something on those lines, what comes is more an echo of "theme determining form." Oh, and not Malbec -- something a tad sweeter (Hungarian, maybe?)

- ironyroad

September 9, 2012 at 3:21am

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Roid you wrote "Bush inherited a booming economy and trashed it" I agree with you that Obama "inherited" a sinking economy, but I do not understand how you could describe the economy Bush inherited as "booming". The burst of the .com bubble began in 2000. Annual US GDP growth for 1999, 2000, and 2001 was 4.87%, 4.17%, and 1.09 respectively. Then, in 2004, GDP was back up at a respectable 3.48%. The ostensible story is that Bush inherited a sliding economy and recovered it by the end of his first term.

- Nicomachus

September 9, 2012 at 3:52am

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The ones that bailed out wall street and ignored main street are in power. Rampant unemployment and foreclosures continue unabated. Will see how the electorate will react.

- JAIMECHUCH

September 9, 2012 at 5:26am

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BTW. As an example of how people with power and money behave we have the tennis US open. Attendance is 3/4 million. Plans are to renovate the main stadium at a tag of 500 million dollars. The inclement weather has been a problem the last few years including this. In the renovation plans there is no provision to provide a roof. The wind conditions were so rough that the favorite Djockovich was loosing 5 sets to 2 to David Ferrer before they stopped the match fearing a forecast tornado. Idiots have control of stupid power. Just like Bernanke said we bailed out wall street, they were supposed to lend money to small businesses, not speculate, and we including BHO can do nothing about it. Ha ha ha ha.

- JAIMECHUCH

September 9, 2012 at 5:39am

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Can't do numbers from my iPad Nichomachus, but I will get back to you.

- roidubouloi

September 9, 2012 at 7:37am

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Magboy writes: "Pray tell how corporate America has achieved record profits and savings under Obama, if he hasn't instilled confidence in business. I wonder what lie you'll make up to get around that one." Because when the downturn was getting worse, companies laid off en masse. Including Microsoft here in Seattle (a first for them, by the way). The companies that emerged were leaner, and more profits went directly to the bottom line. Magboy writes: "Yes, seattle, Bush had much, much more experience than Obama--in f--king up. And he applied that experience to the fullest while in the Oval Office, much to the grief of Americans. And he's your hero. Whew! Some things are beyond belief." And yet, under Bush, if you were middle class, you had more money in your pocket that under Obama! And, under Bush, you were more likely to have a job. And under Bush, the government was pulling in more money. These are not be be trivialized. If you think these are lies, then just take a look at the CBO data. I'll help you through it if you wish. Just tell me which of these 3 assertions you don't believe, and we'll go straight to the data. Roid writes: "Yeah, Seattle, Krugman is a tool, because, unlike you, he actually knows something about economics and can relate evidence to claims coherently." Sure he knows something about economics. The problem is that the national debt matters to him immensely when Bush is in office, and doesn't matter to him when Obama is in office. Hmmm. In 2002, Krugman praised the housing bubble. The bigger the better. Ooops. Krugman also proclaimed very early on the Bush tax cuts would be disastrous for the economy. Of course, they were not. Ripping growth, falling deficits. And of course, Krugman was THE advisor to Enron. He never met a consulting check he didn't like. Kind of like Dems worrying about the Iraq deaths when Bush is in office, but they don't care a whit that AfPak deaths are 2X those of Iraq deaths. It's like the stopped caring altogether. Odd. Or not. People who's arguments flip flop for no valid reason are partisan hacks. They will never tell you the truth. Thus, they cannot be trusted. Krugman cannot be trusted.

- seattleeng

September 9, 2012 at 1:36pm

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So what is going to be. Big banks with billions used for speculation. Leaner big companies with enormous profits. A third of the population under unemployment and millions of homes under foreclosure. I guess the silogism is all is good, more people out the door is good for profits. Is an economy leading to ............. Here is where the optimist meets the pessimist. Ain't broken until it is broken. We have a system that protects the powerful, unless you are a petty thief, then we apply the full extent of the law. Big banks can use forged documents to foreclose, and can take years to foreclose, statute of limitations does not apply to them. And so goes on. It is fundamentally funky.

- JAIMECHUCH

September 9, 2012 at 2:25pm

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Bottom line, we are ready for second bailout of wall street and the big banks. Makes no difference democrats or republicans, as long as we have plenty of supplies of the stuff that keeps us in cloud nirvana. Smoke it baby smoke it, there is more from where it came from.

- JAIMECHUCH

September 9, 2012 at 2:31pm

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BTW final men at tennis US open is Djockovich vs Murray. Prize money is 1.9 million battered USA maracas. If Djockovich wins since he won last year, he gets an additional one million battered dollars. Today final women Serena Williams vs Azarenka. Prize money I think is 1.5 million, if wrong I will correct myself on later info. Attendance is expected to be 7000,000 people. Surely this part of the population is not the unemployed.

- JAIMECHUCH

September 9, 2012 at 2:40pm

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"And yet, under Bush, if you were middle class, you had more money in your pocket that under Obama! And, under Bush, you were more likely to have a job. And under Bush, the government was pulling in more money." I see seattle is still completely ignoring the fact that we had a devastating economic crash near the end of Bush's presidency. It reminds me of Rudy Giuliani a while back, when he said on Fox News that there was a terrorist attack on America under Obama, but there wasn't one under Bush. Same kind of vacuous thinking.

- magboy47.

September 9, 2012 at 2:45pm

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"If you think these are lies, then just take a look at the CBO data. I'll help you through it if you wish. Just tell me which of these 3 assertions you don't believe, and we'll go straight to the data." This is the funniest thing you have said to date, seattle. You have demonstrated time and again that you have no idea how to read a data table or chart. What you derive is invariabley reliably either completely incompetent, wilfully deceptive, or both. I vote for both. I have spent hours unwinding your falsehoods and painstakingly laying out the results for you. Quite pointless. You remain just as dedicated to nonsense as ever. You are a charlatan, seattle.

- roidubouloi

September 9, 2012 at 3:34pm

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"Sure he knows something about economics. The problem is that the national debt matters to him immensely when Bush is in office, and doesn't matter to him when Obama is in office. Hmmm." Yeah, ponder that seattle. Krugman understands, as you do not, that deficits are useful and not destructive when they are counter-cyclical. That is, you run surpluses when the economy is strong and deficits when the economy is weak. That Bush created a series of structural deficits, that is, deficits while we were at full employment, has a great deal to do with the difficulty in combating the current recession. When the economy at full employment has already adjusted to deficits, then you need really whopping deficits to counter a recession. You are an economics ignoramus, seattle, and a tendentious one to boot because you are drowning in moronic libertarian pseudo-economics.

- roidubouloi

September 9, 2012 at 3:38pm

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My competence in economics fits easily into a small thimble. But I don't see how how launching two wars together with cutting taxes together with, as I feebly understand it, making an unfunded drug prescription plan and tilting toward deregulation as a general proposition are anything but a recipe for financial implosion. Am I wrong in this and if so why, explaining it to me, step by step, as if I'm a three year old, as Denzil Washington said to Tom Hanks in Philadelphia?

- basman

September 9, 2012 at 3:51pm

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Yes, a recipe for a financial implosion. Of course, given the size of the US economy, the reaction is not instantaneous, just as the implosion, once it has begun, has huge momentum and cannot be stopped instantaneously. It is important to keep in mind that, not only was this a recipe for disaster, Bush's abuse of the budget when the economy was strong also weakened the tools available to combat the recession. The fiscal baseline, instead of being in surplus as it should have been, and as it was when Bush took office, was already in deep deficit making the economy less responsive to deficit spending.

- roidubouloi

September 9, 2012 at 4:57pm

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Magboy, if you're still here, just a note on something you said, namely that, in effect, Woodward just gossips. I think that's much too short shrift. He's, to me, the personification, of a certain kind of good reporting journalism. He's neither a deep thinker nor an analyst as such, nor does he pretend to be. He doesn't get into weeds save to the extent that his reporting recapitulates the ongoing arguments, and in that there's complexity a plenty, but all at the accessible level of intelligent people speaking to an intelligent reporter, who has the great knack of setting out with admirable clarity what they tell him and explain to him. He also has the great knack of reiterating what they say and explain in their voices. Also his book length reporting has compelling narrative drive. For all his lack of wonkery and weediness, Woodward is amazingly judicious, all the while suggesting human and weaknesses where they appear, and all the while maintaining even handed neutrality. I still remember vividly reading his first of the three books on Bush's Iraq war and realizing through Woodeard's reporting that, there being no accounting of how Bush arrived originally at he decision to go to war against Iraq, how the idea came to him as a kind of an impulse. And I still remember vividly Woodward's recounting of a meeting between Bush and Tenet decisive in the ultimate going forward, I think, I'm not sure, on the evidence for Hussein's WMDs, Tenet saying, famously, "it's a slam dunk," Bush saying that that Tenet's case "was thin," and then absolutely no follow up by Bush, leaving the reader to draw the irresistible inference that Bush here was a terrible executive. These typify, to my mind, some of the strengths in what Woodward does. So from the snatches I've read of Woodward's about to come out book on Obama, he seems in fine form and I'm looking forward to reading it.

- basman

September 9, 2012 at 7:47pm

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Anyhow. Serena Williams won the women US tennis ope and she got a 1.9 million check, runner up Victoria Azarenka received a check for 0.9 million. Why takling about sports. Looking at filled out stadiums and price money , and what players and such get paid, you would never suspect there are 25 million unemployed and 10 million homes under foreclosure in the USA. Well somebody rests assured. The big banks that were part of the wall street baile out, have so much money that surpasses the GDP . It is used for speculation never to provide jobs for small businesses. Sadly the BHO team can do nothing about it, neither congress senate and other elected specimens. The democrats blame the republicans and viceversa, and at the end like the three stooges they slap the unemployed. While the king of the stinky baloney is back insulting, since he hates to be as ignorant as ever, and he has or tried two PhD's. That is why they stand for pile higher and deeper. Ah that is for you the king of the stinky baloney.

- JAIMECHUCH

September 9, 2012 at 8:22pm

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"My competence in economics fits easily into a small thimble. But I don't see how how launching two wars together with cutting taxes together with, as I feebly understand it, making an unfunded drug prescription plan and tilting toward deregulation as a general proposition are anything but a recipe for financial implosion." basman, Your competence in economics fits into a large auditorium, not a small thimble. You nailed it. A few Republicans, mainly McCain, agreed with you in the media while Bush reigned, but most of the GOP was oblivious. The competence in economics of almost all of the Republican Party fits into a small thimble. Romney, e.g., has been saying, over and over, that "we need to get the government out of business." To most Republicans that means a bare minimum of regulations or none at all--a sure formula for economic and environmental and even food-safety disaster. You're right about Woodward. I was wrong. He's a good reporter who tries to get at the personalities of presidents to explain some of their actions. The problem is that the personality approach sometimes makes his stuff sound a bit gossipy. But that's unavoidable. Woodward's contribution, along with Bernstein's, to Watergate reporting is unmatched.

- magboy47.

September 9, 2012 at 9:58pm

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Here you go, Nicomachus. Have a nice day, and for god's sake stop drinking the libertarian right-wing economics Kool-aid. It can only turn one into a blithering idiot given enough exposure. ___________________________ 2000 was a strong year, with 4.1% growth, and 2001 was weak, 1.1%, due to the bursting of the dotcom bubble, but it was not a down year. The first and third quarters of 2001 were down at annualized rates of -1.3% and -1.1%, but the ONLY quarter-end at which the economy was smaller than at the end of the very strong year of 2000 was the first quarter. Bush inherited a fundamentally strong economy that hit a wet patch due to the dotcom bubble bursting. That bubble was, however, fundamentally different from the housing and debt bubbles created under Bush because it was a price speculation and hardly the result of government policy. Irrational exuberance about the future value of internet businesses. Unlike the housing and debt bubbles under Bush, there were not huge amounts of capital that flowed into dotcoms, although huge paper fortunes came and went. And a great deal of real value was created. Bush was not responsible for the bubble, its gains or losses, or for the only temporary weakness induced by its collapse. But they were not an economic crisis. More like a blip. Even though the economy was down from its end of 2000 level for only a single quarter, the first of 2001, growth was not really robust again until 2004. Under Bush’s economic management, the economy took two years to “recover” from being below its peak for all of one quarter, the first of his presidency, and that coming off a very strong year. Where is the supply-side genius? Where are all the benefits of wacko libertarian economics? Nowhere to be found. They are a chimera. Flat-earth nonsense. Bush passed his first tax cut in 2001, yet the economy was still weak in 2002. What happened? Why doesn’t the supply-side tax-cut libertarian bullshit work as claimed? Meanwhile, the fiscal crisis was building as tax revenues plunged in 2002, taking us from structural surplus under Clinton to structural deficit under Bush, culminating in the crash. Even in 2001 there was a small surplus. After Bush’s policies began to bite, after his first year in office, nothing but deficits. By the end of Bush’s presidency, the economy was a wreck. The economy was smaller at the end of every quarter in 2008 than it was at the end of 2007. By the second half, in free-fall. -3.7% annualized in the 3rd quarter, -8.9% annualized in the 4th quarter!!!, -5.3% in the first quarter of 2009, with Obama barely in office. But wait. The American Recovery Act as signed into law on February 17, 2009. By the second quarter under Obama, March-June 2009, the economy was down only -0.3%, and by the third quarter, the economy was growing again, as it has every quarter since, just not fast enough to undo all the Bush damage. As I wrote above, Obama’s policies arrested the fall. Obama’s second year, coming out of the disasters of 2008 and the -3.1% decline in the economy for 2009, all of which and more occurred in the first half and almost all of that in the first quarter of 2009, was stronger than Bush’s second year, coming out of a weak 2001 but one in which the economy still grew. It is exactly as I said. Bush took a strong economy and trashed it. Obama took an economy in free-fall and rescued it. Sure, he doesn’t walk on water. Given the extent of the damage, all of which had already taken place by the end of June 2009, Obama’s first year in office, the economy has yet to recover. But if Obama were not hobbled by Republican insistence on austerity and political games-playing with fiscal policy, we would have recovered by now. Everything the Republicans insist upon makes matters worse, because supply-side economics, especially the libertarian variant, is total hogwash. There is no time in history when it has ever worked as advertised and overwhelming evidence that it has repeatedly caused economic disaster.

- roidubouloi

September 9, 2012 at 11:12pm

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Wall Street and Big Banks bailout. The actual machinators. W treasury sec. Henry Paulson, Bernanke federal reserve chief under W and under Obama. Timothy Geitner NY federal reserve under W and Obama's treasury sec. A trillion dollars of our taxes were given, no strings attached to the bailout. Wall Street and the big banks are qusing the money to continue speculating. Lending the money to small businesses, that provide the bulk of employment in the USA, is a nono. Why? Because speculation gives 20%+ return, lending money gives 6%+ return. As usual it is very simple, is the economy stupid. The king of the stinky baloney is not only stupid, he is an idiot. Idiot savant he is.

- JAIMECHUCH

September 10, 2012 at 5:38am

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Roid. I would assert that 2001 was a very anemic year for the economy. There was a sudden and significant decline of GDP. Furthermore, the unemployment rate shot up and grew steadily until 2004, after which it declined until late 2007. I would argue that these empirical facts hardly point to a "wet patch" or a "blip". I recall at the time liberals bemoaned the "recession", blamed Bush for causing the downturn, complained that he failed to create a recovery, emphasized high unemployment, etc. In response to the downturn, Bush's government and the federal reserve took standard measures to stimulate the economy - deficit spending, slashing of interest rates, tax cuts. Bush, although a notorious spindrift, did not have any radical economic policies. You seem to be implying that Bush caused the 2008 downturn (i.e. "trashed the economy"). The bursting of the housing bubble is what crashed the economy. Are you saying that Bush's policies actually created the housing bubble? Or failed to remedy its burst? Just curious how your logical goes. Lets take a look at the American Recovery Act - the largest one time budget hit in US history. The $700+ billion bill roughly consisted of 60% spending and 40% tax cuts. And of course the Fed reduced interest rates. More or less Bush's prescription. GDP initially shot up, but later started to falter. Yes, it has not gone negative, but I think you know Roid that lingering GDP growth below 2% and even 1% some quarters in conjunction with high unemployment is considered inadequate, especially for a recovery. The argument that the economy has not had enough time to recover would be plausible if it was consistently improving, but it has not been. Some would also argue that an additional stimulus injection is needed. If that is true, then why did Obama not plan one when his party controlled both legislative branches? Bush and Obama pursued fundamentally the same economic policies in response to their respective economic downturns - borrow and spend, manipulate interest rates, cut taxes. Granted Obama's recession and response are multiples of Bush's. Apart from a few details, I see no significant ideological rift here in action, only in words.

- Nicomachus

September 11, 2012 at 12:08pm

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Yes, Bush's tax and fiscal policies are what blew up the economy in 2008. The idiot libertarian rightwing economic theory is that the more money that is put into the hands of the investor class, the more they invest. Hence Bush's policies. The problem with this idiocy is that business investment does not come in response to excess capital; it comes in response to consumption demand. Business invests in order to serve expected demand. Period, end of story. Directing too much of national income to the investor class starves demand. One result is that, to keep the business cycle going, investors have to find some way to send the excess money back to consumers. Otherwise, consumers cannot buy and the economy slows. Plus, as they don't have an expectation of sufficient demand, investors don't have enough investment opportunity for their income share. One way this recycling occurs, unsustainably of course, is through consumer credit. They invest in consumer debt rather than in plant and equipment. And then the geniuses found what they imagined was a nearly riskless method cycling funds back to consumers -- securitized mortgage credit. Can you figure out what happened next? The bubble and the crash. So, yes, Bush caused the crash. Your logic is circular, to say the least, or rather contradictory. You want to hold Obama responsible for the performance of the economy in his second through fourth years, even though he faced a much deeper hole than Bush. Yet, according to you, Bush had nothing to do with the performance of the economy until 2004. Just how do you justify that, I wonder? How do you justify this double-standard? The fact is that Bush's high end tax cuts were a disaster in every conceivable way: pro-cyclical, bubble-financing, deficit producing, and irrelevant to effective demand. Tax cuts, unless they are tax cuts that go to the lowest earners, are simply the wrong response to a recession. Do you get that? They are the wrong response to a recession. They were under Bush, they were under Obama to the extent included in the stimulus package out of political necessity. They are ass-backwards. Government spending, and sending money to the states for them to spend, is the right, classical, orthodox Keynesian response -- and it works! It has always worked, even when the reason for the spending has been war rather than a deliberate attempt at recovery -- weaponized Keynesianism. What actually finally goosed the economy in 2003 was no doubt the Iraq War. "Supply-side" tax cuts are a bust. As far as the anemic recovery this time, wacko rightwing austerity economics has denied the administration the critical tool of revenue sharing with the states -- government spending at the every level where the money is most easily spent. Bottom line, Bush economics, rightwing economics, libertarian rightwing economics, supply-side economics, Bush rightwing libertarian rightwing supply-side is bullshit, through and through. It never work as advertised, and then the excuses that follow are nauseating. Keynes was right. Fiscal stimulus in a recession works. Fiscal stimulus is the correct response. Monetary policy helps, but it is not a substitute for fiscal stimulus in a recession. Do any of the rightwing wackos care that their theory never works and the theory they deride, Keynes' effective demand always works? No, they don't. Pure religious nuttery, impervious to evidence. So, yes, Obama should have asked for more, he should not have allowed so much of the stimulus to be taken up with tax cuts, he should have provided for follow on. Probably all impossible in the face of implacable Republican opposition more concerned with bringing down Obama than saving the US economy. I think he should have fought harder and more publicly, but it was a miracle that Obama got what he did in February 2009, and that only because the implacable Republican opposition had not yet had time to gel.

- roidubouloi

September 11, 2012 at 6:55pm

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Roid, Let me summarize your argument, it goes something like this: Bush cut taxes on the rich. The rich saved most of their tax cuts. The increase in savings caused a surge in consumer credit, which caused consumers to buy houses, which caused the bubble. Thus, Bush is responsible for the bubble. Let’s examine each point. Bush did cut taxes on the rich and others (including some retroactive gimmick). However, I do not think it is so emphatically clear that the rich saved their tax cuts. The savings rate remained at historic lows through the 2000s. In absolute dollar terms it was lower than the previous decade and significantly lower than it is currently. There is evidence that the rich spent their tax cuts. According to Mark Zandi chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, after-tax income saved for the top 5% fell from 13.6 percent in 1990 to 6.2 percent in 2006 (you can google the New York Times article). Logically, even if Bush did cause a surge in consumer credit, why did the consumers all gravitate to housing? Why did they not buy jewelry, boats, designer clothing, food, vacations, etc? Because there were forces at work here that had nothing to do with tax cuts – housing tax policy, speculative “flipping”, usual risk taking by the large financial firms (who likely calculated they were de facto insured by the federal government), house mania in the media, rock bottom interest rates thanks to the Fed, housing as investment, etc. In fact, home prices started to climb during the 1990s, under Clinton. It does not make sense to me that this was all Bush’s fault. I am not sure why you think that I am defending Bush. I never liked his policies. My only point is that Obama is no better. I do not blame Obama for failing to conjure up a miraculous recovery. I blame him for creating the impression that he possessed such powers. Despite his resurgence, I have many doubts about Keynes. Even if he is 100% correct in theory, I have misgivings that government is capable of implementing his prescriptions. The Keynesian resurgents (my new word) seem quite emphatic. People like Krugman regularly pound their metaphorical fists and ends sentences in “period”. I have no doubt that Krugman is an intelligent and compassionate individual, but he is also an ideologue and a shrill partisan. He suffers from a form of myopia that afflicts zealots – he does not seek truth, but rather confirmation. He often prematurely dismisses conflicting evidence, theories, and contradictions. Like many partisans these days, Krugman embraces economic policies that coincide with his political views. This is not to say that his work is worthless, but it is far from absolute. Many serious economists disagree with Krugman’s theories and various aspects of resurgent Keynesianism. So Roid, it is not just crazy or diabolical people that have doubts.

- Nicomachus

September 12, 2012 at 12:38am

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All Bush's fault? No. The financial deregulation under Clinton surely set the stage. Blame Summers and Rubin for that. I do. "Consumers" gravitated toward housing because that's what capital would give them the money to buy. To be sure, there was also an unsustainable surge in non-mortgage consumer credit, because capitalists were willing to extend the credit. But if the capitalists will only give money to everyone else if they buy houses with it, then you can be sure that is what they are going to do, and that is what they did. None of the forces and policies you cite are particularly relevant, because the key to the bubble was that capital would advance unlimited amounts to build houses. Given the lack of ability of the nominal owners to pay, the houses really belonged not to the nominal owners, but to the capital interests financing them. They built them willy-nillly and just stuck people in them in order to "qualify" for securitization. You can securitize the house if it has a nominal owner/mortgagor, but not if it is empty. Whatever Zandi thinks he his calculating, or you think he is calculating, there are certain realities of national income accounting that cannot be avoided. The fact is that a couple of trillion dollars of national output went into housing stock that could not be financially sustained. The money that goes into this housing is, by definition, investment which equals savings. If it was invested, it had to have been saved as it was output not consumed. This is so whatever you use as the denominator for calculating savings percentage. Forget the percentages, a couple of trillion of unneeded investment assets were created this way. Had Bush not exacerbated the shift of income from labor to capital, then labor would have been spending this money on goods, not houses without building up unsustainable debts. Why? Because labor cannot buy houses that capital will not finance!!!! No one other than the super-wealthy can buy a home out of pocket. I have no idea on what basis you think Obama created the impression that he had miraculous powers. Even more important, I cannot imagine on what basis you level your accusations against Krugman. Exactly how do we know that it is not the "serious economists" who disagree with Krugman who are the "shrill partisans?" Because you say so? For my money, shrill partisans are exactly what they are. They have been peddling the same bullshit supply-side economics for 30 years. The results of their policies have been awful, uniformly. Period. None of the benefits claimed for them have materialized and we have produced economic disaster -- slow growth, loss of labor share of output, and then an epic bust. Do you think perhaps it is these partisans, rather than Krugman, who need to reconsider a tendentious position that has by now zero evidence to support it?

- roidubouloi

September 12, 2012 at 8:21am

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"I have no idea on what basis you think Obama created the impression that he had miraculous powers." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtGrp5MbzAI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOtGr1JFCnE&feature=related

- noga1

September 12, 2012 at 12:50pm

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I see now. Obama engaged children to make videos on YouTube that created the impression he had miraculous powers. Here I had been thinking that the fiscal stimulus package of February 2009 was for the purpose of economic recovery when it was really just a cover for miracle-working.

- roidubouloi

September 12, 2012 at 1:53pm

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You asked: ""..on what basis you think Obama created the impression that he had miraculous powers." And I provided some proof that some people had formed the impression that he had miraculous powers, and went to some trouble into organizing a miniature concert to his glory. You don't think he meant to create that impression? That's a different question; not the one you actually asked.

- noga1

September 12, 2012 at 4:57pm

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"created" is use by Nichomachus as a transitive verb, implying that Obama did something to create the impression, for which Nichomachus then criticizes him.

- roidubouloi

September 12, 2012 at 8:14pm

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Well, the impression had to come from somewhere. Michelle Obama tried to re-create the magic of that mood in her speech. It is the same Obama of 4 years ago, she re-assured her enraptured audience. Indeed. I totally agree.

- noga1

September 12, 2012 at 8:34pm

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Roid, on the "miraculous powers" discussion.. I am not referring to Obama's cult of personality, which is disturbing and creepy in its own right. As an example, lets take the Recovery Act. During the short debate over the stimulus bill, a widely circulated report authored by Christina Romer, the incoming chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, chief economic adviser for incoming Vice President Joe Biden. In this report is the infamous graph and discussion on the unemployment rate with and without stimulus. The graph projects that with stimulus the unemployment rate would now be below 6%. I give some modicum of credit to the report for having a disclaimer and other qualifying language that basically states that major content of this report is bogus - this of course begs the question on why it is then being published in the first place. Obama directly referenced this report and it was widely touted in the media (minus the disclaimers of course). Obama never corrected any media misstatements attribute to the report prior to the passage of the Recovery Act. Only after disappointing results, did the administration seek to distance itself. The fact that Obama indirectly perpetuated a false argument in favor of the stimulus is unfortunate. Worse is that he created an impression that government is capable of driving predictive economic solutions. It implies that government economists can accurately identify all of the economy's moving parts (i.e. perfect information), accurately diagnose the problem, select an appropriate remedy (out of a plethora of competing and contradictory economic theories), size the remedy correctly, predict the outcome, and correctly implement the remedy. Having spent 12 years in academia, I know that despite impressive sounding jargon, the accuracy rate for macroeconomic predictions is low (and the brunt of many a joke) - especially for those that relate to the outcome of a specific action (the effective meaning "ceteris paribus" is "never"). These limitations combined with governmental ineptitude and political inclinations make it nothing short of miraculous for central planners to successfully implement consistent and predictable policy. The aforementioned issues do not seem to concern the advocates of interventionist policies. When the interventions fail to live up to expectations, there are always excuses on the ready - "not enough of the same action", "political opposition forced us to compromise", "individuals or reports were inaccurate", "expectations were too high (even though we inflated them during the political process)", and my favorite "it kept things from being worse", an entirely untestable assertion. More on other discussion points soon..

- Nicomachus

September 13, 2012 at 5:44am

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There were responsible voices, such as Krugman and Romer, saying that the stimulus was too small at the time. That is actually not difficult to calculate from the magnitude of the output gap at the time. The fact is that it worked. We were in a rapid decline and the decline was arrested and reversed pretty quickly. That the stimulus was too small and too short-lived fully to move the economy back to full-employment does not alter that reality at all. Moreover, had the Federal government simply continued to pass enough money to the states so that local government employment was not shrinking even while private employment was growing, I think we would have emerged from this by now. That Keynesian tool has been used in every previous recession. Just not in this one because of Republican austerity-mania. As to what Obama should have said about his stimulus package at the time, that is a slightly different matter. It would have been a huge error, undermining the purpose of the legislation, to be publicly negative about the prospects. However, I certainly believed that the public pronouncements should have been more cautionary, about the unknowns, the real possibility of a need for more, and the determination of the administration to seek what is necessary. The argument that policy tools are of uncertain effect, that not everything that one would wish to know can be known, and that implementation will be imperfect is, frankly, useless. The reality is that policy accomplishes plenty, although, like every other human undertaking, it is not perfectly efficient in using the least resources to achieve its objects. There is tremendous inefficiency and error in private undertaking too. Had this standard laissez-faire trope been permitted to justify doing nothing -- as it counsels -- we would be in a deep depression now. That it was imperfect in conception and execution does not argue, even in hindsight, that sitting on our hands would have been better. The evidence is literally overwhelming that fiscal stimulus -- government spending not tax cuts -- can serve to mitigate and bring to a close a recession, even a deep one. That such a policy is incapable of perfect execution does not change that economic fact one iota. Even imperfectly implemented policy, or weaponized Keynesianism for that matter, still works.

- roidubouloi

September 13, 2012 at 8:15am

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Cheers!

- roidubouloi

September 13, 2012 at 8:18am

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Roid, I guess I don't have the same view of the "overwhelming evidence". You have probably already heard all of this and dismissed it, but for the benefit of our miniscule readership: - Henry Hazlittin details a well thought out critique of Keynes. He paraphrased a quote attributed to Samuel Johnson, that he was unable to find "a single doctrine that is both true and original" - Arthur Pigou first refuted the “liquidity trap” hypothesis by demonstrating that deflation increases the real value of cash holdings, thus boosting potential demand during a depression. riedrich Hayek showed that Keynesian economics is based on a “critical error,” namely, that economic activity is solely a function of final aggregate demand, - W. H. Hutt thoroughly refuted the accelerator principle and also demonstrated that a government-induced high-wage policy generates significant joblessness. - Milton Friedman effectively destroyed the Keynesian argument that monetary policy is not effective during a slump. With painstaking research, he showed that the Federal Reserve allowed the money supply to decline by a third during 1929-32, proving evidence that government, not the free market, triggered the Great Depression. - Friedman also demolished Keynes’s “consumption function,” which gave theoretical support for progressive taxation, and raised serious doubts about the Phillips curve. - Robert Higgs, in a researched study of the American economy during World War II, showed that deficit spending did not have the beneficial effects commonly believed, and that it was only after the war that genuine prosperity returned - Robert Joseph Barro, economics professor at Harvard, senior fellow of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, believes that the Keynesian multiplier is close to zero. For every dollar the government borrows and spends, spending elsewhere in the economy falls by almost the same amount. 2009 Atlantic interview with Barro: A: Do you read Paul Krugman's blog? B: Just when he writes nasty individual comments that people forward. A: Oh, well he wrote a series of posts saying he thought the World War II spending evidence was not good, for a variety of reasons, but I guess... B: He said elsewhere that it was good and that it was what got us out of the depression. He just says whatever is convenient for his political argument. He doesn't behave like an economist. And the guy has never done any work in Keynesian macroeconomics, which I actually did. He has never even done any work on that. His work is in trade stuff. He did excellent work, but it has nothing to do with what he's writing about. A humorous video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk Later

- Nicomachus

September 13, 2012 at 12:33pm

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Sorry, Nichomachus, no sale. You can quarrel all you want with one or another aspect of Keynesianism, or what you take to be Keynesianism which is pretty much anything you disagree with, but isn't. (Pigou? Come on. He refuted nothing. The value of money is not the basis for spending, except when it is declining so people want to get rid of it. When it is appreciating it, people hold onto it. Pigou isn't even a footnote any more.) But,if you look at long time series, both before, during, and after recessions, the evidence IS overwhelming that increases in government spending fuel aggregate demand. Real GDP grew by 74% over the four-year span from the end of 1940 through 1944. Monetary policy? Dumb luck? The business cycle? It slumped after the war, not returning to the same real level until 1951, but the peak to trough (1947) decline was 12.7%. It actually took until 1953 for per capita GDP to reach again the level of 1944. So, with very strong government spending, we grew 74% in almost no time at all. When government spending declined, we shrank. We are to understand from this, according to your description of the work of Higgs, that wartime spending did not lift the economy and prosperity "only returned" after the war? Meaning 1951, I suppose, or 1953? If you want to have a theory of something, it at least must pass the laugh test by not being openly and obviously inconsistent with the data. Or is your argument with deficit spending? That is a very different issue. The belief that deficits fuel prosperity -- whereas the Keynesian claim is that government spending lifts aggregate demand -- is much closer to a supply-side view that tax-cuts, and resulting deficits, are magic elixir. The policy of borrowing in recession, as understood by a Keynesian, is in order to have government spending have the least negative impact on private spending, raising the multiplier, by taking from the private sector those funds (the money of the investing class) that were already least likely to be spent and spending them. But for it to work, the absolute level of government spending has to increase. Just giving tax cuts and shifting to a deficit doesn't do it. See, e.g., Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. It is the SPENDING, not the borrowing, that is critical, even if spent on the military. If you can find some empirical support for Barro's claim, go ahead. His belief is not by itself terribly compelling when there is so much data to the contrary. You went to some libertarian pseudo-economic website and sucked up the standard little bits and pieces that, even taken together, mean very, very little. Friedman "demolished?" I have read there was a worldwide depression. Did the monetary authorities in every other industrialized nation also allow to money supply to decline by a third? What has the Phillips curve got to do with anything? The Austrian school? Pass. Empirically unfounded.

- roidubouloi

September 13, 2012 at 3:10pm

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I am sure Barro is fit to be tied that he hasn't won a Nobel Prize.

- roidubouloi

September 13, 2012 at 3:13pm

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Roid, So your theory is that these guys are all clowns and liars who disregard full proof evidence? P.S. Nobel Prize is highly politicized. Obama won one merely for potential.

- Nicomachus

September 13, 2012 at 4:45pm

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Just because it is politicized doesn't mean Barro doesn't want one and isn't absolutely convinced that he should have received the very one that Krugman has. For better or worse, economics, out of pretty much all academic fields, is the most heavily infected by ideology. That is why almost everything in economics remains subject to dispute -- and a left-right dispute. You would think that after a couple of hundred years, most major aspects would find a broad consensus, but that is not the case. They are not all clowns, but they are tendentious, and prone to cherry-pick evidence to suit their ideological preferences. Even more common, they tend to over-claim and over-interpret their results. Take Friedman. There is a pretty broad agreement at this point that the Fed continuing to fight inflation when we were in a recessionary downturn in the 30s exacerbated matters. That might even explain why the Depression was worse here than in many other places. But to say that the Fed "caused" the Depression, which was a world-wide phenomenon? That is a grossly exaggerated claim driven by a right-wing ideology that deeply wishes to claim, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, that markets naturally maintain equilibrium or return to it quickly in the event of a shock. Faced with the reality that this is not the case -- but convinced as a matter of theology that markets are naturally equilibrating -- they look for another cause and decide that government is it. This is, frankly, nuts (the sort of thing libertarians love), a profoundly tendentious reading of the evidence. But that is what you can get in economics. To try and attribute business cycles to government involves endless ad hoc-ery (see, e.g., the Austrian school which doesn't even bother with data because it would gum up the ad hoc explanations for things). Then, on top of the tendency of economists to claim much more than their evidence will bear, is the tendency of secondary readers, even more ideologically driven, to over-claim on the already over-hyped results. That is what the list that you offered consists of. Higgs might have had some point, but he hardly overthrew the idea that government spending in a downturn does not increase aggregate demand. Pigou is by now a footnote in economics. Hazlittin "quoted Samuel Johnson?" If you read Friedman in the manner that you do, that the Depression was solely the result of price deflation rather than its primary cause, then what we need is inflation to get us out of the current economic malaise. And indeed, we do, contra Pigou, as people start spending money when it is depreciating and the value of existing debt falls, which is also good for spending. Do the very same people who deny the utility of fiscal stimulus and insist that deflation caused the Depression therefore advocate for aggressive Fed action to increase inflation [i.e., fiscal policy doesn't work but monetary policy does]? Of course not. That would be contra their ideology which is that the government should take no action that would benefit labor. Barro says a lot of things. For one, he claims the fiscal stimulus had no effect That is far more shrill and ideological than anything that has ever come out of Paul Krugman's mouth but surely doesn't bother you at all. In that we quickly emerged from our free-fall, he would have to claim that that happened despite government spending or would have happened anyway and in the same time frame. Wholly implausible, particularly when the Fed was scooping up assets. But, of course, such a claim can never be definitely falsified as we cannot go back and re-run history. So he can say whatever he wants. If Barro is to be believed, with his zero multiplier, then when the government printed a dollar and spent it in the spring and summer of 2009 (which is exactly what happens when the government borrows, spends, but the Fed then buys up the debt), someone else, somewhere else in the economy magically decided not to spend a dollar. On top of that, we are supposed to believe that whomever the government paid with that dollar didn't spend it either, any of it. That isn't just stupid. It is ridiculous. There is really nothing on the left that comes close to the ideological drivel that emerges from the right.

- roidubouloi

September 13, 2012 at 7:43pm

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As an aside, I attribute the drift of the American right toward outright extremism, as well as the extremism of right-wing economists, to the demise of communism and the discrediting of socialism. When there was an extreme left in the world, liberalism was the center, the extreme right was correctly understood as the mirror of the extreme left and just as dangerous. Without communism and socialism, pragmatic liberalism -- such as the kind that had Republicans advocating a health insurance mandate not very long ago -- is left on the edge of the political spectrum. This makes the extreme right the "opposite" of pragmatic liberalism and gives it legitimacy that is wholly undeserved. Those people are fuckin' nuts, and if we still had wacko extremists on the left, no one would have any doubt of it. I have no idea what can be done about this other than try to defeat the wacko right politically using any legal means and rhetoric available.

- roidubouloi

September 13, 2012 at 8:10pm

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I think we are probably closer than you might think. I agree that people's ideology more often than not influences their positions on economic issues (and many other disciplines). Economics is particularly susceptible because it is not an experimental science. Even the so called empirical economic data is limited. At best economists can establish correlative relationships. Despite the statistical games that economists play, you can never really purge all of the confounding variables from the data. Just about all economic models have assumptions built in, which is why contradictory models can reference the same data. There is a lot of room for emotional determinism in economics.

- Nicomachus

September 14, 2012 at 6:21pm

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"emotional determinism in economics" is a good turn of phrase. It is helpful to have a sense of the nature of evidence and what sort of claims it can support. Unfortunately, I don't think many economists, or people in general, do. In the case of economics, I think this is the real problem with it not being an experimental science. In experimental science, you are forced to understand what is and is not evidence. In economics, it is possible for that understanding to elude one indefinitely. Most of mainstream economics these days consists of mathematical models, contrived for their mathematical tractability, and some form of regression analysis "testing" the model on a data set. The results, in my view, mean nothing. Given that almost all economic phenomena show an upward trend with some high frequency oscillations, you can obtain a "statistically significant" result for almost any two or more phenomena that have this two basic characteristics. Most of these papers come and go and are never heard from again. Then they crank out more. Keynes's insight, although startling at the time because so contra the economics orthodoxy, is profoundly simple: The output of the economy consists of private goods and public goods, privately determined spending and publicly determined spending, and nothing else. When the government spends, it injects money into the economy, much of which will then be spent if it goes to people who have no money to spend or will spend at least some of their additional income (the multiplier effect). Thus, in an economic downturn, where spending is less than output capacity, a decrease in private spending can be compensated by an increase in public spending which will not crowd out private spending (Barro's claim) precisely because there is slack capacity. Moreover, the additional private spending capacity created will raise private spending thereby moving the economy back to full employment. This is so stunningly simple in conception that I personally wonder how it can be considered controversial. The only way that an increase in government spending could fail to increase output would be if private spending decreases by the same amount in response, Barro's claim, But anyone who makes that claim should have at least a plausible explanation for the causal mechanism by which the offset occurs, and there isn't any. If the government pays me to do something, raising its spending, am I going to hoard that dollar, all of it, and not spend it? If I am going to hoard it, am I going to hoard it because it came to me for doing some work -- as employee or contractor -- merely because it came from the government? What if I am paid for private employment? Do I not spend what I earn? If not, the entire economy would be at a halt all the time. Some money gets spent, the people who receive it hoard it all and the economy stops. That is obviously not the case. So, does Robert Barro have any possible explanation for his claim that when the government spends a dollar the recipient hoards it all but when he or any private person spends a dollar the recipient goes on to spend it? Of course he does not, but I would love to read his best effort. We won't, because the whole claim is ideologically motivated hyperbole that Barro cannot possibly defend in a serious way. The modern re-understanding of the simple Keynesian insight is that, whenever the government spends money, it is printing it, injecting new money into the economy that will be spent. The government then removes money from the economy in one of two ways -- taxes or spending (Ricardian equivalence). Whether taxed or borrowed, the same amount is still removed, but who the money comes from can have different impacts. If you take the money in taxes from people who spend all their income -- much of the population that doesn't really have a lot of income -- then their spending is reduced, dollar for dollar. This sounds a little like Barro, except that it is the tax that reduces the private spending, not the government spending that reduces the private spending, which is another way of seeing that Barro's claim is ridiculous. If the money is taxed from very wealthy people, then their spending (on consumption and investment goods) may be reduced by very little. But it is not entirely trivial to allocate the tax in this way. If, on the other hand, you borrow the money in order to remove it from the economy, you may have people largely self-selecting. Those who are not spending their money are precisely those who have it to lend to the government. Thus, in a recession, you have the theoretical possibility of increasing government spending, keeping the money supply level, and not reducing private spending at all, if that is you deficit finance the increase. However, this is potentially destabilizing as the public debt rises. An acceptable short-term solution, but not if the fiscal stimulus has to go on for a while. This makes it easy to see why cutting income taxes (supply side nonsense) is a horribly inefficient way to stimulate the economy, increasing the deficit without much stimulative effect, inviting the potentially destabilizing effects of rising public debt without even getting any benefit. If the government is keeping the money supply level, by taxing or borrowing for its spending, and it cuts income taxes, most of the cut has to flow to people with the most money. They are the very ones who are not spending what they can spend -- workers pretty much have to spend their entire income. But if you cut their taxes and then borrow the money back, you haven't changed the cash balances of the well-to-do at all. One way you take their money by taxing it, the other you rebate the taxes but then immediately borrow back the rebate. In the end, the only difference is that, with the income tax cut, you are giving them a piece of paper when you get their money. There is reason to think this might slightly increase their spending, but not much reason and not by much. Thus, an income tax cut, which took up a huge share of the stimulus bill, is the worst possible response to the downturn. But wait. There is another way besides taxation and borrowing, which is simply not to keep the money supply level. Increase government spending and DON'T remove the new money for the economy. In that manner, no one's spending capacity is reduced, even indirectly, by the increase in government spending. Take that, Robert Barro! This is what occurs if the government spends money -- printing it -- borrow its back, extinguishing it, but the Fed then buys up the debt (open market operations). The government has spent money by printing it. This is the proper response to a sharp downturn. Output increases due to government spending. Private spending increases because everyone has more money. But won't there be inflation? Let's hope so. Some inflation under these conditions would be good. People are encouraged to spend money that is depreciating, the real value of debts is reduced, also encouraging spending. How do we avoid setting off a roaring inflation? Simple (in concept, requiring some adept effort in practice). As the economy recovers and incomes rise, reduce the gap between tax revenues and spending by raising taxes and/or reducing spending, preferably the former, thereby removing the newly printed money from the economy. And we don't even need to retrieve all, or perhaps even most, of the newly printed money. If the price level has risen, we would need a larger money supply to sustain the economy. This combines monetary and fiscal policy. The key though is that there must be fiscal stimulus, however financed. Monetary policy alone is unavailing because (1) people don't invest during a recession just because interests rates are low ("liquidity trap") (2) buying debt from the investor class also does not induce them to invest. If you are fairly well off, you have financial assets, it is a recession, the government takes your financial assets and pays you for them, do you go out and buy stuff with it? Of course not. Why don't we just do this? Because the rich don't like it. Inflation reduces the value of their money and debt holdings. It is for them a wealth tax, and they hate nothing more than taxes. Also, regardless of the benefit to the country, let alone working people, they are convinced that any dollar spent on a public good is taken from them and spent on the undeserving. They didn't need libertarian wacko Randian nutcase economics to come to believe this. They have always believed it. Libertarian wacko Randian nutcase economics was invented for the sole purpose of giving some purported intellectual legitimacy to their belief. Failing all of that, they try to convince us that if they are not permitted to have 33% of the national income, no 50%, no 60%, no all of it, until working people are reduced to the standard of living in Bangla Desh, that the capitalist engine will fail. Without this "incentive," we will all be poor. Nonsense. During the period from 1940 to 1980, when the income share of the top 10% was "only" 33%, we had the highest growth of any period in our history. When, in 1980, the income share of the top 10% started to grow to its present level of 50%, GDP growth slowed down and has remained lower. That is because too much income in the hands of the investor class starves consumption demand -- producing a fragile economy and asset bubbles (anyone seen a bust around here?). Of course, since the rich now essentially own the government due to the various ways in which they can legally bribe public officials -- not least lucrative post-government employment -- we are in a tough spot for loosening their grip.

- roidubouloi

September 15, 2012 at 10:07am

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It took me several years of graduate study in economics to reach the point of being able to understand and say that.

- roidubouloi

September 15, 2012 at 10:09am

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