A reader writes:
You wrote: "While all the liberals are bemoaning their purportedly weak president…" I know we don't agree about this. But at least give me and all the others like me the benefit of the doubt – our opinions on this aren't pure nonsense. This is not about losing some dick measuring contest. Here's a Pro-Publica article that's mostly a summary of economic stats.
The economy is bad. It is, by now, Obama's economy. I understand what Bush and Co. did, and I know the role that Greenspan played, and all of that. But Obama can't say "I inherited this from Bush" if he's not making the requisite policy changes to prevent it from happening again. And he hasn't been willing to take on the people who would lose under genuine reform. He hasn't done what's necessary. He hasn't tried. This is where I'm coming from.
The numbers on that Pro-Publica page – they're real people, with real lives that pretty much suck. Millions of them. And I believe that the agreement just made is going to make their lives suck more. It doesn't take an econometric model running on a super computer to tell you that if you slash unemployment benefits it's going to hurt people who are out of work. Sometimes these fights get wrapped up in ideology and power struggles. We just had Democratic and Republican plans to raise the debt ceiling that were pretty similar, and they had a lot of trouble making a deal. That says to me that a lot of this is about power.
You believe in austerity and it's just sort of this common sense thing to you – of course debt is bad, and having less of it is better. But you don't have any kind of economic model that measures the pain caused by reducing the debt and compares it to the benefits that accrue. I'm not throwing stones – neither do I.
This is so much like the Iraq debate it scares me. A bunch of people playing power games, backing their side with pseudo-rational arguments that fall apart under rigorous scrutiny by people who really know the field, completely ignoring the effect that all of this jostling has on real flesh and blood people on the ground. If Obama gets unemployment down to 8.2%, I'll get back in line. Let him deliver 1% of relief, and I'll start drinking the Kool-Aid again. If you want to tell me to blame the Republicans, tell me what the President wanted to do that they blocked. Tell me the policies he fought for that would have made a difference.
I do not believe in austerity as such. I was very happy in the go-go 1990s. But I do believe in math; and can read the projections of future debt; and don't want to see hyper-inflation; and want to see a balanced responsible path toward a sustainable fiscal situation. We are not in one, and it saddened me that the president couldn't lead from the front on this one, as it has become completely clear the parties are far too divided to lead from behind. Nonetheless, my judgment is that we have a slightly better chance of tackling the real issues now in the super-committee set up by this stop-gap measure than before the current kerfuffle. That's all I'm really saying.
This isn't over. It's barely begun. But nothing is going to be pleasant, because we have run out of money. At some point, those suffering Americans are going to have to be told that. If done honestly, I think they'll rally. But from now on, Obama really has to make the case for the Grand Bargain, everywhere and anywhere he can. And those of us who supported him in 2008 should support him in that balanced approach as well. Abandoning him now, when so much is still to play for, is to be out-psyched by the far right. It's time now to out-psych them, with relentless, pragmatic, reasoned reality.
It's Obama's natural cause, the Grand Bargain. Or should be.
The Dish 