If true, this story illustrates what I’ve been saying to folks on the left who don’t like President Obama talking to the right. At the end of the day he won an election with a significant margin and has close to 3/4 of the country in his corner. He isn’t an unpopular lame duck like the last guy.
President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning – but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. ‘I won,’ Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.
He out-negotiated Congressional Republicans? That’s like someone bragging they can outrun a special olympics kid.
but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. ‘I won,’
He also gets full ownership of the efforts made to fix the economy. And the failures. No more voting “present”, Mr. President.
Yes, I know that repeating “it’s all the fault of Bush and those evil Republicans” every time a Democrat-led effort to fix things fails makes everyone on the left feel better, but eventually John Q. Public is going to expect some actual results out of the “Hope and Change” party and no amount of finger-pointing is going to deflect their attention.
If you’re lucky, their patience will last at least through the midterm elections in 2010.
If history is any indication, the economy will be fine in 2 years. We Dems have some history of cleaning up after GOP excess.
>If history is any indication, the economy will be fine in 2 years. We Dems have some history of cleaning up after GOP excess.
Which history would that be? Examples, please?
Btw, Oliver, I should note that I have high expectations for hypocritical non-outrage from you (and some of your commenters), now that Obama is president. That is, things that would have been horrible when Bush was president are now a-ok now that Obama is president, along with weak rationalizations when it is pointed out to you. I know you won’t disappoint.
The fact that the US is in a mess is not Obama’s fault. Remember, the Bush people blamed Clinton for something that happened eight months after he left office, as though Bush had not yet arrived.
So at least until 9/11/09, Bush is still responsible for everything bad, mmmkay?
[...] Swamp, pandagon.net, PERRspectives Blog, Washington Monthly, The Caucus, The Moderate Voice, Oliver Willis, Political Machine and The New Republic (via [...]
Which history would that be? Examples, please?
Okay.
“the Bush people blamed Clinton for something that happened eight
monthsyears after he left office”Fixed.
If history is any indication… Democrats will f*** everything up and Republicans will retake Congress in 2010. THEN things will turn around.
I guess we know who “The Decider” is now.
Funny… a week ago, a president who had done the same thing would have been called incomparably arrogant, and worse, on this site.
Now, it’s “Thank you sir, may I have another?”
That Barry must be a great kisser for you to bend over and spread so easy.
Nemo me impune lacessit
“Democrats will f*** everything up and Republicans will retake Congress in 2010. THEN things will turn around.”
That’s a bet I’d love to take. Honestly, if you’ve got some cash you want to stake on this I’d be happy to take you up on it. E-mail through my blog if you want.
Fact is, Americans do better under Democratic presidents. Especially the younger ones (like me) who remember what a great job market it was during the 90’s, and how getting a significant annual raise wasn’t a rare surprise, but an expectation.
But we’ll all just have to wait and see, won’t we? It’s going to be tough, but thank God we’ve got Obama rather than Sarah Palin, would be too busy reading every newspaper and trying on new clothes from Saks to fix anything.
The story says the Republicans are all upset about a rebate plan that returns money to those who don’t pay income taxes. Let’s see, that would be something like the Earned Income Tax Credit? You know, the government program for the working poor that Ronald Reagan supported?
A new standard: These guys make Reagan look smart by comparison.
These guys make Reagan look smart by comparison.
Unfortunately, Reagan made Ford look pretty sharp by comparison…
Those two words, “I won,” will become the “Make my day” of the Obama administration. Perhaps I should have known from the campaign, but this guy is an extraordinary LEADER, and he doesn’t suffer a lot of crap.
Maybe the task is impossible, and maybe he will fail, but no one ever brought better tools to the job.
Kudos to you, Oliver, for at least trying to back up your assertion with something. You don’t often do that. The type of analysis you linked to isn’t very convincing for a number of reasons though:
1. There is no data (that I can find) where those conclusions came from. So we can’t ask some fairly obvious questions that arise from such an analysis, such as
2. We can’t tell how those numbers were arrived at – are they averages? If so, is the Democrat’s lead a consistent lead, or are they ahead because of a few big outliers?
3. Since Congress crafts the actual laws that would affect the economy, why is the President considered terribly significant here? (Note that the article says that Congressional ownership favors Democrats too, but by a smaller margin.)
4. As an example, and leaving aside the issue of president vs Congress, Clinton was able to preside over a pretty good run of the economy. Before he left office though, it had clearly turned south, and Bush inherited a not so good economy. Is it reasonable for that to “count” against Bush? Not unless you also think it is reasonable for the current problems to “count” against Obama. (Neither of which seem reasonable to me.)
But it’s a question of degree. Nobody would deny the American economy was soft in 2000, and hurt after 9/11. But let’s grant Bush this benefit of the doubt. He had _seven_ years to get things rolling again, and for five years he had a Republican Congress.
Why couldn’t they do better than stagnant job growth in the service sector at best, and over the past few years, actual job loss? (As opposed to not “keeping up” in terms of job growth, which in effect can be read as “job loss” as well.)
So sure, let’s give credit where credit is due. Republican Presidency + Republican control of Congress = American economic decline. Simple as that.
Phil Gramm calling everyone “whiners” for a “mental recession” certainly doesn’t help as people I know lose their houses and jobs. People from all walks of live, i.e., relatively rich to working-class poor.
So yeah, if four years from now our economy is still doing incredibly badly, by all means blame Obama and his team. As I said in another thread, it amazes me that Republicans don’t understand how basic leadership works. When you assume responsibility as the president, you reap the benefits of your successes and you suffer scorn for your failures.
George W. Bush? Eight years of passing the buck. 9/11? Clinton’s fault. Disaster in Iraq? The Iraqis’ fault. Afghanistan? The Afghanis’ fault? Katrina? State of Louisiana’s fault. The economy? The banks’ fault.
And this is why Americans are breathing a sigh of relief right now. Come what may, we’ve got adults back in charge who realize they are accountable to the American people. We simply didn’t have this for eight years under Bush II, despite all his pissy-pant whining about “personal responsibility.” The guy was simply a coward. An incompetent one to boot.
>The story says the Republicans are all upset about a rebate plan that returns money to those who don’t pay income taxes.
Funny bit of upside down speak there – how do you “return” money to someone from whom it was never collected from in the first place? (You probably got it from the article, to be fair.) And how dare those nasty Republicans ask whether it is wise to increase the number of people who don’t pay taxes yet receive money from the government! That could never lead to problems! What a dumb question!
>Come what may, we’ve got adults back in charge who realize they are accountable to the American people.
Democrats are the “adults”? Really? With exemplars like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd? William Jefferson? Blagovich? I don’t see any of them displaying much in the way of accountability, so why would one think the Democrats in general have some kind of lock on adult-ness vs Republicans? (And seriously, “adults”? what a childish term to desribe people you disagree with. We’re adults and they’re kids! nyah nyah! Give me a break.)
I certainly would agree that Bush and the R Congress did pretty poorly, and can be pretty fairly be characterized as failures when it comes to domestic policy. (Though I imagine we would disagree as to the reasons.) But this tells me you have your priorities wrong:
>So yeah, if four years from now our economy is still doing incredibly badly, by all means blame Obama and his team.
Why is this blame game so important? The problems facing our economy are hard problems, and in some cases have roots that go back pretty far in time – I don’t see how it would be reasonable to blame Obama for not “fixing” them. Hell, I’d be happy if he accomplished nothing other than get gov’t spending under control – Bush and the R’s certainly showed they couldn’t manage it.
I’ll stand by my view of the new Obama administration as being “adults” in relative terms to the children that ran the Bush years — their child-like faith in things like “Deregulation” always leading to a better economy, to an occupation that would “magically” make the Shia and Sunni Iraqis start to love one another after centuries of hostility. Yup. “Adults” vs. “children” is a pretty good analogy. If you’d prefer, however, let’s switch to “faith” vs. “reality based.”
“I don’t see how it would be reasonable to blame Obama for not ‘fixing’ them.”
Really? Then why do you bother voting for a president in the first place? I don’t think Obama can magically solve our problems overnight, but he’s got the best interest of Americans at heart, as opposed to the ideological crony-ism that defined the Bush II regime.
IMO, he’s got four years. Starting now. A good bench-mark to shoot for? A stronger monthly job-gain rate matched with lower and middle-class wage earnings than we had from 2000-2008. Or 2006 if you prefer.
I’m very excited to have Obama as our new president. This isn’t mutually exclusive of saying hell yes, I expect a lot from him. He’s got a mandate from the American people to turn things around, and I hope he takes the opportunity to do so.
Republicans fuck up the economy by cutting taxes for rich guys and assuming this will magically fix everything. This is what Reagan-Bush did and it was left to Bill Clinton to clean up the mess. Bush II inherited an economy that was slowing down and proceeded to make it worse by yet again pushing tax cuts for rich guys and praying it healed itself (while also gutting the regulatory agencies and putting in cronies like Chris Cox) – he was aided by ball-free Democrats in the House and Senate. Now it falls to President Obama to once again pull our asses out of a Republican-created fire.
Why is the President significant? Where, pray tell, do you think the framework for the legislation congress passes comes from? The baby Jesus? No. That comes from the President, and for the last 8 years we had someone who was seat filling in the job of leadership.
President Obama’s political fortunes will live or die based on his performance in fixing the economy. I’m expecting the outcome to be pretty good. The problem for the GOP is the standard dropped so low under W.
Now, it’s “Thank you sir,
may I have another?that’s why we voted for you!”Glad to help!
Haplo9: “Why is this blame game so important?”
Because the first step in fixing a problem is figuring out what went wrong in the first place.
No problem facing the United States right now was a surprise. NONE. Not the economy, not the terrorist attacks of 9/11, not Katrina, none of it was a surprise.
So we have to figure out…
A.) Who screwed up.
B.) How they screwed up.
C.) Why they screwed up.
D.) How to prevent further screw ups in the future.
People who call part A, ‘The Blame Game’ are usually to blame and just want to avoid the consequences.
Y’all write as though the government controls the economy; it doesn’t. If the government controlled the economy, we’d always have growth and we’d never have recessions.
The economy will recover, but it won’t have much to do with the Democrats or the Republicans. The economy recovered from a recession in the early eighties when we cut taxes, and the economy recovered from a recession in the early nineties when we raised taxes. The economy has gone into recession when we raised taxes (early nineties) and when we cut taxes (early 2000s).
And the economy will recover whether President Obama gets his stimulus package through or whether we do absolutely nothing and let it heal on its own. My only hope is that it waits until after November of 2010 to recover!
So, Dana, you hope that Americans continue to lose their jobs and their homes so the GOP can win the midterm elections? Country First, right?
Dana: “Y’all write as though the government controls the economy; it doesn’t. If the government controlled the economy, we’d always have growth and we’d never have recessions.”
Only if you elect people who are competent when it comes to handling the economy.
If you elect people who think the Laffer Curve says, ‘Lowering taxes means raising revenues.’ then you will get into trouble like you did under Bush, Jr.
“The economy recovered from a recession in the early eighties when we cut taxes…”
Actually, I’m pretty sure the economy didn’t start to recover until Regan raised taxes.
“My only hope is that it waits until after November of 2010 to recover!”
Why do you hate America?
Seriously, people are getting laid off and evicted and you hope this continues?
You’re a sick fuck.