Mounting Pressure

A mere week ago, Barack Obama took the oath of office and became the 44th president.

It was unrealistic for anyone to expect immediate change as a result — although he did take several steps in his first few days that were "logical," as the therapy malaria blog observed recently.

Nevertheless, for the unemployed or for those who have lost their homes, change can't come soon enough. The pressure continues to build on the jobless and the homeless. Even those who still have their jobs or still have their homes can feel a certain amount of pressure.

The wolf is at the door.

When he was running for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan liked to say that "Depression is when you're out of work. A recession is when your neighbor's out of work. Recovery is when Carter's out of work." It was a nice play on words that supported Reagan's political philosophy at the time.

Reagan, like Obama, combined his personal popularity with the unpopularity of his opponent and his opponent's party and rode the wave to the White House, where he continued to enjoy residual popularity for awhile. Eventually, by the time he left office and certainly by the time of his death in 2004, he was regarded by most historians as a successful president, but in his first few years in office, his popularity began to wane as those who struggled in the recession of that time saw no change in their own condition.

Before he had been in office for a full year, Reagan's approval rating dipped below 50% and it remained there for the next two years, which included the period surrounding the midterm elections of 1982 (when Reagan famously urged voters to "Stay the course"). The Republicans managed to gain a Senate seat but lost more than two dozen House seats in that midterm election.

Twenty-eight years later, Obama showed a similar gift with words when he told his listeners, following his (at the time) surprising loss in the New Hampshire primary, "We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come."

The primary, he said, was a "reality check." He and his campaign, Obama asserted, had been "warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." He went on to rally the faithful with his now famous slogan, "Yes, we can."

Obama made a similar point while telling a story about a stop he made at a diner where he had been told that tasty pies were available. While he was there, he said, the employees told him they wanted to get a picture of him to tease the owner because the owner was a diehard Republican.

When the owner came out with the pies, Obama said to him, "Sir, I understand that you are a diehard Republican."

The owner said, "That's right."

Obama said, "How's business?"

The owner said, "Not so good. My customers, they can't afford to eat out anymore."

Obama said, "Who's been in charge of the economy for the last eight years?"

The owner said, "Republicans."

Obama said, "You know, if you kept on hitting your head against a wall over and over again and it started to hurt, at some point would you stop hitting your head against the wall?"

Those are the words that one can say from the outside, where one does not carry the responsibilities of the office. Now the job is his, and the "chorus of cynics" likely will become deafening.

Only yesterday, seven companies announced layoffs that will put more than 70,000 people out of work, bringing the total for the first month of 2009 to over 200,000 — and when new jobless claims are announced next month, the news is likely to be worse. Of course, Obama hasn't been president for the whole month. But that's a technicality for the unemployed.

Obama's critics on the right are feeling compelled to defend and assert themselves. Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Obama was "frightened of me" after coming under fire for saying that he wanted the new administration to fail.

"My attitude is that, if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody," Obama said during the general election campaign.

Sounds a lot like the "rising tide lifts all boats" rhetoric that was used to support Reagan's supply-side economics plan in the 1980s — which is also known as the "trickle-down theory."

Back in the 1980s, things didn't seem to "trickle down" fast enough — if they trickled down at all.

Jesse Jackson, who mounted two unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic nomination in the 1980s, criticized that rhetoric in his speech to the Democratic convention in 1984. "A rising tide doesn't lift all boats," he said. For the boats stuck at the bottom, in the mud and the muck, he said, there was what the government blithely called a "misery index" that could calculate how much of a struggle it was to pay the landlord or even put food on the table.

Ask an economist what the "bottom line" is, and you'll likely get an answer with a lot of numbers, but you won't see the human faces behind it.

Those faces are there, but they're strained.

The wolf is at the door.