What the President Can Learn

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The Panic of 1837 was the inspiration for this cartoon.

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There has been much talk of late about Rush Limbaugh's proclamation, in the days before Barack Obama was sworn in as president, that he hoped Obama would fail.

Limbaugh has since tried to mitigate his remarks by saying that he hoped what he saw as the objective of an Obama administration — the achievement of a "socialist utopia," as he puts it — would fail. That, to me, is an extremist interpretation from an extreme radio talk show host who perceives every Democrat to be a socialist.

As I have said before, I am a centrist Democrat. I do not support an extreme socialist agenda, and I do not believe that Obama has been trying to pursue one. But I believe he needs to develop the kind of persuasive skills that tend to define a successful president. And to be a successful president, he has to make a persuasive case to a public that, while supporting him personally, tended to be split on the stimulus package Obama's administration supported.

When it came time to vote in the election last November, I felt torn. I felt unconvinced by Obama's rhetoric — and I felt unconvinced by John McCain's rhetoric as well. At the time, I believed Obama probably would win the general election — and I felt equally certain that McCain would carry the state in which I live by a handy margin (which he did) so I did not feel that my vote would make a difference. That freed me to cast a vote that I felt was a protest against both nominees. I voted for Ralph Nader.

I did not vote for Nader believing that he had a chance of winning the election — or even believing that he had a chance of carrying Texas. And I want to make it clear — because I know there are those who will accuse me of this if I don't say something ... and there are probably some who will accuse me of it, anyway — I did not make my decision based on Obama's skin color.

Throughout my life, though, whether I have supported the candidate who won the election or not, I have hoped for that president's success. Like it or not, he was my president — and, as the late Sam Ervin pointed out during the Watergate hearings 35 years ago, we only have one president at a time.

Once an election is over, it is in everyone's interest for that president to succeed. That was especially true in 2008, when the economy was in the midst of what appears to be the worst recession this country and the world have faced since the end of World War II.

I have had my doubts about elements of the Obama stimulus plan. As I have written before, it isn't possible to do everything that must be done so certain things must be given initial priority. True, this country has ignored many problems — crumbling roads and bridges, crumbling schools — that need to be addressed. But the most urgent needs are putting America back to work and making Americans secure in their homes. And those needs must be addressed first.

It has now been seven weeks since Obama was sworn in as president. More than 1 million people who had jobs on that day are unemployed now, and most of those who were unemployed that day are still unemployed — or working at part-time jobs or much lower-paying full-time jobs. As time goes by, it will become less convenient — and less acceptable, as far as many Americans are concerned — for Obama and the Democrats to blame things on George W. Bush.

It reminds me of a bumper sticker that began to pop up late in 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Reagan, as students of history will recall, was elected in large part because of the recession that began during Jimmy Carter's presidency — although I believed then, and I still believe, it was unfair to blame Carter for the painful transition the economy went through in its adjustment from the wartime economy during the Vietnam War to a peacetime economy — which coincided with OPEC's economic muscle flexing.

As conditions worsened in 1981 and 1982, I frequently saw bumper stickers that said, "It's getting harder and harder to blame Carter."

Reagan's Republicans suffered setbacks at the polls in 1982, but Reagan eventually won over the support of his fellow Americans by saying things that encouraged consumers to abandon their fears of the future and put their money into circulation. Reagan knew that a president must inspire confidence.

That is the kind of thing Obama needs to be doing more of — along with reducing his policy wish list to a manageable length. Unfortunately, the only sort of thing like that that I have heard from him was a somewhat half-hearted suggestion that now would be a good time to invest in the stock market. The stock market continued to stumble today. Its losses were more sedate than they have been — around 80 points — but the volume now is just barely over 6500.

I'm not an economist, but, even though it apparently was a joke, I have to doubt the wisdom of suggesting that Americans invest their money in the stock market, which continues to lose volume with virtually each passing day. It does not inspire confidence.

For Obama to succeed, employment needs to do an about-face — and consumers need to loosen their purse strings. Those are things a president can encourage from his bully pulpit.