When Bill Clinton was president, he was often criticized — and, perhaps, deservedly so — for political opportunism.
Among those who criticized him were people who later became (and many still remain) enthusiastic supporters of Barack Obama. I find that to be hypocritical because Obama strikes me as being as much of an opportunist as Clinton ever was. If not more so.
Actually, it seems to me that anyone who goes into politics and manages to succeed to any degree is an opportunist. A politician may start out as a staunch advocate for whatever cause he/she may think is critical, and he/she may ride a wave of what is at least perceived to be genuine discontent over that issue to office, but, sooner or later, that politician must bow — at least to a certain extent and often temporarily — to whatever worries his/her constituents the most. It's the law of survival.
Thus, it was with some interest that I noted Obama's visit to Ohio this week.
Now, Obama's political survival is not on the line this year, but all the signs indicate that the members of his party who must face the voters this year are hunkering down in survival mode.
And with good reason.
As you can see from the chart I have attached to this post from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment in Ohio has been higher than the national rate for much of the last 20 years. Perhaps that is due, at least in part, to the fact that Ohio is in the industrial midwest, which is usually vulnerable during economic downturns.
Whatever the reason(s) may be, if unemployment is going up in Ohio, I think you can be sure that a recession is occurring in the rest of America. Ohio's unemployment rate broke the double–digit barrier last spring, months before the national rate followed suit.
And this week, following Republican Scott Brown's victory in the special election in Massachusetts — coming on the heels of Republican gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey — Obama appears to have gotten the message that voters are (a) worried about the cost of the health care reform plan and (b) convinced that not nearly enough is being done to encourage job creation, even though, nationally, unemployment is in double digits.
Obama remains personally popular in Massachusetts and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere. (Do you hear me, conspiracy theorists? They like him. They really like him.) But that popularity doesn't transfer easily to others — and it's especially hard when the historically unreliable voting blocs that showed up to elect Obama aren't motivated to turn out when he isn't on the ballot.
Now, the unemployment rate in Massachusetts is not as severe as it is in Ohio or the nation at large. But it is certainly bad enough. When Massachusetts' voters went to the polls in November 2008 and gave Obama nearly 62% of their ballots, unemployment in the Bay State was slightly higher than 6%, a little more than a full percentage point higher than it was when George W. Bush ran for re–election against John Kerry in 2004 but considerably higher than the state's 2.7% unemployment rate when Bush was elected president in 2000.
Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the unemployment rate in Massachusetts is 9.4%. I don't know how much attention either Brown or Martha Coakley gave it during the campaign, but I'm sure an unemployment rate that has more than tripled in the last 10 years was a factor for the voters.
The fact that the economy shed 85,000 jobs in December couldn't have helped the party in power, either.
(For that matter, New Jersey's unemployment rate was 9.7% when it elected a Republican governor in November. It cracked double digits in December. Virginia's unemployment rate is, by comparison, relatively modest — 6.9% — but it, too, has risen dramatically since the state voted for Obama in November 2008, when unemployment was below 5%.)
Obama's trip to Ohio may well have been planned months ahead of time, but the timing couldn't have been worse for a president who clearly prefers to tinker with the health care system instead of promote job creation.
Reality demanded that Obama at least give some lip service to joblessness when he visited the Cleveland suburbs of Lorain and Elyria, which he did. But I found it to be fleeting, obligatory, almost a tactic, a verbal bridge to what he really wanted to talk about — health care reform. And, to my disappointment (but, frankly, not really to my surprise), his enablers in the media have been all too willing to keep the spotlight on health care reform.
"You know," a friend of mine said to me after it was pointed out that the last president who tried to lead his party through a midterm election year that was plagued by double–digit unemployment was Ronald Reagan, "at least he's ahead of Reagan in one way. He doesn't stick his head in the sand about anything. Reagan wouldn't discuss financial assistance for AIDS research, wouldn't even say 'AIDS' in public until his old pal, Rock Hudson, died of it. And, by that time, so much time had been lost that it took years for us to catch up."
Aware as I am of the tragic and shameful treatment the federal government gave AIDS research in the early years, I have to wonder ... just what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
There's so much misdirection in political discourse these days. I haven't decided if it's a little better now — maybe it's worse? — than it was in 2004, when some people wanted to address the very issues that contributed to a major crisis while others were intent only on talking about the threat posed by gay marriage.
Obama conceded that "[t]hese are difficult and unsettling times," which couldn't have come as a surprise to any of his listeners, and he proceeded to repeat his vague and unconvincing claims that his policies had "saved" jobs. Yep, times are hard. But he insisted that "the worst of this economic storm has passed" because of the steps he and the Democrats in Washington have taken.
I would argue that the unemployment figures alone tell a different story. And the results of a recent Gallup Poll are on my side. Gallup reports that two–thirds of Americans believe an economic recovery won't start for at least another two years.
Clearly, there is a disconnect between Obama and ordinary Americans on this issue.
In truth, I find it ironic that Obama came to Ohio, where he received far more credit for addressing joblessness than he actually deserved. In October 2008, in Toledo, about 75 miles to the west–northwest of where he spoke yesterday, Obama addressed voters during his campaign against John McCain.
During that campaign stop, Obama pledged to offer tax credits to businesses that hired Americans in 2009 and 2010. The idea probably met a receptive audience in Lucas County. Unemployment was 8.8% there in October 2008 (by the following June, it had soared to 14.6%), but the plan was not part of the stimulus package that Obama and the Democrats rammed through Congress nearly a year ago.
Consequently, PolitiFact rates it a broken promise.
The rhetoric yesterday was much the same as we've heard for the last year. "So long as I have some breath in me, so long as I have the privilege of serving as your president, I will not stop fighting for you," he said. "I will take my lumps. But I won't stop fighting to bring back jobs here."
Well, some people are still buying it, but the approval ratings suggest that not as many are. Anyway, as far as I can tell, the priorities haven't shifted significantly. The emphasis is still on health care. He spoke about hitting a "buzz saw" with the loss of Ted Kennedy's seat, and he made it clear that health care was still at the top of his agenda. "This is our best chance to do it," he said. "We can't keep on putting this off."
They just don't get it, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert marveled.
"How loud do the alarms have to get? There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long–term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves and their children," Herbert wrote.
"The door is being slammed on the American dream and the politicians, including the president and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, seem not just helpless to deal with the crisis, but completely out of touch with the hardships that have fallen on so many."
You know, just when I think Herbert can't get any more on target, he writes a column like the one in today's Times. And he raises the bar another notch or two.
I hate to keep quoting him, and I certainly do recommend that you read the column for yourself, but here's an observation that is simply too good not to share.
"The Democrats still hold the presidency and large majorities in both houses of Congress," he writes. "The idea that they are not spending every waking hour trying to fix the broken economic system and put suffering Americans back to work is beyond pathetic. Deficit reduction is now the mantra in Washington, which means that new large–scale investments in infrastructure and other measures to ease the employment crisis and jump–start the most promising industries of the 21st century are highly unlikely.
"What we'll get instead is rhetoric. It's cheap, so we can expect a lot of it."
Amen.
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