Nearly a Year of the 'PDQ Presidency'

Jonathan Alter contends, in Newsweek, that Barack Obama's presidency actually began early last November, when the election results confirmed that he had beaten John McCain, not in late January.

The "PDQ Presidency" began on Nov. 5, 2008. In Obama's eyes, Alter writes, that was "another workday — or, more precisely, the first day of his presidency." Alter acknowledges that Obama could not "sign bills or issue executive orders. He and his family couldn't sleep in the White House. Having resigned from the Senate, he was technically a private citizen — a man with no constitutional authority. But these were formalities. For the first time in modern American history, an incoming president made some of the most important decisions of his term."

I think most Americans can sympathize with the task Obama faced — and the sense of urgency he felt to take on everything.

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"But the breakneck pace carried a price. Many so–called shovel–ready construction projects often weren't actually ready to go. Had Obama taken a bit more time, he might have been able to think harder about job creation, which has become the big economic challenge of late 2009. During the transition, Obama officials failed to persuade congressional Democrats to offer tax credits to employers for each new person they hired. And his economists rejected WPA–style government hiring programs out of hand. So when unemployment later approached double digits, they were caught without a backup plan."

Jonathan Alter

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Maybe Alter is right. Maybe the tax credit plan got the kibosh from congressional Democrats, not Obama. But it's a promise Obama made when he was running for president. And PolitiFact.com classifies it as a broken promise, whether Obama or congressional Democrats were responsible for breaking it.

That's a distinction, frankly, that is lost on long–term job seekers.

It's extremely frustrating, as Anthony Balderrama writes for CareerBuilder.com, when job seekers don't hear back from employers.

It's understandable, of course, that, with so many people looking for work, hiring managers easily can be overwhelmed by applications. I sympathize with their situation.

But how are job seekers supposed to react to the sense of rejection that comes with this scenario? Especially now that so many unemployed people are losing their jobless benefits. The lifelines that keep them and their families going. I've heard that 7,000 Americans are losing these benefits each day.

I have to wonder about the logic — not to mention the sanity — of a culture that cares so much about health care but not, apparently, about whether people can pay for it.

I have often asked others a simple question for which no one has been able to provide a satisfactory answer — if I am in the position of having to choose whether to pay for my rent or my health insurance, which one do you think I will choose?

More Thoughts on the Nobel Prize

Two days have passed since Barack Obama was named the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Pundits are continuing to voice their support — or opposition. And I continue to try to make sense of it.

An old friend of mine spent quite a bit of time Friday trying to persuade me of the "global perspective" that the Nobel Committee showed in naming Obama this year's winner. Obama is such a change from his predecessor, my friend said, that he has altered the way the world looks at America.

But he acknowledged that was the only conclusion he could reach. When it comes to recognizing Obama's achievements, he admits, as even the most diehard Obama supporters must, that the cupboard is bare of the sort of accomplishments that Nobel historically honors.

My friend may be right. I hope he is. But, absent a tangible achievement like a peace agreement or even a potential achievement, the Nobel Committee's decision clearly is open to interpretation.

And I think the Nobel Prize runs the risk of being diminished (to at least a certain extent) in the eyes of the world if Obama's potential as a peacemaker is not realized.

A friend and I were talking about this (among other things) at lunch after church today. And we agreed that Obama and his party are facing serious setbacks at the polls next year — due, in no small part, to the fact that Obama has spread himself thin in his first year in office.

I sympathize with the fact that he is in a hurry, but it would be embarrassing — at least, ironic — if domestic tranquility is damaged by the manner in which the Nobel Peace Prize winner's administration has ignored the worsening labor market. I don't think that is the kind of image the Nobel Committee wants its prize winners to project.

I know Obama didn't campaign for this. But it is his to live up to now:

• In the Washington Post, Jim Hoagland gives the Nobel Prize a positively Dickensian spin. It is, he says, in recognition of events yet to come.


• Similarly, Tim Rutten observes, in the Los Angeles Times, that, since the Nobel's deadlines would have required Obama to be nominated after less than two weeks in office, it was intended "to reward words and not deeds." That's a noble sentiment, but not especially in keeping with what I have always believed to be the Nobel's purpose.


• Derrick Jackson writes, in the Boston Globe, that the Nobel Committee was actually recognizing the American voters for electing Obama. In the absence of any actual international achievement, I suppose that is as good a reason as any.


• Left–leaning Eleanor Clift of Newsweek speculates that this has the potential to contribute to a Saturday Night Live parody promoting "Obama as a politician who makes grand promises but doesn't deliver."


• Well, SNL may not have picked up on it yet — I didn't watch the show last night so I have no idea if there were any skits about it — but right–leaning Mark Steyn of the Orange County Register thinks the Nobel Committee has outdone SNL in the Obama joke category.
  
  "Obama took office on Jan. 20," Steyn writes. "Gosh, it's so long ago now. What 'extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy' did he make in those first 12 days?"

I seldom agree with Steyn, but I must admit that it is a good question.

Of course, that conclusion depends on the presumption that the Nobel nomination was for something that happened between Jan. 20 and Feb. 1. Technically, it is possible that the prize is in recognition of something that occurred before Obama took the presidential oath of office.

But the problem for Obama is that there was little in the preceding 50 weeks besides charismatic — and, sometimes, well staged — campaign speeches. In 2008, he was a senator — and, for a short time, president–elect.

There have been many senators who sought their party's presidential nomination. And some of them did win the nomination. And a few were elected. But I don't recall hearing that any of them were nominated for the Nobel Prize.

So I think it is reasonable to conclude this prize is linked to Obama's actual presidency.

And, for Obama, the problem with his actual presidency is there is little beyond potential to reward. Right now, anyway. That could change in the future. But doesn't that raise the bar to impossible heights for Obama? If he does something extraordinary on the world stage, he can't really be rewarded for it now, can he? Wasn't that what this prize was intended to recognize — his unfulfilled potential?

Seems to me that anything that fulfills that unfulfilled potential is, by definition, ineligible to be rewarded a second time.

if anyone can provide an equally reasonable answer, that person may well be next in line for next year's Nobel Peace Prize.

The Ugly Truth

The recession is over — that's the good news, according to Newsweek.

At least, that is what the main headline on Newsweek's article says. But the ugly truth is to be found in the subhead: "Now what we need is a new kind of recovery."

"The Great Recession ... is most likely over," writes Daniel Gross for Newsweek. And he acknowledges that "[c]atastrophe may have been averted. But when economists proclaim a recession over, they're celebrating a technicality: they mean economic output has stopped contracting. ... GDP growth alone can't feed a family, or pay a mortgage. Cursed with a high national debt load and blessed with a dynamic, growing workforce, the U.S. economy needs annual growth of at least 1.5% just to feel like we're standing still."

Gross has more bad news, although I suspect that longtime job seekers have already figured it out.

"[T]he data point that means the most to our psychological well–being — unemployment — is likely to keep climbing. The loss of 6.5 million jobs since December 2007 has spurred the sharpest rise in the unemployment rate since the 1930s."

If you've been unemployed for awhile, you're probably feeling like a punching bag these days. And Erik Eckholm delivers an uppercut in the New York Times, reporting that up to 1.5 million unemployed Americans will run out of unemployment benefits in the coming months, "ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution."

Don't blame Eckholm. He is only the messenger.

And I'm not suggesting that anyone blame the president, either. He didn't create the situation.

But make no mistake about it. While Barack Obama is gambling his popularity on a health care reform package — the passage of which seems iffy at best — and sitting down for a beer and a "teachable moment" on race relations with a Harvard professor and a Cambridge, Mass., police officer, unemployed Americans of all races and their families are facing the loss of their meager benefits in spite of the fact that, as Eckholm writes, "unemployment in this recession has proved to be especially tenacious."

For whatever reason, some people can't get it through their bullet–proof heads that things are different than they used to be. Joblessness lasts a lot longer for most people than it used to. There was a time when employers would take a chance on people who sort of fit the bill for what they were looking for. Today, with so many people looking for jobs, employers can look for a candidate who meets their requirements precisely. That's why it is so hard for people to find work in different fields, even after retraining. Few employers seem willing to allow for a learning curve. Most want actual on–the–job experience.

It's a modern–day Catch–22. You can't get a job in a different field without experience, but you can't get experience in this economy.

The focus of this administration should have been jobs — creating new jobs, encouraging employers to give displaced workers a chance, etc. — all along. Now, millions of Americans, including children, will pay the price because it hasn't been the focus. Many will pay the ultimate price.

I'm not doubting Obama's intentions. But you know what they say about the road to hell?

It's paved with good intentions.

Does Obama Have What It Takes?

This morning, I have been reading an article by Eleanor Clift in Newsweek that wonders, candidly, if Barack Obama is up to the job of being president.

Clift, for those who don't know, is hardly a conservative critic. She leans so far to the left that, during the Clinton administration, she was nicknamed "Eleanor Rodham Clifton" because of her rigid defense of the former first lady and now secretary of state.

When she complains about "Obama's Zen–like avoidance of confrontation," he needs to pay attention.

I've written about the same thing, but I used different words. Back in the days when the economic stimulus package was being debated in Congress, I wrote about Obama's misguided efforts to achieve bipartisanship. Obama and the Democrats in Congress nevertheless permitted so many concessions and so many compromises that we were left with an expensive, pork–laden package that has been ineffective in dealing with the urgent problems that needed to be addressed.

Sure, it has provisions that are aimed at long–term goals, and we won't see the benefits of those efforts for years. But the package has done virtually nothing to address the immediate problems that are strangling Americans. It may have slowed the rate of job losses, but it hasn't shown any sign of reversing that ominous trend. We're still losing hundreds of thousands of jobs each month when (taking into account population growth) we need to add at least 100,000 jobs each month just to stay even, and the current 9.5% unemployment rate is well above the 8% rate Obama and the Democrats said would be the plateau when they passed the stimulus package.

Clift says Obama needs to "get in touch with his inner LBJ," who was known for bullying and cajoling and threatening lawmakers to get his way by using "the treatment," a tactic Lyndon Johnson honed in his years as majority leader in the Senate, "but so far the signs don't look good."

I don't know if Obama has an aversion to criticism or what, but more than one promising presidency has been shot down by an irrational desire to stay on everyone's good side. That simply isn't possible in politics.

In case you haven't noticed it, Obama is a polarizing figure. He remains personally popular — but voters make a distinction between liking the president and liking his policies. Presidents Reagan and Clinton served two full terms in the White House and, despite leaving the presidency with high personal popularity, were loathed and despised by their opponents, largely (but not exclusively) on the basis of their political philosophies.

It's also worth pointing out that, although both Reagan and Clinton went on to win second terms, they suffered setbacks in their first midterm elections — in Reagan's case because of mounting unemployment. Remember his pleas to a chastened public to "stay the course?"

And, of course, in Clinton's case, the backlash was so severe that the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades.

Voters haven't been as charitable when asked about Obama's policies as they have been when asked about the president himself. Clift observes that Obama's objectives are in danger, and that there is a short window of opportunity for him.

"With unemployment climbing and 12,000 people a day losing health insurance, Obama cannot allow universal health care to slip away yet again," she writes. "If a Democratic president with commanding majorities in both the Senate and House can't make it happen this Congress, the Democrats will take a hit in the 2010 congressional election, and the losses will be deserved."

This is Obama's "LBJ moment," Clift writes. And the window is still open for him. But she observes that the "steadily increasing number of people without jobs and health insurance is scary and their cry for change will only grow louder. The true unemployment rate is probably twice what the government records as people get discouraged and fall from the statistics."

That is the reality. It is what Obama and the Democrats were elected to do something about.

Interesting, isn't it, that Clift uses the word "change?" Last year, a majority of Americans responded favorably to the slogan "change we can believe in," but many are finding it harder to believe in change now.

The sniping between the parties hasn't changed. What's changed is which party is in the majority. When Republicans were in the majority, they liked to ridicule the Clintons and Al Gore. Today, with the Democrats in the majority, they enjoy doing the same thing to George W. Bush and Sarah Palin.

When the stimulus package was passed in February, Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson said those who hammered out the congressional compromise should be called "the jobs squad" and Obama, when signing the legislation, said it "mark[s] the beginning of the end — the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs; to provide relief for families worried they won't be able to pay next month's bills; and to set our economy on a firmer foundation."

There seems to be — to put it mildly — a disconnect between the rhetoric of February and the reality of summer.

As Clift urges, Obama must spend his political capital. She acknowledges that "Obama is on pace to exceed Clinton and even LBJ in getting Congress to vote his way, in part by carefully picking his fights."

And she observes that "[v]ictory born of caution falls short of expectations but beats defeat any day."

That's true. But there is a fine art in being an effective president. Can Obama learn it in time?

Or is this the best you can hope for when a community organizer is elected president?

Blaming Big Oil

In an editorial headlined "Obama's Dry Hole," the Wall Street Journal dismisses Barack Obama's argument that the oil companies have been stockpiling leases on federal lands to manipulate gas prices.

Obama alleges that "68 million acres that have the potential to nearly double America's total oil production" have gone untouched.

"[T[he notion is obviously false — at least to anyone who knows how oil and gas exploration actually works," the Wall Street Journal says.

Then it applauds "liberals" for "finally acknowledging the significance of supply and demand."

I don't know if the Wall Street Journal is just noticing this (as many on the right seem likely to act these days), but the law of supply and demand isn't being "finally" acknowledged.

It is one of many factors that thoughtful progressives see as important (along with the need for conservation, the sense of urgency for finding reliable and renewable sources of energy and other factors) in the energy debate.

But "supply and demand" seems to enter the conversation these days (on both sides) with the accompanying question about "Big Oil" and its alleged role in all this.

Well, if you're going to insist on pointing your finger at someone ...

Newsweek's Robert Samuelson suggests a new culprit — the speculators.

"A chorus of politicians, including John McCain, Barack Obama and Sen. Joe Lieberman, blames these financial slimeballs for piling into commodities markets and pushing prices to artificial and unconscionable levels," Samuelson writes.

"Gosh, if only it were that simple," he continues. "Speculator-bashing is another exercise in scapegoating and grandstanding. Leading politicians either don't understand what's happening or don't want to acknowledge their complicity."

All the proposals I've heard for dealing with today's energy crisis seem to be based on the belief that there is a quick-fix solution out there to the reality of a finite supply of fossil fuels.

Whether the proposal is for a windfall profits tax (the logic behind the tax suggests that big oil is manipulating supply to inflate price, but such a tax is likely to restrict production and produce much less revenue than predicted) or a summer "tax holiday" (which would provide minimal — and temporary — financial aid to the consumer — while forcing state governments to cut their workforce — along with some important road maintenance projects), none of the "solutions" I've heard address the real issue of long-term energy needs — including independence from foreign energy suppliers.

So I guess, as Samuelson writes, the speculators are next on the blame list.

Isn't it time for our politicians to speak in depth about a long-term answer? I don't expect anyone to have the answer. How do we find it? That's the kind of vision we seek from our leaders.

We need a strategy.