Prioritize, Prioritize

I think I was in college when I first heard a little jingle about plagiarism — "Plagiarize! Plagiarize! Let no one's work evade your eyes!"

As a journalism major, I was constantly being warned by my instructors not to plagiarize anyone. It became an article of faith with me. So I guess that accounts for my appreciation for that little snippet, which bubbles to the surface in my brain from time to time — sometimes because I really am confronted with a clear case of plagiarism, other times for reasons that aren't altogether certain at the time.

Today, it popped up, not because I have seen evidence of plagiarism but (I presume) because I've been seeing (and hearing) frequent pleas to Barack Obama to do a better job of prioritizing — and the two words sound so similar.

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, for example, was writing the other day about how the midterms — "like it or not," she writes — are going to be a "referendum" (her word) on the Obama presidency.

You might have to look long and hard to find anyone who was a more devoted supporter of Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign than Clift, and she has some trouble shedding that enabler role. She insists, for example, that "there's nothing wrong with Obama that a better economy wouldn't fix," and she's probably right about that.

But the economy isn't better. That's the reality.

And Clift, while still giving credit where she feels it is due, has plenty of blame for others for why that is so.

She still seems to think that Obama has time to right the ship of state ("The only saving grace for Democrats is the roster of fringe candidates the GOP has served up, and the hope that voters will reject the change these Tea Party insurgents represent," "it's not too late for Obama to raise the level of his game," etc.) but I don't.

Clift suggests things that might qualify as cosmetic changes, like revamping the economic team in which Obama places so much faith. And that wouldn't have been a bad idea — last year. But Obama was busy obsessing over health care, a Supreme Court nomination that was never in jeopardy and a "teachable moment" over race relations.

(Speaking of race relations, isn't it interesting that Obama and the Democrats never miss an opportunity to lecture the rest of us about race relations and are quick to dismiss any criticism as the product of racism when escalating unemployment has hurt minorities even more than whites?)

Even Clift can't escape the conclusion that Obama simply isn't doing the things that presidents usually do to reassure voters when times are difficult. She points out — and rightly so — that Bill Clinton survived impeachment by "going before the cameras every day to insist he was doing the work of the people."

Obama, on the other hand, will be addressing the nation tonight about Iraq.

"The time for that was earlier in August when the last of the combat troops rolled into Kuwait," writes Clift. "Voters want to know what Obama is doing to create jobs" — as I observed the other day, a great time for that would have been last Labor Day — "and if he doesn't get the message soon, he will in November."

Maybe, in Obama's inexplicable sense of logic, what he is doing is groundbreaking and will work in ways that the rest of us cannot see yet. Perhaps, in the years to come, political science professors will be telling their students how Obama rewrote the rules for being a successful president and leader of his party during bad times.

If so, then perhaps on November 3, the day after the midterms, it will be incumbent upon me to acknowledge that Obama really did know what he was doing all along.

And if that's the case, I'm a big enough man to admit I was wrong and give credit where credit is due.

But today, about nine weeks before the voters go to the polls, I'm inclined to think that the Democrats are going to lose at least one chamber of Congress — and perhaps both.

If that happens, the Democrats will be all too eager to point fingers. Some are avoiding the rush and getting started on it ahead of time.

And, to be sure, there will be many scapegoats — some legitimate, some not.

But you will need look no further than the White House and its failure to prioritize to find the biggest reason for the setbacks.

Priorities and Midterms

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"For all the attention the White House and Congress have given to health care and Afghanistan this fall, no problem poses a greater political threat to the Democrats in 2010 than joblessness and slow economic growth."

Dan Balz
Washington Post

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Are Barack Obama and the Democrats beginning to realize that unemployment could undermine their grandiose plans when the 2010 midterm elections are held?

Darned inconvenient, those unemployed Americans. And there are so many more of them now than there were in January when Obama took office.

But just about every time I ask a Democrat what is being done to encourage job creation (I say "just about every time" because I'm sure there must be some exceptions, although I can't think of any), I get virtually the same response Dan Balz of the Washington Post got from Jennifer Crider, the communications director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

It was Bush's fault, they say. He left so many problems that had to be addressed (in the New York Post, Michael Goodwin calls it a "whiny blame game").

OK. But when does that second shoe drop? When do we hear about what the Democrats have been doing about unemployment? We've been hearing a lot about unemployment in recent days, but it's really the first time Democrats have bothered to talk about it since the days of the stimulus — which was going to produce a whole bunch of jobs, remember?

(By the way, which party was in charge of Congress in the last two years of Bush's presidency?)

Well, the patience of the unemployed has been stretched thinner than U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The unemployed may have no jobs, but they can still vote — and you can expect them to show up at the polls next November. Some may have jobs by then, but most of the unemployed — and the "under–employed," to use the latest buzzword — have no reason to expect much change in their status. And that's apt to make them a bit peckish.

In what is a time–honored tradition with American voters, it is likely that they will punish the party in power. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is anticipating significant gains for the GOP in 2010, which would be in keeping with historical tendencies. Of course, Democrats can make the case that Cheney is biased. But history is not.

Most unemployed Americans probably would be more tolerant if they felt the government had been trying to encourage job creation this year. They certainly had reason to expect that. Less than a month before the 2008 election, Obama told voters in Ohio, in a speech titled "A Rescue Plan for the Middle–Class," that he would propose a $3,000 tax credit for existing companies for each full–time employee they added to their payrolls.

But "[t]he credit was never part of the stimulus legislation as far as we saw, and it was not included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which Obama signed into law on Feb. 17, 2009," writes Angie Drobnic Holan for PolitiFact.com. "Likewise, we see no indication that this idea might re–emerge."

Reasonable people know the government can't create jobs, but it can encourage job creation. The absence of such efforts this year makes the Democrats' sudden interest in job creation justifiably suspect. Could it be that "The One" is nothing but another cynical politician, an opportunist who is pleasingly packaged and armed with a soothing vocabulary?

I know I've mentioned this tax credit proposal before, but no one has answered my question satisfactorily. Why was it dropped? If there were potential problems in the original proposal, why was no effort made to address them so a tax credit could be part of the stimulus package?

Why have we gone nearly all year with no tangible efforts — until now, when the invincibility and inevitability of Democrats is being challenged — to encourage job creation?

I don't dispute the fact that there were a lot of things on Obama's plate when he took office. What I have a problem with is his priorities. And I'm not the only one. William Galston writes about that in The New Republic.

"Good policy ideas are useless if the time is not right," argues Galston. "In a democracy, leaders must focus — and be seen to focus — on the problems the public cares about the most. If the political agenda is not aligned with the public agenda, the likely result is frustration and anger. Conversely, if leaders work hard on the public's problems, the public response is likely to be favorable, even if the results are not immediate."

Affordable health care, for example, is important. I'm not denying that. But what is affordable when you've got no job?

"[T]he number one issue on the public's mind is the sorry condition of the employment market," Galston writes, "and the people want action to restart the great American jobs machine."

Better late than never, I guess.