Clinton’s argument: Be patient
Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention (Source: DNC)
So last night’s tour-de-force speech by former President Bill Clinton really boils down to one simple argument about the current president, Barack Obama, and his place in modern American history.
“No president, not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years,” Mr. Clinton said.
In other words, be patient, remember the crisis that Obama confronted, remember who played a big role in creating the mess, and don’t judge his performance by the usual yardstick.
I suspect that Clinton is right that the election will hinge on Americans’ willingness to buy this argument.
So what do you think? Did Obama make a terrible situation significantly better? Did he bungle the recovery? Somewhere in between? How will this issue shape your vote in November?
Tags: election12, politics
jdm runs his mouth, spouting nonsense. walker looks things up, demonstrating that the nonsense really is nonsense.
just another typical day in the comments at the in box.
Oh Larry. We’re not drugged on government handouts. I just don’t want to see my neighbors living under the bridge. I don’t want to see the others die early and in debt because of some illness. I don’t want the kids down the street to go to school hungry…and I don’t want them stealing my plums.
I have been poor, and I have been very well cared for sometimes. I know what it takes to get out of the ditch, and what it takes to make a buck, and in our society it isn’t cleverness, it’s luck. If you dad has money, you’re lucky. If you’re exceptionally healthy, it’s luck. If you got steered into a trade or an education…call yourself lucky. Some people don’t have it and if you’re among the lucky, you should help the others.
You can call it a handout if you like. I call it a responsibility.
i agree that this is an excellent point. don’t have time to look up really proper links, but here’s a short synopsis of what happened mentioned by matt yglesias today (my emphasis):
i think the administration should have done a much better job with worst-case planning. in their defense, i think they decided to go with the (dare i say conservative) approach of asking for a bit of stimulus at first, and then getting more if further developments showed they needed it. of course further developments have shown just that, but it was incredibly naive to believe they were ever going to get more than one shot at stimulus, owing to opposition from conservatives.
If you’re referring to government spending for the war effort, then yes, in that sense spending did end the depression. If you’re talking about spending on New Deal social programs (as I was), the answer is no, it absolutely did not end the Depression. By the way, what does WW II have to do with the Interstate Highway system?
pop quiz! who said this?
ok ok, no one said it. but flip “obama” into “bush,” and suddenly the answer becomes mitt romney.
this is kind of a contradiction in the whole thrust of his campaign.
Mike,
I said: “…and an electorate, drugged on government handouts, that can no longer tell the difference between necessary social programs and economic insanity.” Being able to tell the difference has nothing to do with luck or people living under bridges.
That darned HT not only knows his/her stuff and remembers almost everything, but can back it all up. Impressive.
No Larry, the New Deal programs didn’t end the Great Depression.
The economy improved rapidly from 1933 to 1937, but relapsed into a recession when federal spending was reduced and the money supply was tightened. So yes, it took WW II and its concomitant high level of federal spending to truly end the depression.
What does WW II have to do with the Interstate Highway system? You’ve heard of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, later President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the role he played in both the war and the building of the Interstates? Seriously, though, my point was that Eisenhower built the IHS despite the continued existence of high war debt:
“The cost of construction has been estimated at $425 billion (in 2006 dollars), making it the “largest public works program since the Pyramids.” The system has contributed in shaping the United States into a world economic superpower and a highly industrialized nation.” (Wikipedia)
If high federal spending and high marginal tax rates and high federal deficits and strong labor unions are all bad for the economy, how do you explain the phenomenal growth of the U.S. in the fifties and sixties?
My point about the New Deal has been that it has been misunderstood by many as an example of government spending that ended the Depression. There’s no doubt that drastic, unprecedented action was necessary and that many of the Depression-era public works programs provided lasting benefit to Americans, as did later post-war projects like the IHS. The New Deal ALSO ushered in the age of Big Government and cultivated in Americans the presumption that the government and government spending are the answers to all our problems. There’s a huge difference between intervention in emergencies and a never-ending reliance on the government dole and I am convinced that many liberals can no longer tell the difference.
Larry, how would you characterize the investment in the IHS? Certainly neither “the dole” nor intervention in an emergency. And yet I don’t think you could deny it’s role in U.S. growth in the fifties. Don’t you think that an investment in U.S. infrastructure would have a significant impact on today’s problems? We do need our bridges and highways, they are crumbling, and the economy could certainly use an infusion of cash. Why not just do it?
I agree with JDM’s earlier post. A lot of wiberals have speech impediments, particularly when they defend Obama, and I don’t want my tax dollars paying for weaklings who can’t pronounce things correctly. What a boondoggle!
A large piece of the president stimulus package was tax cuts. According to the speeches at the DNC what has been done is working and the economy is slowly recovering. How can you (with a strait face) criticize these policies and at the same time use them to improve the economy???
Not a bad idea Walker, but I don’t know if we can afford it on top of all the entitlement programs we already have. No, we can’t afford it by raising taxes on the rich either. Something else has got to give, but I agree that investment of money (that is otherwise being wasted) in public works projects would be a good idea.
OK, was there anything in this morning’s jobs report that would make people be patient, stay the course or give Obama another chance? There comes a point when you can’t blame others or make excuses. People no longer care how or why it got this way; they need jobs now. Obama hasn’t delivered jobs and there’s no sign his policies will turn things around. Time for a change.
93,000 jobs.
Warm up the bus.
no no no. the alternative matters! we should all vote for obama because obama would be better than romney. that’s all there is to it.
in fact larry implicitly makes this argument himself. 1937 tells you what you need to know. the economy didn’t turn to recession then because fdr’s “failed economic program was savagely exposed.” it turned to recession because fdr changed policy. he slashed spending and balanced the budget while the economy was still depressed. that’s why the economy returned to recession. that’s why britain is in a double-dip recession right now. and that’s the direction romney-ryan want to go in. they want austerity, and austerity will make things worse.
“no no no. the alternative matters! we should all vote for obama because obama would be better than romney. that’s all there is to it”
Well, I guess that about sums up the liberal position. Obama is better because we say so. That’s all there is to it.
HT,
FDR did not have a balanced budget in any year of his presidency. He came closest in 1938 but the recession we’re talking about began in 1937. Deficit spending was highest (except for the war years) in 1936, immediately preceeding the recession.
“no no no. the alternative matters! we should all vote for obama because obama would be better than romney. that’s all there is to it.”
As if the hang-over wasn’t bad enough after the DNC party last night, waking to the jobs numbers, ouch! Grab the aspirin.
oa, I don’t think the facts bear out what you are saying. Like I said a large portion of the stimulus package (what I assume you supported) was based on tax cuts. These are likely to have had a positive effect on the economy and are partly responsible for the anemic growth we have seen. The Fed also spent a trillion dollars propping up the banks not something that the president likes to talk about (QE3 is probably coming after today’s job numbers (buy treasury bonds!). It is a better play to voters to talk about the smaller auto bailout (by the way we have just learned there is little chance that GM will ever pay us back despite the rise in sales). On a side note it appears that the foreign car makers are all doing even better, did you see what the tsunami did to Japan, they chose not to use that as an excuse. I think we did even over here?
The bottom line is that Romney is just likely to do more of what the president has already done. Maybe that will speed things up a bit. Bill Clinton didn’t balance the budget on the back of the tax payers he did because business and jobs were growing the economy. It is really not that scary or complicated. Everyone benefits from strong economic growth. That isn’t a “trickle down” policy it is a fact that both republicans and democrats understand.
uh, larry, you know i kind of went on to explain in my second paragraph why obama would be better than romney.
but i should also say that you’re correct: fdr never did balance the budget, and i’m sorry that i didn’t double-check that before hitting “submit.” however the broader point stands. in 1936 the federal deficit was 5.5% of gdp. in 1937 fdr instituted significant austerity. the federal budget deficit fell to 2.8% of gdp in 1937, and to just 0.5% in 1938. this was simultaneously paired with significant tightening from the federal reserve. the result was the recession of 1937-8.
if you want to ignore the lessons of 1937 and turn to austerity, then vote for romney. if you want to remember these lessons, then vote for obama.
The whole idea that, because Obama hasn’t yet completely gotten us out of the hole that George Bush dug means that we ought to return to the policies of George Bush is, on the face of it, ridiculous.
Can anyone articulate how Romney’s proposals differ from Bush II?
Paul,
Not sure you’re addressing the correct person here. All I’ve done on this thread was agree with Larry and JDM, which is what I plan to do for the rest of my comments in the In Box. Agreeing totally with them makes life much simpler.
That stuff about the size of the stimulus—boooooorrrrrinnnng.
Bush is gone – get over it. The issue now is Obama’s failure to provide economic recovery.
Larry, how do Romney’s proposals differ from Bush’s? If they’re as nearly identical as they appear to be, then Bush isn’t gone at all– he’s back. Why should we expect this time to be any different?
oa, thanks. Sorry about that. My comment wasn’t on the size of the stimulus but the scope really. Mostly tax cuts that have helped the economy to a minor extent (perhaps). Policies the president now says are old school republican and something he doesn’t support. But he did and they kind of worked.
No one has an answer on the Romney/Bush question, eh?
Walker, the president’s policies are not that different than you would probably see from Bush II. Keep the the tax cuts intact, maybe even make some more (stimulus) and keep the hammer on the terrrorists (maybe even double down in a different way).
There are only so many ways that the government can really directly affect the economy. Stimulus and jobs programs, and the Congress has nixed those in the past couple years. Lower taxes have a negligible affect as the poor job creation numbers for the Bush years show. Economically, we are in uncharted territory. It is not business as usual. An economy based on cheap energy struggles with higher energy prices. Growth is being choked off, and frankly may not come back in any meaningful way for a long, long time. A no-growth economy is the new third rail of American politics, and neither party would dare say it. The president, any president can really be held responsible for the economy? Even on the face of it, that is absurd.
“Stimulus and jobs programs, and the Congress has nixed those in the past couple years.”
You say that as if that’s just the way the world is these days. And that “Congress has nixed those…” should read “Republicans in Congress have nixed those…”
These are not insoluble problems. We just need both parties to want to fix them.
1937 tells you what you need to know. the economy didn’t turn to recession then because fdr’s “failed economic program was savagely exposed.” it turned to recession because fdr changed policy.
Ahh, so where is the moving forward in this statement?
We look back at history repeating itself when it’s convenient.
We can talk all we want about the stimulus, deficit, tax or not to tax, jobs, and more when the drive for both political parties are social issues.
Both sides have very different visions and are intent on seeing their world view in power.
The DNC was full of angry women at the microphone and the men are afraid of their power and are bowing to it. Better cave to them or you won’t get the vote.
“Walker, the president’s policies are not that different than you would probably see from Bush II. Keep the the tax cuts intact, maybe even make some more (stimulus)…”
Or as the New York Times put it yesterday