One GOP landslide in 2010 and an Obama approval rating of 40 later, it seems difficult to argue that the Theory of Change has worked politically. Will Obama stick to it through the 2012 election and will it be advisable for him to do so? I argue, and I think “liberals” argue, that no, that would be a political mistake…
Obama’s pragmatism will be his downfall. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work.[/quote]
SK: My apologies for the hack job on your post, and I supplied ellipses to show where I truncated your various points, but I wanted to make a few points of my own here.
Relative to Obama’s “pragmatism”: I truly don’t think he’s being pragmatic, I think he’s genuinely trying to make everyone happy and has completely underestimated the hard ideological line that the GOP would take and HOLD. The GOP has NOT budged and this is where Obama’s inexperience has wrong-footed him, again and again, and where an experienced street fighter like Hillary would (probably) have done a better job.
As regards the stimulus, I’m not one of those that feel that the stimulus failed. I don’t think it did, but I also don’t think it succeeded, either, not to the extent that was promised. Why? Because, like Obamacare, the stimulus was “outsourced” to Congress, which bungled it. The stimulus that was proposed was NOT the stimulus that was delivered and, as a result, the various multiplier effects were never realized.
More to the point, the bulk of the stimulus spending on infrastructure (which I wholly support) has not landed yet, but is due to hit in the next federal spending cycle (the government budget year on public works runs from 1Oct to 30Sep). This is the sort of spending that Obama needs to focus on and he should re-task those ARRA dollars that are now in non- and under-performing programs and put them into serious WPA-type programs, i.e. those focusing on bridges, roads, etc. And NOT in the proposed Infrastructure Bank, which would be hugely inefficient and tie up the money even longer.
I completely agree that there is no magical silver bullet that will fix everything. To a certain extent, both the Dems and GOP are fighting the last war, and not recognizing that, with China, the Eurozone and other rising powers (like the BRIC countries), the world’s economic landscape has changed. Continuing to pay fealty to Big Labor (the Dems) and Big Money (the GOP) is exacerbating fairly deep structural imbalances and inequities in the American system. The problem is that no politician who wants to get re-elected is willing to bell that particular cat and explain to the American people that “short-termism” (trying to solve big problems within short election cycles) is bound to fail and that until we get serious, we’ll remain stuck right where we are.
