Will Unemployment Crisis Get President Pink Slip?
Michael Barone, one of the most brilliant political analysts in American history, penned a great column today that takes President Obama’s policies to task:
“The level of unemployment is unacceptably high. And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.”
Who do you suppose said that? A Republican political operative? A Fox News political analyst? One of those several hundred thousand Tea Partiers who assembled in Washington on Sept. 12? No, it was Lawrence Summers, the director of Barack Obama’s National Economic Council and, by common consent, one of the world’s leading economists.
Summers made this gloomy forecast in the course of arguing that our economy is headed to “sustained recovery.” And while it sounds like self-protective political rhetoric, it is also in line with the thinking of Democratic economists who bemoaned a “jobless recovery” during the first Bush term.
They argued then that a variety of factors, big increases in the incomes of high earners, the crowding-out of wage increases by the fast-rising costs of health insurance, prevented the rapid job growth that followed previous recessions. There was something to these arguments.
The thing that President Obama should worry about is whether the economy starts creating jobs again. If tons of people don’t get hired back to good paying jobs fast, their frustration with President Obama’s policies will increase exponentially.
While the stimulus bill was being debated, President Obama said that we had to pass this bill so that we’d avert an economic catastrophe. During those stump speeches, he’d remind people that passing the bill would keep the unemployment rate under 8 percent.
At some point, people will get frustrated because the results haven’t matched up with the speeches. There’s a limit to how much people will ignore performance, whether it’s the nonexistent job growth or the nonexistent economic growth.
I said prior to President Obama’s inauguration that this was new ground for him in that he’d always been judged by his ability to give a polished-sounding speech but that he’s now being judged by the results of his policies and the laws he’s signed.
Technorati Tags: Stimulus, Unemployment, Economy, Job Growth, President Obama, Larry Summers, Democrats
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
September 17th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
First, this is the first job Duh-1 has had where his performance is actually being evaluated by anyone outside the Illinois machine. No wonder his evaluations are coming in kinda punk.
Second, I wonder if the genii in D.C. will figure out before the 2012 election (IOW, in time to save his presidency) that if there are 40 million criminal aliens in this country, and 20 million are stealing jobs legitimate citizens of this country would love to have at this point, how fast would employment rise if jobs were available only to those legally here by birth or process?
I hate to give the swampmasters in D.C. any ideas, but if an old country boy can figure this out without a Hawvud education you’d think those in the “arrogancia” could figure it out, too.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Arrogencia. HA! I luv it!
Perfect epiphet for Versailles-on-the-Potomac.
September 17th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Thank you, USN Ret. I probably should copyright it (it is, I believe, an original), but I want it available for all because it is so descriptive of who those self-centered, arrogant, narcissistic buttheads are.