In todays’ Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty has a discussion of the recently released CBO numbers , arguing, persuasively to me, that the deficit and the restructuring of government it will require is the defining issues of our day. I think he’s correct on this. The CBO numbers forecasting 13-digit deficits for at least the next two years really ought to be treated like an emergency situation. When people start quoting Job, it’s never a good sign.
Geraghty is also correct that Obama is effectively voting “present” on this matter, refusing to propose any serious solution to what is obviously a dire problem. Or, for that matter, refusing to stop adding on to the problem. Sure, some of you might say, but I don’t see Republicans proposing specific solutions either. Okay, maybe, maybe not. But Obama’s not in Congress; he spent about a billion dollars getting out of Congress and becoming president. Which is the office where the hard decisions must be made.
Here, I’ll quote Geraghty somewhat out of order, but I think this is a worthwhile analogy:
[N]o matter how dire the numbers get, Obama remains convinced we’re just one high-speed rail system away from winning the future and qualifying for the Temporal Playoffs or something…. It’s as if 9/11 occurred and President George W. Bush had responded, “yes, stopping the terrorists is important, but I was elected to enact education reform and that remains my top priority.”
Alter: If you look at social legislation, the health care bill is the biggest piece of social legislation since Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.
Stewart (joking): Well, It’s a government take over of healthcare. It’s socialism.
Alter: (laughing): That’s right. We’ve been told. But, you know, insuring 30 million Americans and ending discrimination against sick people is not a minor thing. I think we will look back and say “Can you believe that we used to live in a country where if you got cancer, you used to have to sell your house?“ We’re not going to live in that country anymore and that’s a good thing.
While the scientifically-minded among us might be a bunch of Mopy Matildas who insist that, ultimately, the future is probably unwinnable, I was pleased to learn the other night that the president is not a member of that particular reality-based community. I’m glad we have a leader who isn’t such a Glum Gretchen as to think that winning the future will require altering the laws of physics or developing time travel; rather, we’ll win it by reorganizing the government. When you look at your calendar one day, and it says “The Future,” you’ll be happy we had B.H. Obama Jr. in the White House back when it said “The Past.”
But if I might be a Presumptuious Percy, I think I might have a better idea. While reorganizing stuff is, in a word, AWESOME, it’s just reslicing a finite pie. What we need is an infinite pie. And how to do we get an infinite pie? With infinite dollars.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “But Apollo,” says you. “But Apollo, if we print infinite dollars, won’t they actually fill up the entire universe and crush all other forms of matter with their infinite gravity?” But you know who thinks that way? Loser Lou, that’s who. When the future gets here, do you want to be Loser Lou, or do you want to have an infinite pie? Sputnik, people. Sputnik.
If there’s one thing we’re learning from our rhetorician-in-chief, it’s that he is not a car guy.
“The past two years years have been about pulling the economy back from the brink,” Obama said. “The next two years, our job now, is to put our economy in overdrive.”
Last November, I was one of millions of Americans who voted straight-ticket Republican based entirely on making the president stop using the worst analogy ever, his damned driving-into-a-ditch shtick. It seems that the president’s knowledge of gear ratios is at least as bad as his knowledge of getting cars out of ditches.
Overdrive is a gearing ratio of less than 1:1. That is, for each revolution of the crank shaft, the drive shaft will turn more than once. I think this description, though slightly technical, explains it well:
Technically, an overdrive gear should have a ratio lower than 1-to-1, which means the engine turns less than a full revolution for each revolution of the transmission’s output shaft. Because engines must run at a minimum speed of around 500 rpm, and because their output is greater at higher revolutions, the transmission’s job is to gear down the engine’s driveshaft so you can accelerate from a stop. For example, when the car is in first and second gear, the engine’s driveshaft rotates several times for each time the transmission’s output shaft rotates once.
Got that? Every modern car has an overdrive gear; mine has two, which is not uncommon with six speed automatic transmissions. The point of the overdrive gear is to allow for lower engine revs while cruising at speed. In my top overdrive gear, I can drive at 80 miles per hour while my engine spins at around 2700 rpms. Without an overdrive gear, my engine would have to spin at around 4200 rpms to drive at that velocity.
Of course, overdrive is not all merely about efficiency. Because they keep rpms so low, overdrive gears are not good for accelerating. If I’m driving 80 and need to quickly speed up to pass someone, I downshift into a lower gear in order to get my engine spinning more powerfully, which will allow me to accelerate quicker.
So let’s go back to the president’s comment. He refers to “overdrive” as though that’s the gear you put a car in when you want to go fast. But it’s actually the gear you put a car in when you’re already going fast. Or, when you’re going fast enough; in order to get the best EPA numbers, every modern car with an automatic transmission is programmed to seek out the highest possible gear, so frequently my car will be in sixth gear even when I’m just driving around at 35 or 40 miles per hour. In top gear at that speed, however, acceleration is abysmal, and I generally need a downshift to go up hills.
Why does my car have to get to 35 or 40 before it can use sixth gear? If an engine doesn’t maintain high enough rpms, it will stall out (i.e. stop working). If you put the car into too high of a gear at too low of a speed, the engine will not spin fast enough and will stall out. This is [one of many reasons] why people with stick shifts take off from a stop in first or second gear, not fifth.
So the president says it’s now time to put the economy into overdrive? Essentially, he’s saying we’ve reached our cruising speed and no longer need to accelerate.
Does that sound like an accurate description of the economy right now? Personally, I think we need to drop down a gear or two so that we can get the revs up into the engine’s real powerband and can accelerate more quickly. I think we’re moving slowly after coming to a dead stop, and if we put our car into overdrive, there’s a good chance we’ll stall out completely. I also think we need a president who doesn’t use metaphors about topics that he doesn’t understand.
Like 90% of job-seeking Americans, I’m employed and was not able to watch this live. But I wish I had.
The Greatest Orator in All Space-Time had to bring in Bubba to argue for his polices? And then Barry left the stage? These are the sorts of things a man is supposed to be able to do for himself. Is he going to call in Bubba tonight to aid in putting the O back in Mrs. O? Since Barry’s now abandoned any pretenses of being a man, she should be so lucky.
This is embarrassing. Really, really embarrassing. Let’s not forget, among other things, that whatever Clinton’s reputation for moderation and fiscal Blue Doggism, he was a tax hiker. In 1992, he campaigned saying that we had “the worst economy in 50 years,” and then promptly raised taxes after he got into office. Now he’s telling us that not raising taxes is the way to economic growth. And he’s more credible on this issue than The Most Persuasive Creature Since That Snake That Got Eve To Eat That Apple? Wow.
The State of the Union Address generally devolves into a laundry list of policy proposals. The last few times that Obama gave it, Republicans had Bobby Jindal and Bob McDonnell respond. Brian Pick suggests some political Jiu Jitsu:
First, make it a table discussion with more than one responder. As a suggestion, include at least one governor to remind the audience that there are independent sources of authority, laboratories of policy that should retain their power to handle local problems (a big-city mayor could also do), and also include a legislator representing the opposition in Congress to directly address the president’s agenda on the federal level.
This also takes the pressure off of any one person to speak for the party, and signals that the opposition is having a frank conversation, not speaking press-release style through the great filter of lawyers and focus-group-tested language. Make good use of stars like Paul Ryan and Chris Christie who have shown they’re champs at off-the-cuff communication and aren’t afraid to take on big issues. Bobby Jindal would have been far better suited to this than talking into a camera solo.
Second, use resources the president doesn’t have. The president is limited by the tradition of giving his speech in the chamber of the House of Representatives, which only affords him a microphone, a teleprompter and an audience. Instead of trying to beat the president at his own game, use a modern-looking studio, where the responders can make use of supporting staff and visual aids like charts and video.
And this extra content should come from a well-coordinated rapid-response team who provide ammunition for the response.
The model for responding to a speech in progress is liveblogging. Certain people, by some mix of expertise, encyclopedic memory and quick wit, have proven they can tear apart a carefully-crafted speech in real time. Identify these people—bloggers, political operatives, think-tankers—and (with their advance permission) borrow their best arguments and lines.
A media team would be responsible for matching the president’s remarks to earlier video and quotes from the president, his advisers and top congressional allies that contradicted the president’s SOTU message. Anyone with a good memory and a well-ordered catalogue of video and/or transcripts can do this. What could be more damaging than showing that the speech just delivered contained flip-flops?
To respond to specific policy proposals and claims, have a team of stat junkies, economists and others who can call up relevant charts and other visuals to help the responders on-screen.
This kind of rapid counter-offensive would be much more entertaining than the president’s exhausting, conventional address, giving viewers a good reason to stick around afterward. And it would be much more effective than current efforts like sending out fact-check emails and post-speech press releases, the contents of which are read by only a tiny minority of people who saw the speech.
Don’t play to the president’s strengths. Use your own, leveraging all the media available to you that the president doesn’t have.
Good idea. Shall we take bets on it not happening?
Yet Republicans, it seems, have been able to distance themselves from George W. Bush’s presidency. Only 34 percent believe that the GOP would return to Bush’s economic policies if they regain Congress, while 58 percent say they would bring different ideas.
The president has spent months endlessly repeating the worst metaphor of this election, and basing his entire pitch to voters on the premise that electing Republicans to Congress is just like giving W. a third term. And the weekend before the election, 1 out of 3 people believe him. One. Out. Of. Three.
Obama couldn’t persuade the Washington Generals to throw a game. Obama couldn’t persuade the Pope to wear a hat. Obama couldn’t persuade Sarah Palin to give a child a funny name. And let’s all say it together: Barack Obama couldn’t persuade a bear to crap in the woods.
From his first day, I’ve said that Barry was petty; a very small man on a very big stage. If I had to sum up the first two years of Obama in five minutes, it would be this video clip. Everybody else should shut up so he can tell you what’s in your best interest, because the time for debate is over. His preferred method of persuasion is bullying, and when that doesn’t work, frankly he doesn’t have much else except the ability to look huffy. One suspects he was only a few moments away from taking his teleprompter and going home.
[Barry] said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, “we can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”
It doesn’t make any sense. I have driven into and out of ditches, and I was once pulled out of a ditch. Just because someone pulls you out of a ditch doesn’t mean they get to drive your car or dictate who gets to sit where. Who gets to drive the car is determined by who owns the car. What sort of socialist crapland are we living in when someone gets to drive off in your car just because you drove it into a ditch? The Greeks long ago killed off the Persian notion that, as Cyrus would put it, the flute should be given to the best flute player. We have a system of justice that revolves around private property, thank you very much.
And just because you drove off into a ditch doesn’t mean you’ll do it again, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re a worse driver than the first shlub with a 4X4 to come along and pull you out. In fact, I’d say that driving off into a ditch and surviving is valuable experience; having learned a lesson from driving off into a ditch (i.e. the importance of countersteering), I’m less likely to run off in a ditch than someone who has less skills and fewer earned experiences.
This doesn’t even get started on more fundamental questions: were we going in the right direction before driving into the ditch? is the new driver going to take us in a better direction, or are we actually better off staying in the ditch? is the new driver just going to run us into a worse ditch? was the ditch, in fact, just a rough patch we needed to get over in order to get to our destination, and going around the ditch is just going to add lots of time to our overall itinerary?
This analogy is inane, and it could only come from someone who has no personal knowledge about driving into ditches. I don’t really care where Republicans drove us, but Barry is driving me nuts.
Between 2001 and 2009 [...] a very specific philosophy reigned in Washington: You cut taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires; you cut regulations for special interests; you cut back on investments in education and clean energy, in research and technology. The idea was if we put blind faith in the market, if we let corporations play by their own rules, if we left everybody to fend for themselves, America would grow and America would prosper.
That was the philosophy that was put forward. For eight years, we tried that. And that experiment failed miserably.
Important note: Obama is full of shit.
Look anyone who is under the delusion that George W. Bush was some kind of market fundamentalist needs to have their head examined. What the vast majority of our pundit class, current ruling party and members of the political left don’t seem to understand is that the current backlash against big government has been a long time brewing. The Prophet (the good Jewish nerdy one, not the insane Catholic obstetrician one) is fond of pointing out the Tea Party is, in large part, blow-back against the excesses of the Bush Administration. Once our ruling class gets that through their thick skulls maybe we will get some real progress on this issue.
David Frum explains why taxes will probably be raised:
Last weekend, Republican House leader John Boehner offered the anticipated compromise. He told CBS’s Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation that he would accept a middle-class-only tax cut if he had no other choice. What happened? Let Bob Schieffer tell it:
”By mid-afternoon [Sept. 12], the White House acknowledged Boehner’s change in position, but added in a written press release: ‘Time will tell if his actions will be anything but continued support for the failed policies that got us into this mess.’
”Blame it on a long memory, but I can remember when the first move by a president like Lyndon Johnson or maybe a smart aide in the Eisenhower White House would not have been a snarky press release.
”I’m guessing LBJ would have been on the phone to Boehner in five minutes after seeing him on TV, saying something like, ‘If you’re serious, why don’t you come over here quietly and we’ll try to work out something good for both of us and the folks out there?’”
Schieffer astutely diagnosed this reality: President Obama’s Democrats do not want a tax compromise.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I wonder what this must feel like from behind your desk. You’re President of the United States. You have to deal with the fallout. And he’s a pastor who’s got 30 followers in his church. Does it make you feel helpless or angry?
Why on earth would anyone feel helpless or angry because some people are doing things you don’t agree with? And why would the president, in particular, feel helpless or angry about it? I guess this question could be rephrased, “Does it make you feel helpless or angry that you’re not a dictator who gets to control every action of his subjects?”
The correct response to this question, which, of course, the president did not give, is: “Free people do the darnedest things, and I was elected to manage the government, not tell American citizens how to behave in their spare time. I won’t be burning any Korans, that’s for sure.” But Calvin Coolidge has been dead for some time now, and I’m not sure we’ve had a president since then who would have gotten the answer right.
The “like a dog” bit seems to be making the rounds, but watch what he says afterwards:
And, Milwaukee, that’s what we’re going to do again. That’s been at the heart what we’ve been doing over these last 20 months: building our economy on a new foundation so that our middle class doesn’t just survive this crisis -– I want it to thrive. I want it to be stronger than it was before.
And over the last two years, that’s meant taking on some powerful interests — some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time. And they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. (Applause.) That’s not in my prepared remarks, it’s just — but it’s true.
You know, that’s why we passed financial reform to provide new accountability and tough oversight of Wall Street; stopping credit card companies from gouging you with hidden fees and unfair rate hikes. (Applause.) Ending taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street once and for all. They’re not happy with it, but it was the right thing to do.
So the new financial regulations are because people talked bad about him? Is there any reasonable way to read those three paragraphs without concluding that “financial reform” passed in order to get back at people who opposed him?