I happen to think that Dean Baker answered it best...its a stupid question to begin with.
Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the courageous news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, "is the house in better shape than when you got here?"It is unserious reporters who ignore the fact that our economic house was on fire when President Obama took office and that his first job was to put out the fire.
Now, as the blaze has been put out, we need to start talking about how we can re-build again. Instead, the Republicans keep trying to throw gasoline and matches around the place so they can blame the fire chief for not putting it out sufficiently.
The real question is whether or not the American public is going to throw the arsonists out of office so we can get on with the task of re-building.
Maybe you saw the thing on TPM this AM, too. They posit that the question may well favor the President and I'm certain it does, by a small but significant margin. Part of the problem is that there is a large group of people, that 27% who approved of Dick Cheney in 2007-8, who believe the economy has been losing jobs in the past two years. I'm at a loss as to how to approach them.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, it's the wrong question. I really don't think lightning strikes twice in anything at all, and politics I imagine all the more so, if one goes down to the details.
People have a tendency, however, to prepare to fight the last war. I think one of the President's real strengths, shared with his circle by and large, is that he is very aware of that tendency in people and seeks to compensate for it by constantly gathering data and examining it from a variety of angles. He seems data-driven in the best sense, not in the institutional jargon sense.
They are not running against, as one headline put it, Bush 2.0, and I don't think they'll campaign that way. They will note that the GOP has not changed its political-economic tune, though, but rather maximized it. Focusing on Romney's plutocratic existence is very different than the tack taken against, to be sure, McCain, but even what one imagines Obama would have taken against Bush, had he run against him.
Republiscums are dumb enough to bring up the question, they lose.
ReplyDeleteAre we better off than we were 4 years ago?
Of course we are.
Well done Smarty!
ReplyDeleteReagan won on that question because he was facing an incumbent wh o had just been primaried by hids own party. LIKEABILITY President Obama can answer that question in his trips to OH, WI PA, IA, CO, FL, VA - Yes! - All have unemployment rates below the national avg.
DeleteMI too
DeleteRight question, wrong time span.
ReplyDeleteAs I pointed out on Stonekettle Station in today's post, The Good Old Days, it's not "Are you better off than four years ago?" It's are we better off than our grandparents?
I would hope the answer to that is obvious. Along with the reasons why.
Am I better off than I was 4 years ago?
ReplyDeleteThat depends.
Economically? Hell, no. I've had to change jobs twice, complete with pulling up stakes and moving the fam. Oh, and the fam's added two people as well. Oh, yeah, along with the discovery that the first kid was special needs. The hits just keep on coming.
That's not Obama's responsibility, and besides it's not about me. With Obama in there, I can at least think I can get some help for said special needs kid. No matter my job situation, thanks to S-CHIP expansion, they were always covered. And being in a blue state that is willing to pay for services for my daughter, I have some peace of mind that she is being helped. She wouldn't be eligible in Missouri - just not "special needs" enough.
I may not get what I want, but the vulnerable members of my fam have an extra hand up. With Obama, it'll stay there. With Romney, it won't, and hope for a real job will disappear.
And I wouldn't trade the kids for anything.
"Are we better off than we were 4 years ago?", puts a lot on the Presidents side of the ledger that doesn't belong there. For example, job losses. Between Sept 08 and March 09, the economy lost close to 4 million jobs. With this question, the media is shifting those job losses, among other things, to Obama.
ReplyDeleteThe real question is whether or not the American public is going to throw the arsonists out of office so we can get on with the task of re-building.
ReplyDeleteIt's even worse than that. Republicans, asking the question, are implying that we should throw the firemen out of office and hand over control of the house back to the arsonists.