Well, definitely improving.
After months of discussion, and with the unemployment rate hovering near a 27-year high, Democratic leaders said Thursday they had finally reached agreement on a bill that would send aid to states and take other steps to increase job growth. Congress plans to vote on the bill next week. But some of the money will not be spent for months and may not be enough to affect voters’ attitudes before November’s midterm elections.
Still, the turnabout since Jan. 20 — the first anniversary of Mr. Obama’s inauguration and the day after Scott Brown, a Republican, won a Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts — has been remarkable. Then, commentators pronounced the Obama presidency nearly dead. Today, he looks more like a liberal answer to Ronald Reagan.
“If you’d asked me about this administration after Scott Brown was elected, I’d have told you it was going to fizzle into virtually nothing,” said Theda Skocpol, the Harvard political scientist. “Now it could easily be one of the pivotal periods in domestic policy.” But, Ms. Skocpol added, “It will depend on what happens in the next two elections.”
There's more. David Leonhardt looks at Obama as antidote to Reagan.
Mr. Obama has been trying to reverse the Reagan thrust in some important ways. Although the Reagan administration did not shrink the size of the federal government, it changed the ways that Washington collected and spent its money, by reducing taxes on the affluent, cutting some social programs and increasing military spending.
These policies ended up magnifying income inequality, which was already rising for other reasons. Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top of the scale have tripled or quadrupled. Every major piece of the Obama agenda is meant, in part, to push back against inequality. Government may grow somewhat, but the bigger change will be how the government is spending its money.
Whether or not it's possible to make a badly needed, radical reduction in military spending, there is a little light at the end of dark tunnel of Pentagon power. All we have to do is bundle the Republican party into a sack with some rocks and dump it into the nearest, most industrially-polluted river.
