Mr. Obama still has immense power, if he chooses to use it. At home, he has the veto pen, control of the Senate and the bully pulpit. He still has substantial executive authority to act on things like mortgage relief — there are billions of dollars not yet spent, not to mention the enormous leverage the government has via its ownership of Fannie and Freddie. Abroad, he still leads the world’s greatest economic power — and one area where he surely would get bipartisan support would be taking a tougher stand on China and other international bad actors.
But none of this will matter unless the president can find it within himself to use his power, to actually take a stand. And the signs aren’t good. ...Paul Krugman
Krugman looks at the coulda, woulda, shoulda of Barack Obama's almost two years in office and points to the same list of possibilities. Is he being fair?
Obama refused, over and over again, to call a spade a spade, to challenge the very Republican ideology that gave us a financial crisis and deep recession.
... Again and again, he defined America’s problem as one of process, not substance — we were in trouble not because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas, but because partisan divisions and politics as usual had prevented men and women of good will from coming together to solve our problems... But the real question was whether Mr. Obama could change his tune when he ran into the partisan firestorm everyone who remembered the 1990s knew was coming. He could do uplift — but could he fight? So far the answer has been no. ...
He didn't use his "bully pulpit" to state clearly the strategies of his own administration.
...Given the economy’s troubles, however, the administration’s efforts to limit the political damage were amazingly weak. There were no catchy slogans, no clear statements of principle; the administration’s political messaging was not so much ineffective as invisible. How many voters even noticed the ever-changing campaign themes — does anyone remember the “Summer of Recovery”...?
He should have told China off for its role in trade imbalance.
At the predictably unproductive G-20 summit meeting in South Korea, the president faced demands from China and Germany that the Federal Reserve stop its policy of “quantitative easing” — which is, given Republican obstructionism, one of the few tools available to promote U.S. economic recovery. What Mr. Obama should have said is that nations’ running huge trade surpluses — and in China’s case, doing so thanks to currency manipulation on a scale unprecedented in world history — have no business telling the United States that it can’t act to help its own economy. But what he actually said was “From everything I can see, this decision was not one designed to have an impact on the currency, on the dollar.” Fighting words!
And now we have the issue of allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to expire -- and no sign that Obama will hold the line on this. As Krugman says, "the signs aren’t good."
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Steve Benen recommends a moderate strategy on the part of the White House.
...All available evidence suggests GOP leaders and their nihilistic rank and file have no interest in governing. None. If Plan A is exploring the possibility of working in good faith with Republicans towards actual policymaking, fine. Give it a try. But keeping Plan B handy at or near the top of the pile would probably the responsible, realistic thing to do.
Put it this way: the White House should imagine Republicans being as reckless, irresponsible, ignorant, ill-tempered and child-like as humanly possible -- and then expect that to happen, because it probably will.
Do we have any evidence whatsoever that Republicans aren't planning to be "as reckless, irresponsible, ignorant, ill-tempered and child-like as humanly possible"? I don't think so.
