Judging By Inputs

One thing struck me in E. J. Dionne’s column in the Washington Post on the double whammy that confronts the Obama Administration in the form of dealing with the oil spill and the stalling economy at the same time. It wasn’t the meat of Mr. Dionne’s column which pointed out that, although the oil spill is demanding visible attention, the economy is actually the more important of the two matters and should be commanding the bulk of the president’s attentions.

It was this quote from David Axelrod:

“Nobody can look at the response and say we were slow in doing what we were doing,” senior adviser David Axelrod said in an interview. He pointed to a “whole range of steps” Obama “took right from the beginning.” But he added: “We didn’t communicate it well.” Axelrod offers a long list of facts and figures to back up his portrait of an administration on top of things.

Uh, no. The oil spill continues to be ongoing. It’s not that the Obama Administration didn’t communicate their actions well. It’s that Americans judge by results rather than by intentions or even by efforts.

That suggests to me what appears to be a common motif for the Obama Administration: insisting that their actions be judged by inputs rather than by outputs. More troops should be sent to Afghanistan. Pass a whopping stimulus package through the Congress. Pass a healthcare billl to extend coverage. Take “a whole range of steps” (which mostly consisted, no doubt, in convening meetings) to deal with the oil spill. Meet with adversaries and extend the olive branch.

Unfortunately, more troops in Afghanistan hasn’t led to progress in the country, the stimulus package hasn’t lowered unemployment in the way that the administration predicted, the additional coverage promised by the ACA hasn’t even gone into effect yet and the plan is already over budget, and the oil continues to gush into the Gulf and is likely to do so for some time, albeit more slowly than before. We aren’t receiving notable cooperation from Russia, Iran, or the Arab countries of the Middle East and erstwhile friends like Turkey are becoming restive.

I recognize that every problem can’t be solved in an hour. The real world is not an episode of Law and Order. But Americans are notoriously impatient people and, contrary to the Administration’s preferences and possibly unfairly, in this November or that of 2012 the voters will not judge by the inputs—the attention, efforts, or even the accomplishments in legislation of the Democrats and the Obama Administration—but by the outputs. Are our troops still fighting in Afghanistan? Is the unemployment rate still hovering around 10% (17% for the broader, more intuitive U6)? Is the oil still gushing into the Gulf and has the cleanup been completed?

Results matter.

0 comments… add one

Leave a Comment