by our puzzled looks. I see that former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is just as puzzled as I am by the president’s un-State of the Union speech last Thursday:
On Monday the President will offer ways to pay for his $467 billion American Jobs Act mostly by increasing taxes on the wealthy.
I’m all in favor, but it’s an odd strategy. If any Republican was prepared to vote for the jobs bill, this will send him or her scurrying.
So if the President was never really serious about getting Republican votes in the first place — if his jobs bill and the tax increase on the wealthy were always going to be part of his 2012 election year pitch — why didn’t he make his jobs bill big enough to do the job?
I don’t think the political argument holds water, either. That’s the explanation that the president’s intention is to run against the do-nothing Republicans in Congress.
The problem with that line of attack is two-fold. First, it opens you up to complaints about your own lack of action which are manifest. Second and more importantly, I think that President Obama is peculiarly vulnerable if he is seen as just another conniving politician. The question seems obvious: were you just making a cynical bid for votes when you ran in 2008, too?
I wonder if either house of Congress will put the President’s plan up for a vote? I can see the House doing so for cynical reasons and then perhaps passing the pieces it likes. I can’t see Harry Reid putting his vulnerable members at risk though unless the President is successful in making the package popular.
Which brings up the problem with running against a do-nothing Congress: Congress is split with the Democrats narrowly holding the Senate while Republicans hold the House. The challenge is running against the House only without making the Senate even more vulnerable than it already is.
Neither the House nor the Senate have endorsed the legislation. After the results in NY, I suspect relations between the White House and democrats on the Hill to get frosty as self preservation kicks in.
The question seems obvious: were you just making a cynical bid for votes when you ran in 2008, too?
The answer also seems obvious: “Duh.”
In light of JSS’s comment above, I wonder if it might become possible for Dem and Rep leaders on the Hill to put together their own jobs package independent of the President. I can’t quite see how it would work, but Congress does have lower numbers than the President. it would behoove them to do something.
In other words, it was still born.
Obama does not have a track record of taking the case to the public for legislation. He does have a track record of handing things over to various allies in Congress and then stepping back. He also has a record of capitulating to the Republicans to the point where he almost can’t capitulate enough.
Republicans smell blood in the water, and they are focused almost solely on their own short terms (potential) gains and have lost sight of the bigger picture, IMO. And I’m far from convinced that Obama has the intestinal fortitude to do much about it.
True Steve V, but in Illinois we don’t say someone lacks intestinal fortitude, but as Blago would say Obama lacks “testicular veracity.” And the Republicans are playing small balls.
Sorry Dave. And please remember to tip your waiters.
That’s what puzzles me. From what I can see, it was intentionally stillborn.
I know that Michael see this administration very differently than I do and I respect his instincts. My offhand guess is that he’d say that the White House is playing chess masterfully while the rest of the peanut gallery is playing checkers.
But from my vantage point it looks as though they’re outwitting themselves, turning what could be minor or even major victories into minor or even major defeats. Unforced errors.
Why did the White House demand a joint session of Congress for a stump speech? Why was the proposal too small to be effective? Lack of conviction? If it was a goat staked out over a pit for the Republican House to fall into, why not be bolder? And so on.
The timing of events disturbs me. The proposal is certainly too late to be effective by election time if that is its purpose. At some point, I think Obama suggested that things were going fine, but Europe exploded, but that’s off-message from its Bush’s fault and I don’t expect that view to obtain much domestic traction.
I asked the question at OTB among Obama supporters, and I didn’t get any response, whether the plan would change unemployment figures by the next election. Too much uncertainty. There is a timing problem.
If so, it seems logical to propose something that one can blame Republicans for not passing. A big plan won’t serve that purpose.
I dunno, I don’t get it either.
It is also a weak strategy. It depends on people following a chain of reasoning, and with the public at large that doesn’t work well. Consider the success of the anti-evolution folks, they toss out a “plausible” problem with evolution, let the audience conclude evolution is bunk, and go from there. The supporter of evolution has to then walk the audience through the actual process and try to explain why it works. Obama is setting himself up to be the supporter of evolution and the Republicans the anti-evolutionists. In terms of making a sales, the latter team has a significant advantage, IMO.
Plus, it is weak for another reason. Obama et. al., argued we needed nearly $800 billion to keep unemployment from going over 7.2% or something like that. Two years into the subsequent economic expansion we are still over 9% unemployment….and we are to believe that another $447 billion or whatever will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
In other words, amongst the ignorant in the voting public the strategy is laborious for them to follow and will likely be meet with only partial success. With the non-ignorant there is a ready counter that is, IMO, far more believable. Overall, I see agree that it appears to be a “too smart by half” strategy that may very well blow up in Obama’s face. And as has already been noted, if the Democrats in the Senate and House sense this, they’ll likely look more towards their own self-preservation vs. getting Obama re-elected.
That’s what it looks like to me too. I didn’t notice earlier that there was a poll out this week showing that “By a margin of 51 percent to 40 percent, Americans doubt the package of tax cuts and spending proposals intended to jumpstart job creation that Obama submitted to Congress this week will bring down the 9.1 percent jobless rate.”
That’s more skeptical that I would have expected. So, he’s got to sell the package first, if he wants to try to blame Republicans for not passing it.