Obama, “Credibility,” and Fear of Failure
In the course of an exchange yesterday with Rich Yeselson about the deficit and the prospects of more stimulus, Marc Ambinder wrote:
Telling Democratic leaders and the White House to ignore Evan Bayh’s pleas for deficit reduction just isn’t going to work. In general, my sense is that the White House does not believe that Obama has the credibility to make the argument that government has to spend even more.
I’m not really sure why Obama would lack the credibility necessary. His job approval split is at 50-41 and has been basically stable at that level for a couple of months. That’s not the best job approval rating in the world, but it’s pretty good.
But does “credibility” really matter? Probably not. Insofar as the issue is that Evan Bayh doesn’t want to vote for more debt, then the question is whether he can be persuaded on the merits. I, personally, find Christina Romer and Larry Summers pretty persuasive. But as far as I know, they’re not actively trying to persuade anyone because the White House is afraid that if they try to persuade key legislators they might fail. That’s circular. There seems to be some feeling that the President has an obligation to act like he’s a Prime Minister and not bring proposals to the floor unless he’s sure they can pass, even though he doesn’t have a Prime Minister’s ability to coerce people into voting for his bills. But that’s not how our system works and there’s little reason to believe that trying and failing would somehow turn out much worse than simply refusing the try.
30 Responses to “Obama, “Credibility,” and Fear of Failure”
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November 4th, 2009 at 9:32 am
The bigger problem is that people like Baye, Nelson, Landrieu, and especially Lieberman have proven time and time again to be impervious to reason. They blindly stake out ideological positions for esentially cultural reasons, and no amount of analysis from economic experts is going to sway them.
They can sometimes be negotiated with, cajoled, fluffed, pressured, etc, but no reasoned with.
The only hope would be for the White House to “reason” with the public to the point that the national political calculus changes vis-a-vis these issues, but that is much harder and in any case has more to do with political persuasion than reasoning.
November 4th, 2009 at 9:35 am
My comment got eaten, so I’ll just say it again: these “centrists” are not truth-seekers; they blindly stake out ideological positions for cultural reasons. No amount of “reasoning” is going to sway them. The only language they understand is politics.
November 4th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Obama is being blamed for Bush’s deficits. The Washington Post is OBSESSED with deficits all the sudden.
The Democratic healthcare bill is almost exactly the same size as the Republican Medicare bill. The salient difference is the Democrats’ bill is paid for, and it gives more people more healthcare. Yet the beltway media is talking about how the Democrats are spending recklessly.
The stimulus and Wall Street actions have prevented another depression, and have turned a depression into a recession.
The NJ and VA races flipped to Republicans, just like they flipped to Democrats in 2001. This means NOTHING.
Democrats added a seat to their majority in the House. And they replaced a moderate with a progressive in CA.
The teabaggers have proven yet again that they are a tiny faction who are not representative of some silent majority. And once again, the media thinks because they are old and white, they are somehow more “real” than other citizens.
I don’t understand how Democrats are supposed to govern in a media environment where they are blamed for their opponents’ policy failures, and where they fail to get credit for their own achievements. There’s no reality to this reporting. It’s insane.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
50% is not “pretty good”. It’s not even “good”. It’s, at best, “mediocre”. I seriously doubt you were saying “Hew GWB has a 51% approval rating. Better cave on Social Security” in 2005.
Really, Republicans know full well that if the economy is still shitty, Obama is out of office. They know, deep down even if they won’t say it in public, that stimulus works. Do you honestly think they aren’t going ot demagogue and filibuster any stimulus plan that has any chance of helping people? It will never happen.
Also, it should be obvious by now that Obama, no matter what his other strengths and weakness, is basically a coward politically. His timidity will likely kill his administration, as that timidity comes during crisis. It looks to a lot of people like he isn’t really doing anything to help anyone but his banker buddies.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Reducing the deficit will be political suicide. It will likely send this country back down the depression hole.
I always expect Obama to do it. Always have, at least since it’s been obvious what kind of man Obama really was. He doesn’t have the balls to stand up the village conventional wisdom.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
I, personally, find Christina Romer and Larry Summers pretty persuasive
One more reason to discount MattY’s economics comments.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
It should be clear by now, from his appointments and his actions, that Obama is a corporatist, DLC democrat.
We need a new Huey Long type to challenge Obama. Maybe Howard Dean or some other could oppose Obama for 2012.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
1) The Republicans are the enemy of the American People and need to be destroyed. Instead, Obama is sucking their cocks in a doomed quest for “bipartisanship” that only gains him contempt from the Republicans and loses him support from the Democrats and Independents.
I worked years for Democratic candidates — and I didn’t even vote yesterday, much less help in campaigns or donate. Because I’m fucking furious that the people we put into power are taking a dive.
2) When you run up debt, you are putting debt onto the common citizens. So people EXPECT to see some beneficial results from that investment — NOT GOldman Sachs stock soaring through the roof while real unemployment is around 17 percent.
3) When Republicans and Blue Dogs sabotage healthcare reform, we expect to see Obama and the Democratic Caucus criticizing them in the public forum, vowing to destroy them in the next election, and using all tools available to fuck the constituents who elected these assholes to office — and making sure said constituents know who is to blame for the bag of shit dropping on their heads. Instead, we see backroom payoffs from Billy Tauzin.
4) With huge majorities in the House, Senate and control of White House, you would expect the Democrats to be making
STRATEGIC actions to reduce the malignant influence of the Republicans: REAL campaign finance reform that can only be changed in the future by overriding Democratic filibusters, Institution of the Fairness Doctrine and other measures to restore the News Media which uses public airwaves to an institution that truthfully informs the voters –instead of being a propaganda machine that promotes deceit on a massive scale.
And yes — the 2 percent richest part of the population should have been hit with a massive tax hike at this point to pay for the financial bailout and to restore the $3 Trillion that Bush and the Republicans stole from Medicare.
Instead, Obama and the Democrats are giving us Republican Lite that exists solely to subvert, coopt, undermine and destroy any effective resistance to the Republican agenda of making this country’s people slaves to a small, wealthy elite.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Not to mention that the majority of Obama’s ‘disapproval’ comes from the Old Confederacy, which has very little say in the nation’s electoral politics.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Your running smack into the major problem with democracy: whenever village-smarts opposes expert opinion, it is very dangerous to one’s political career to follow the expert advice. One reason our founding fathers structured our system to be an indirect democracy was to people that on average were more expert and angaged with the issues of the day than the average citizen to make policy. Now with our 24hour news cycle, and permanent campaigns politicians can only go against lowbrow CW, when the issue is off the radar.
Whether Obama is smartly saving his limited political capital for when it is most needed, or is simply too timid is a good question.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I’m a deficit-hater and I take our current account deficit very seriously. That said, the biggest hole in this year’s budget was the bank bailouts. Assuming the government stops stuffing cash into banks next year (and those same bank’s record profits I would hope is a sign they won’t need more cash) then there should be a little sanity returned to the deficits. Maybe we’ll go back to the median Bush yearly deficit of around $500 billion. Horrible beyond measure but better than this year.
Further, any Senator/congressman who voted to invade Iraq loses forever his/her claim to being serious about deficit reduction.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
But that’s not how our system works and there’s little reason to believe that trying and failing would somehow turn out much worse than simply refusing the try.
Matt: I strenuously disagree with this. I think you try, of course, to persuade legislators of the need for more stimulus. But you do so in private. You absolutely don’t introduce legislation — no matter how justified and needed — if it’s merely going to result in a bloody nose for the White House and congressional leadership. Not before healthcare is passed, at least.
The last thing Obama needs is a public rebuke via a legislative defeat before a healthcare bill reaches his desk.
It will hurt the Democrats next November if they don’t get some supplemental stimulus in the pipeline ASAP. It will destroy them next year if they don’t get a healthcare bill passed. I mean, what part of “it’s really very unwise to embolden the opposition” don’t you get?
It’s universal healthcare, stupid.*
*(And judging from their actions since the inaugural, the administration is fortunately well aware of this political reality, and that’s why it’s probably going to pass).
November 4th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Good Post Matt. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. There seems to be a pervasive piece of conventional wisdom that if Obama fails at even one thing, it’s Waterloo. (Forgive the expression, though its use by DeMint demonstrates the extent to which Republicans have staked their political future on the veracity of this piece of “wisdom”)
November 4th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Deserves repeating. This is something that’s been bother me for quite some time now. Thanks for saying it!
November 4th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Obama has lots of power to coerce blind obedience.
All he has to do is threaten to campaign for rebellious Congressmen as he hard as he did in NJ and VA and to equal effect.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
The Democratic Caucus and Obama are setting themselves up for major losses next November — not because the Republicans gain support beyond their base but because the Democrats lose support from the Independents and Democrats by pandering to –and refusing to confront — the Republicans and their Blue Dog allies.
By making it clear that if you want change in this country, you need to work solely to create a Third Party: Because the Republicans will always fuck you and the Democrats will always sell you out so that the Republicans can fuck you again.
November 4th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Evan Bayh needs to write this 1000 times on a chalkboard:
Why the Economy Needs Spending, Not Tax Cuts
November 4th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
All he has to do is threaten to campaign for rebellious Congressmen as he hard as he did in NJ and VA and to equal effect.
Oh, the stupid. There is no end to it.
November 4th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I, personally, find … Larry Summers pretty persuasive.
Are you persuaded by Summers in general–for example, by his thinking on women in academia–or do you find him persuasive only when it’s convenient to your argument?
November 4th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
But as far as I know, they’re not actively trying to persuade anyone because the White House is afraid that if they try to persuade key legislators they might fail.
And how exactly would Matt know?
Jasper is, of course, exactly right: the White House is going to be WAY more effective working with Congress mostly in private. But bloggers like Matt basically take the attitude that if it doesn’t happen in a way they can see and write about, then it must not have happened at all.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
along–right now, the biggest tax cut in a wingnut’s wet dreams would be better than the deficit reduction the idiot centrists like Bayh want.
And that’s how it’s probably going to go, because there’s no way a Republican can vote against a tax cut, even if it is only for a year. Not as efficient as directed stimulus spending, but that’s politics, and a far lesser evil than the Hooverism of the “responsible” set.
Savor that for a moment: the fiscal prescription of someone like Sarah Palin or Jim Inhofe would actually be less bad for this country than what the wise old poobahs of the Beltway establishment (and the centrist Republicans and Dems who live to curry favor with them) would counsel.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
@20: So do most of his commenters. People who have absolutely no idea how Obama spends 90% of his waking hours (let alone his staff) are constantly complaining that he isn’t doing enough about X, Y, and Z.
But waiting to see the results before judging him is derided as starry-eyed naivete.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
going back to the original point, i think “credibility” has an insidery quality here, of the “only nixon can go to china” variety.
in other words, obama hasn’t made deficit reduction a priority, and therefore, he doesn’t have credibility to do what’s necessary at a time of collapsed demand.
it’s an amazingly slovenly and silly way to think about things, but as we know only too well, washington insiders are well paid to strain out these shrimp-sized thoughts.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
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November 5th, 2009 at 12:39 am
Let us start with cheap shots first, which will be quite popular on this site – Sen. Evan Bayh is corrupt. He allowed his wife to be on WellPoint Insurance board for long period and basically she being not particularly qualified, she earned millions which Bayh shared. He is ‘corrupt’ is the point and more than that Media, Blogsphere are all chicken; they will never expose this. (My source – Published column in TheStreet.com, that Mad Money Crammer’s site; written by one Eric Jackson.)
Now the next part where you all guys will wish to throw me out completely.
Matt, his acolytes, ‘tax and spend Democrats’ and yes that Nobel Prize winning Economist Krugman; all are missing crucial thing – you borrow and spend when you are sure that you can ‘utilize’ that money to right basic foundations of our economy – infrastructure (Matt, what about those Railways?), employment, alternative energy, future technologies and future market.
President Obama ‘over sold’ us stimulus. There were many who cautioned Christina Rommer and Larry Summers for their aggressive assumptions about Stimulus and in the end they are right. Go and check unemployment rate predicted by Rommer and reality.
So yes, if Marc Amber is right, then I would say this White House knows their own place – short on credibility when it comes to borrow and spend for stimulating economy.
Krugman does not want to consider difficulties and failures in spending borrowed money ‘fast enough in right way’ for growth. Krugman had been wrong this year – he fell on his face with his Bank Nationalization call. Summers scored on that.
While this is happening in reality, Matt and his friend are simply reluctant to be smart in not insisting ‘deficit spending’ continuously, all the time. If Matt is attempting a political response to GOP criticism of ‘deficit spending’ that is a different thing. I thought Matt wants to give ‘policy’ responses here. And by the way, in politics I would prefer advises of Nat Silver than Matt.
What do Matt wants to spend on? Why is he so quiet about the disastrous way Health Reform Bill is crafted? It is not turning out to be any different than ‘borrow and spend on entitlement’. That is wrong, not good.
Will Matt bother to reply Megan McArdle when she is pointing out exactly what is wrong with policies which in the future would increase deficits larger than expected growth rate increase would warrant?
Matt, answers and honesty. I get the impression, I am the ‘fool’ to demand that from Matt and his friends.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:36 am
@17 along
Thanks for the link, along. Bruce Bartlett, former insane supply sider and Jack Kemp man, is now a sane man.
“Final proof is that the previously cited CBO report shows total federal revenues coming in at 14.9 percent of the gross domestic product in FY2009. According to the Office of Management and Budget, one has to go back to 1950 to find a year when federal revenues were lower as a share of GDP. For reference, revenues averaged 18 percent of GDP during the Reagan administration and were never lower than 17.3 percent – 2.4 percent of GDP above where they are now.”
“I think there are grounds on which to criticize the Obama administration’s anti-recession actions. But spending too much is not one of them. Indeed, based on this analysis, it is pretty obvious that spending – real spending on things like public works – has been grossly inadequate. The idea that Reagan-style tax cuts would have done anything is just nuts.”
This administration needs to get their shit together. They remind more of Jimmy Carter every goddamn day. They are becoming positively Carteresque. All the data, all the facts are on one side of the ledger, and all the horseshit is on the other side -with the horseshit peddlers.
And yet they choose, CHOOSE, to engage only with the horseshit peddlers, which means they are becoming horseshit peddlers themselves.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:44 am
From Roubini. Another bubble is forming. Perhaps the mother of all bubbles. The thing that makes this bubble really pathetic? Before it blows up and potentially brings the world to its knees, no one gets to enjoy and participate in the illusion except a relatively small cadre of inside traders.
http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/257912/mother_of_all_carry_trades_faces_an_inevitable_bust
November 5th, 2009 at 8:01 am
From: Wall Street’s Naked Swindle by Matt Taibbi
“Heading into 2008, there were five major investment banks in the United States: Bear, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Today only Morgan Stanley and Goldman survive as independent firms, perched atop a restructured Wall Street hierarchy. And while the rest of the civilized world responded to last year’s catastrophes with sweeping measures to rein in the corruption in their financial sectors, the United States invited the wolves into the government, with the popular new president, Barack Obama — elected amid promises to clean up the mess — filling his administration with Bear’s and Lehman’s conquerors, bestowing his papal blessing on a new era of robbery.”
Whatever you think of Taibbi, he is exactly right. This is exactly what happened.
There is simply no way to get around the fact: this is not change we can believe in. This is BULLSHIT of the highest order. This administration is not even capable of maintaining the appearance that is functioning as a kind of Bush Light surrogate organization, which itself would have been (SHOULD HAVE BEEN) intolerable to progressives.
Instead, and incredibly, this administration, lead by President Obama, has forged way beyond Bush Light, and now displays all the earmarks of operating with the immunity and arrogance of a Bush Jr. on steroids.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:06 am
President Obama ‘over sold’ us stimulus. There were many who cautioned Christina Rommer and Larry Summers for their aggressive assumptions about Stimulus and in the end they are right. Go and check unemployment rate predicted by Rommer and reality.
This, of course, is completely wrong and based on faulty logic.
The stimulus is having its predicted effects, and that has been very helpful. The problem is that the baseline assumptions on the relationship between GDP declines and employment losses, which were based on historical data, ended up being too optimistic this time. Therefore, with respect to employment in particular, the fact that the stimulus is having its predicted effects is currently getting outweighed by the baseline employment scenario being much worse than originally hoped.
Accordingly, the logical conclusion from all this is not that the stimulus isn’t working. Rather, the logical conclusion is that the stimulus wasn’t big enough. Which many feared at the time, but the political process effectively capped the size of the stimulus at a relatively low level.
So not only were the stimulus skeptics wrong, but their influence on the political outcome in terms of the size of stimulus has proven to be more pernicious than originally feared. And yet many of them have the gall to claim they have been vindicated–which is really shameless.
November 6th, 2009 at 1:00 am
DTM – try convincing somebody else. What the heck you are talking about the faulty logic?
Check this:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/sebastianjer/comment.html?entrynum=178
If Obama felt stimulus was ‘too little’, why did he not tell that then? Please go and check White House statements.
You are out of your mind and are simply criticizing folks without any facts and what happened then.