Okay, I’ve read the speech
again. Last night, my response was heavily weighted toward the empty
rhetorical parts of the speech–the language that was supposed to inspire
me, but left me cold. I haven’t really changed my mind about that, but I
took a closer look at the first two-thirds of the speech, and I drew
some additional conclusions.
As others have already noted, and this is particularly notable in light of the horrible jobs report this morning, there was nothing in the speech particularly relevant to the unemployment situation. I am not surprised that President Obama didn’t call for more fiscal stimulus. But there was no proposal to tackle underwater mortgages (which I would favor), nor a call for additional monetary stimulus (which I have more reservations about, but would certainly like to see debated), nor for reducing the tax and regulatory burden on employment (permanent cut in the payroll tax, offset by a VAT to be phased in over several years?), nor … well, anything, really.
This doesn’t really surprise me, because the line President Obama has been taking since he passed the stimulus bill was: now let’s focus on structural issues. Health care. Education. The long-term deficit. And I’m temperamentally inclined to agree with that approach, both because I think improving current perceptions of the long-term outlook really will improve the short-term economy, and because I think the crisis we went through was the fruit of structural imbalances that built up over a long time, and if we don’t want a recurrence then we need to tackle those imbalances.
But I thought I’d hear something about the short-term situation. Because the short-term situation is lousy. And there wasn’t anything, other than a call for patience. Which made me wonder . . . why?
Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/obamas-speech-no-mandate-for-democrats/
As others have already noted, and this is particularly notable in light of the horrible jobs report this morning, there was nothing in the speech particularly relevant to the unemployment situation. I am not surprised that President Obama didn’t call for more fiscal stimulus. But there was no proposal to tackle underwater mortgages (which I would favor), nor a call for additional monetary stimulus (which I have more reservations about, but would certainly like to see debated), nor for reducing the tax and regulatory burden on employment (permanent cut in the payroll tax, offset by a VAT to be phased in over several years?), nor … well, anything, really.
This doesn’t really surprise me, because the line President Obama has been taking since he passed the stimulus bill was: now let’s focus on structural issues. Health care. Education. The long-term deficit. And I’m temperamentally inclined to agree with that approach, both because I think improving current perceptions of the long-term outlook really will improve the short-term economy, and because I think the crisis we went through was the fruit of structural imbalances that built up over a long time, and if we don’t want a recurrence then we need to tackle those imbalances.
But I thought I’d hear something about the short-term situation. Because the short-term situation is lousy. And there wasn’t anything, other than a call for patience. Which made me wonder . . . why?
Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/obamas-speech-no-mandate-for-democrats/
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