Should President Obama be Blamed for Current Mess?

Although it is tempting at times to be sucked into the 'everything is Obama's fault' vortex, that really is illogical, and so I try to base my opposition to him on the logical grounds that the policies which he supports leads to a society that is less happy, less loving, less free, less prosperous, less secure, less responsible, less wealthy, less efficient, and less productive. It is President Obama's policies that I object to and try to oppose.

The policies pushed by the radical progressive Obama are supported by the Democratic Party through their votes in Congress (my own Senator Debbie Stabenow votes lock-step with the most radical of progressive issues that are pushed by Obama) and by their re-nomination of him, and these policies are destroying the foundations of our nation. Some of the evidence of this is obvious- $5 trillion in debt, crumbling roads and schools, rise in drug use and broken marriages, falling test scores vs the world, etc- and some of this is more hidden- lost time to fix the looming collapse of Social Security and Medicare, the aging of infrastructure, decreases in investment, lack of experience being gained by young workers who are severely underemployed, etc- but the foundations of our nation are indeed crumbling.

President Obama and the Democrats would like to blame this on George W Bush and the Republicans, and in some respects they should be blamed- for going along with the desires of the Democrats and liberals on issues. But they have also suffered from their wrongs, being voted out of office in 2006 and 2008.

But in many ways President Obama and the Democrats should be blamed as well for the falling fortunes of our nation, and should suffer from their wrongs in this election.

Paul Mirengoff over at Powerlineblog has a good and measured argument of why President Obama should be blamed for our situation and should be held electorally responsible. From his post FOR OBAMA, WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND:

Today’s poor jobs report, and President Obama’s ungracious reference yesterday to the parlous state of the economy at the end of the Bush administration, will renew the debate about how much responsibility Obama bears for the current weak economy and how much of it is Bush’s fault. Personally, I’ve never believed that a president’s policies have much impact on the economy, in the short term. And I doubt that the presidency of either Bush or Obama provides a good explanation for our sorry jobs picture.

Let’s start with Obama. I have no trouble accepting the conservative argument that his regulatory policies, coupled with Obamacare and a general hostility towards business, have hurt the economy. And I doubt that the stimulus was money well spent, even for the narrow purpose of short-term job growth.

But I’ve seen no good projection of, say, what the employment numbers would look like in the absence of the stimulus and in a different regulatory environment, and I question whether such a study could reliably be performed. Republicans like to rely on old Obama administration estimate of what unemployment would be with and without the stimulus program. It’s fair to do so from a political standpoint. But these estimates, and the arguments based on them, should not be confused with serious economic analysis.

In the absence of a reliable analysis, I revert to my view that a president’s policies have little impact on short-term economic health. To me, then, the main cause of our current weak economic climate is to be found in deeper trends, including those underway when Bush left office.

But this doesn’t mean that Bush bears much responsibility for our economic woes. The 2008 recession was closely related to the collapse of the housing market. The best analyses I’ve seen of the recession, and of the housing market collapse, come from Stanford economist John Taylor. He has cited two main culprits: excessively low interest rates and the provision by banks, under political pressure, of home loans to people who couldn’t afford to pay them back.

Bush did not set interest rates; that was Fed’s work. And Bush bears little responsibility for the crusade, carried out for years, to make sure low income folks could buy homes. That crusade was led by liberal Democrats, as one would expect given that low income folks are a core part of the liberal base.

The Bush administration, in fact, warned about the mischief that was emanating from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. To be sure, Bush and congressional Republicans should have done more. But the Republicans never had the votes to roll back the liberal Democrats’ affordable housing agenda. Attempting to do so would have led to charges of racial insensitivity, and worse, with no policy payoff at the end of the day.

And foremost among those hurling this charge surely would have been Sen. Barack Obama.

In fact, Obama’s commitment to coercing banks into making loans to poor credit risk individuals goes way back. This was a core element of the community organizing movement in the early 1990s. ACORN used to stage sit-ins and other coercive action directed at Chicago banks that had the audacity to confine their loans to those who were very likely to repay them. As Stanley Kurtz has noted, Obama was recruited by Chicago’s ACORN to run training sessions in “direct action.”

So I have little sympathy for Obama when he frets that he’s being blamed for a mess that Republicans left him. The president did inherit a mess. But he was also present at its creation, and his Party brought it to fruition. Let’s call this poetic justice. Or the chickens coming home to roost.

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