Like Bob Dylan's description of "John Wesley Harding," President Obama is never known to make a foolish move. Of course, if you're a critic of Obama, you'll be howling about that statement because you think every move he makes is foolish, but I don't want to talk about the differing views on his strategy, goals or results. Here I'm using "foolish" to mean "rash."
It seems to me that every move this president makes -- whether I agree or disagree with it -- has been "well thought out" or possibly even "carefully planned." But this careful consideration is damping down the boldness of hope that supporters saw in him during the campaign. (Governing is different from campaigning, but that's a truism I think the president probably can't afford to heed.)
Obama didn't start campaigning on "it's the economy, stupid," as Bill Clinton did in the 1992 campaign. Obama began making noises about running for president as an opponent of the war in Iraq -- which to some degree influenced the way the economy went, but that's a story for another time. However, he had to change his tune along the campaign trail because the spectacular collapse of the American economy ultimately was the only issue that mattered at the end of 2008.
From that point on, Obama has been greatly compromised. To counter accusations that he was simply "too green" (and I don't mean "environmentalist") to handle the presidency, he has courted -- particularly on his economic team -- people who have credentials. As the Washington Post pointed out in a September 2008 article, Timothy Geithner was a partner with then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in engineering the Bush administration's response to the collapse of the financial industry. With Geithner now subbing for Paulson in the Obama administration, we still have two-thirds of that power trio playing the same tune, when it comes to bailing out the economy. (There's a conspiracy debate on whether Goldman Sachs, from whose loins Paulson sprung, is the puppeteer behind every bubble and bust of recent memory. See Matt Taibbi's article "The Great American Bubble Machine," from the July 9 issue of Rolling Stone and Matthew Malone's article in Conde Nast Portfolio.)
You could almost hear the president's pragmatic, political, community-organizing wheels turning. Let's see, the economic crisis opens doorways to revisiting a host of ills with price tags on them: the cost of defense, the cost of health care, the security costs of dependence on international oil markets to supply energy to fuel the economy, the costs of global warming, etc.
His argument? Now is the time to address these issues with new thinking instead of politics as usual, to clear away programs from the past that no longer work, and to make way for programs that create a more secure and prosperous future.
For instance, there's stimulus money to help alternative energy projects, which the administration hopes will create tons of jobs domestically in the near and long terms. It's a very pragmatic response that makes sense within the terms of its own argument, but the devil (and all the arguments) are with the details of what will be favored and funded.
Similarly pragmatic is the administration's global warming response. Rather than tax companies to limit carbon emissions -- because "tax" is such an unpalatable word -- the White House preferred to push "cap and trade." Cap and trade offers a "free market" solution, with all the potential for graft, corruption, market manipulation, influence peddling and economic roller-coaster rides fueled by speculative markets. A carbon tax's effect on the economy and on carbon emissions would be more clearly measurable and controllable, but it's pragmatically (politically) unpalatable. (Look at these analyses from very different POVs by Robert J. Samuelson, a Washington Post columnist, and Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist.) Will cap and trade with all its potential pitfalls produce the desired results? Maybe, but cap and trade looks more like the administration trying to have it both ways -- to look tough on the environment while giving opponents great power to shape the solution. The need for solutions is urgent, but all that they're able to push through because of the slow-grinding gears of politics is Band-Aids.
I think the health insurance debate is the biggest sign yet that the administration is eventually going to rue its pragmatism as it tries to get something, anything done. President Obama wants to create a "public option" of health insurance that would compete with the private sector. Some of the critics, economic conservatives who routinely argue that the government is fundamentally incapable of being well-run, suddenly argue that the private sector would be unable to compete with the badly run government when it comes to providing health insurance. What does that say about how well-run the current free-market health-insurance system is?
Those who argue that administrative costs that drive up the price of health insurance would be drastically reduced in a single payer system -- a system that conservatives and libertarians (they're not the same thing although their thinking may at times align) tend to decry as "socialist" -- are disappointed in Obama, seeing the public option as a timid attempt to mollify free market capitalists. (See what Obama's former doctor has to say about the public option in this article from Forbes.)
Blue Dog Democrats, fatigued with the rising costs of government that have their constituents rightly worried, have been notable opponents in forestalling action on health insurance.
So compromise and pragmatism are leading to inaction and inertia. Remember when the economic firestorm began in earnest in the fourth quarter of 2008? A vast array of free market capitalists (Bernanke and Paulson come to mind as two, Geithner has been a public-sector guy his whole career) suddenly became believers in Keynesian economics (I know the Libertarian Party didn't; they have a strong faith), which essentially says that when economic chaos erupts, the government needs to take action to restore order. (Actually, it would be a more correct summary -- but less "guy I'd like to have a beer with" talk -- to say that Keynesian economics suggest that the government needs to manage markets to keep free market entropy from becoming macroeconomic chaos. Free market capitalists tend to believe that the markets are self-correcting and that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet every now and then, so we're better off with the occasional chaos, no matter how deep the collapse, than with having the government regulate the economy.)
Every action, including maintaining the status quo, has its downside, but what's the upside of the status quo? Everybody complains about health insurance, but nobody does anything about it.
That may be the most foolish move of all.
No comments:
Post a Comment