This day was certain to come; what’s a bit surprising is how quickly it came. The Obama administration now has a “communication problem.” According to the Hill newspaper:
The other misstep that has bogged down the administration on health care specifically is Obama’s inability to communicate effectively to the American people, [Professor Paul] Light said. While it is shocking to consider that Obama is anything less than one of the best communicators in modern political history, when it comes to health care, he simply has not been able to make the sell to people who do have health insurance. And Wednesday night’s primetime press conference was a “disaster,” Light said. Light said that for the president to regain political momentum, he needs to reclaim his agenda from Congress and start connecting with the public. “He needs to take this over and own it,” Light said.
Light’s comments highlight something I have noticed over the years: analysts are invariably quick to conclude that the reason a particular policy is unpopular is the president’s failure at “selling” his plan — whatever his plan is — to the people. If only the president gave this speech or framed the argument that way, everything would be different. Then he would once again “start reconnecting” with the public.
From the perspective of a speechwriter for both a president and a Cabinet member, and as someone with an abiding love of words and their ability to inspire people, I need to say this: many of the problems facing political leaders are not “communication” problems that can be fixed by this or that speech; they are facts-on-the-ground problems, which are largely (though not entirely) immune to the influence of words.
Barack Obama is experiencing resistance on health care. The problem isn’t that Obama has suddenly lost his communication or speechifying skills; it is that he and his party are advocating legislation that with every passing day and every new Congressional Budget Office assessment looks worse and worse. Time and analysis, debate and scrutiny, facts and reality: these are the real enemies of Obama’s agenda.
On the campaign trail, words can gloss over a multitude of weaknesses. Governing is different, and harder. Even someone of Obama’s talent cannot make rainy days appear like sunny days. He cannot make the sun rise from the west. He cannot turn a slander against a police officer into a “teachable moment” for America. And he cannot turn higher health-care costs into lower health-care costs, no matter how often he insists he can. Watching the White House trot Obama out for interview after interview, for town-hall meeting after town-hall meeting, in order to “sell” his health-care plan, and to watch it become increasingly unpopular all the while, is to be reminded of the limitations of words in American politics, especially false and misleading words.
Tim Giethner had to be helped by a sympathetic moderator to correct a significant gaffe, in which he suggested that the dollar need not be the principal currency of the world. No, Tim, we’re not ready to give up on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Good grief, what is Geithner thinking of? That is something that our creditor nations can threaten us with — and I am dismayed to see that threat emerging so soon — but it is certainly not something we should be acquiescing to.
If buyers at the Treasury auction are balking now, just wait till they really start spending that “stimulus”
moneydebt.I’m not a bond expert, but $34 billion sounds like a tiny drop in the bucket against the numbers these folks have apparently already agreed to finance.
Does anyone have a good guess on the dollar value of the bonds Obama has to sell in the next few months?
Of course we’re going to have to inflate our way out of this credit crisis. But look at the bright side – we might not have “card check” to worry about. And if we don’t have “card check” to worry about all is well with conservatism, right? At least that’s how it seems reading conservative blogs these days. I weep for our country. Democrats and the administration are figuring out how to advance the anti-life, government as parent, agenda. Republicans and conservative blogs are mostly interested in making sure people don’t get tricked into joining a union.
I think he was right pre gaffe. the dollar is totally unstable and a terrible currency for international trade. when we were on the gold standard it made sense, now it doesn’t at all.
the problem is the neo cons have have basically tuned the US into Israel with our own perpetual occupation and socialist economy that lives by borrowing. china is now to the US what the us is to israel.
we will never get back on track if we are taking a trillion dollars out of our economy every year to maintain our hegemony all over the world. it’s not sustainable
military spending is killing this country
jdp #4:
your comment fired a tired synapse in my brain, which may be worth nothing… but here goes anyway.
Go back to keep it simple. All the calculations from the current administration and Congressional majority are purely domestic and political in nature. The only reason they would propose the mind-numbing array of progressive fantasies we have seen is to trade back a couple they don’t care about. Example – card check. While we’re patting ourselves on the back for preserving the sanctity of the secret ballot, the currency will be devalued beyond recognition, the financial system is seized, and the welfare reform that has been in place since the late 90s will be a brief golden era we look back on with affection. Basically, every word coming out of their mouths is a lie, including and and the. Watch what they do. All we can do is keep telling the truth about what we see.
How many more gaffes does Geithner get until The One has to throw him under the bus?
Good grief – THIS is the guy we HAD to have run Treasury (despite his tax-dodging) b/c he was the ONLY man in the world to handle this crisis? I wouldn’t put him in charge of a hotdog stand – unless I wanted it to fail.
the equity market rally over the past week and the destruction of the primary dealer’s risk taking ability hve alot more to do with the low bid/cover than the rediculous notion that we are running out of money to buy bonds.
the money to buy bonds comes from government spending. go back and read the transcript from bernanke’s 60 minutes interview when he says to fed spends by changing numbers on a spread sheet. the government puts the dollars into the system that get drained via bond sales, it does not rely on bond sales to enable it to spend.
its an important distinction in a fiat currency world.
#5 “military spending is killing this country”
Check
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Features/BudgetChartBook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-S7-Despite-War-Costs-Defense.html
and
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htproc/articles/20080613.aspx
Military spending as a percentage of GDP has declined over the last fifty years. On the other hand, the relative size of entitlement spending and government transfers has increased over time.
Having the dollar as the world reserve currency is tremendously advantageous to the U.S. Because the dollar is the world standard, the rest of the world has given us goods for paper. Currently the rest of the world gives us an interest-free loan of several hundred billion dollars by holding U.S. paper money and non-interest-earning deposits. When the time comes that dollar is no longer the international reserve money, those loans must be repaid, and that means that we will have to give up goods to redeem our paper. It will be painful.
A reason that Europe created the Euro was to get some of the advantages that we have enjoyed by having the dollar as the world currency. They would like the Euro to also be a world reserve currency.
Any American who wants to see the dollar dethroned as the world reserve currency has no clue as to what he are talking about.
(If the Marxists were not so economically illiterate, they would have seized on the international role of the dollar as a source of U.S. exploitation of the poor nations. But they have been too stupid to understand the potential argument.)
“When the time comes that dollar is no longer the international reserve money, those loans must be repaid, and that means that we will have to give up goods to redeem our paper.”
There are a lot of unemployed steelworkers who can’t wait for the day the world is WILLING to take American goods for their dollars. The collapse of the dollar will mean full employment. Of course, oil and toys will cost more, but maybe then we’ll get around to energy independence.
Those of us still working are addicted to what the strong dollar buys. But it’s not really a good deal.
The excess spending is the final nail in our collective coffin. The cost of capital goes up, canceling out any boost from the spending and we’re stuck in a weak economy weighed down with massive debt.
Meanwhile, George Soros, who helped bankroll Obama, is shorting the dollar and laughing all the way to the bank (which he’ll probably soon own, if he doesn’t already).
Biden warned us that in the first six months, Obama would face serious challenges. I don’t think he anticipated the challenge would come from Obama’s own Cabinet.
This is the gang that can’t shoot straight.
JDP,
we can’t possibly respond all along the line to the widespread advance of the Obots.
We’re falling back into isolated redoubts, which we hope to hold on to, but there isn’t any over-arching scheme in our defensive efforts. For various reasons the EFCA has generated some defenders, who hold some tough ground for the Democrats to take. We haven’t been able to find any advantageous ground yet to marshal a defense along that sector of the line fronting the budget deficit.
We’re holding where we can, ——— that’s all.
Obama is bent, hell-bent on taking this country down.
All of the malignity, the malevolence, all of the darkness woven into his very being, ————– it’s all coming out.
If we still have our own currency 4 years hence, THAT MIGHT be considered a victory.
That’s how bad it is, and what we’re experiencing now is NOTHING to what this creture intends.
#10 “The collapse of the dollar will mean full employment..”
Work is a means to consumption, not an end in itself.
Except for adjustment effects, the strength or weakness of the dollar will not affect the rate of unemployment. It will affect standard of living, and a high standard of living is a good deal. A low standard of living is not a good deal. (If we got a low enough standard of living, we would get energy independence, but Americans would not be happy with that.)
Rather than wait for a weaker dollar, we could try something like this:
http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
The logic is the same.
Obama has a heaven on earth to build, he can’t be concerned with minor technical difficulties like who’s going to “buy all the debt that governments will require. . .”
Nohype-
The Bastiat is cute, but he asumes only benignly achieved comparative advantage. His satire would be more telliing if the French were importing their sunlight from England at an economy-draining (but cheaper than candlelight) price. But if he told a different story, he would teach a different lesson.
The penitentiary has comparative advantage in license plates, not because it takes less work to produce plates there, but because the workers get paid like convicts. If we import from a country that can produce things cheaply only because its workers are willing (in the political sense of unwilling to die rebelling) to live in squalor, then the only way we can compete is to lower our standard of living, too. That’s why tariffs lower living standards.
Despite our best efforts, the workers of the world are being united, but not in a good way. Globalization has put them in a single boat that leaks out the third world side. We need either to insist on better working standards for our trading partners, or we need to get out of the boat by erecting trade barriers.
I believe there are ways to insist upon rising labor standards that do not cause a trade war. Like any “war” one wants to avoid, a trade war should be preceded by negotiation and diplomacy. We need to impress upon the holders of our dollars (other than the oil-sellers, who have us by the geopolitical gonads and need to be pushed of on that account) that unless they become more competitive in their labor standards, they will eventually be holding worthless dollars, and before we get to where we can’t afford their goods, we will ban their goods.
I’d say it’s pay me now or pay me later, but given the AIG furor, I’m afraid that expression is about to fall into disuse.
9 – it was too big in the past and it’s still too big. and it has different problems than it did then. a bigger budget creates bigger problems regardless of it’s size relative to the larger budget. we are directing too much capitol away from the ecbomy and to wars, essentially.
“Any American who wants to see the dollar dethroned as the world reserve currency has no clue as to what he are talking about.”
I’d be fine with it if we adhered to a gold standard but we don’t. so I’d rather hold gold than dollars and i’m sure most countries will eventually wise up in this regard. our governments money is not “america” and has nothign to do with me.
“competitive” labor standards would mean worse not better conditions!!
it’s no ones business what the going rate for an hour of work is in any given country. attaching laws to it will merely outlaw industry in that location and move it to another one. then the peple can do fun thigns like smuggle guns or be prostitutes instead of working in a sweat shop.
Tisket a tasket,
A bushel of fretful fruit.
What’s in your basket?
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