By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 22, 2012
Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? If you've been
following his campaign from the beginning, that's a question you have
probably asked many times.
But the question was raised with particular force last week, when Mr.
Romney tried to make a closed drywall factory in Ohio a symbol of the
Obama administration's economic failure. It was a symbol, all right —
but not in the way he intended.
First of all, many reporters quickly noted a point that Mr. Romney
somehow failed to mention: George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was
president when the factory in question was closed. Does the Romney
campaign expect Americans to blame President Obama for his
predecessor's policy failure?
Yes, it does. Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr.
Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months
of 2009, that is, before any of the new administration's policies had
time to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of
the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that
voters don't remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was
already in free fall.
How does the campaign deal with people who point out the awkward
reality that all of the "Obama" job losses took place before any Obama
policies had taken effect? The fallback argument — which was rolled
out when reporters asked about the factory closure — is that even
though Mr. Obama inherited a deeply troubled economy, he should have
fixed it by now. That factory is still closed, said a Romney adviser,
because of the failure of Obama policies "to really get this economy
going again."
Actually, that factory would probably still be closed even if the
economy had done better — drywall is mainly used in new houses, and
while the economy may be coming back, the Bush-era housing bubble
isn't.
But Mr. Romney's poor choice of a factory for his photo-op aside, I
guess accusing Mr. Obama of not doing enough to promote recovery is a
better argument than blaming him for the effects of Bush policies.
However, it's not much better, since Mr. Romney is essentially
advocating a return to those very same Bush policies. And he's hoping
that you don't remember how badly those policies worked.
For the Bush era didn't just end in catastrophe; it started off badly,
too. Yes, Mr. Obama's jobs record has been disappointing — but it has
been unambiguously better than Mr. Bush's over the comparable period
of his administration.
This is especially true if you focus on private-sector jobs. Overall
employment in the Obama years has been held back by mass layoffs of
schoolteachers and other state and local government employees. But
private-sector employment has recovered almost all the ground lost in
the administration's early months. That compares favorably with the
Bush era: as of March 2004, private employment was still 2.4 million
below its level when Mr. Bush took office.
Oh, and where have those mass layoffs of schoolteachers been taking
place? Largely in states controlled by the G.O.P.: 70 percent of
public job losses have been either in Texas or in states where
Republicans recently took control.
Which brings me to another aspect of the amnesia campaign: Mr. Romney
wants you to attribute all of the shortfalls in economic policy since
2009 (and some that happened in 2008) to the man in the White House,
and forget both the role of Republican-controlled state governments
and the fact that Mr. Obama has faced scorched-earth political
opposition since his first day in office. Basically, the G.O.P. has
blocked the administration's efforts to the maximum extent possible,
then turned around and blamed the administration for not doing enough.
So am I saying that Mr. Obama did everything he could, and that
everything would have been fine if he hadn't faced political
opposition? By no means. Even given the political constraints, the
administration did less than it could and should have in 2009,
especially on housing. Furthermore, Mr. Obama was an active
participant in Washington's destructive "pivot" away from jobs to a
focus on deficit reduction.
And the administration has suffered repeatedly from complacency —
taking a few months of good news as an excuse to rest on its laurels
rather than hammering home the need for more action. It did that in
2010, it did it in 2011, and to a certain extent it has been doing the
same thing this year too. So there is a valid critique one can make of
the administration's handling of the economy.
But that's not the critique Mr. Romney is making. Instead, he's
basically attacking Mr. Obama for not acting as if George Bush had
been given a third term. Are the American people — and perhaps more to
the point, the news media — forgetful enough for that attack to work?
I guess we'll find out.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/opinion/krugman-the-amnesia-candidate.html?ref=opinion
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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