Tuesday, June 05, 2012
One elementary law of politics that the Obama campaign
does not seem to have internalized is this: Don't play against type. Last week
White House spokesman Jay Carney brazenly asserted that President Obama's
spending binge never happened. "The rate of spending -- federal spending
-- increase is lower under President Obama than all of his predecessors since
Dwight Eisenhower, including all of his Republican predecessors."
This was too much even for the usually worshipful press.
The Associated Press issued a full-dress debunking, as did the Washington Post.
Though Politifact, betraying its own unreliability, rated the administration's
claim "mostly true." As the AP explained, the facially hilarious
claim that Obama was the reincarnation of Calvin Coolidge arose from one
columnist's creativity with numbers. Rex Nutting, of Marketwatch, employed the
usual Washington legerdemain of counting reductions in the rate of increase as
cuts. He then assigned all of the spending in fiscal year 2009 to former
President Bush's account, the better to claim that Obama's increase in the rate
of spending after 2009 wasn't all that huge.
But President Bush signed only 3 of the 12 appropriations
bills for 2009. The Democratically-controlled House purposely delayed taking up
the other spending bills, knowing they could really hit the accelerator after
Obama's election. President Obama signed the remaining appropriations bills in
March 2009.
As the AP noted, the administration/Nutting analysis is
an exercise in galling sophistry. "The federal takeover of Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac," AP explained, "also makes Obama's record on spending
look better than it was. The government spent $96 billion on the Fannie-Freddie
takeovers in 2009 but only $40 billion on them in 2010. By the administration's
reckoning, the $56 billion difference was a spending cut by Obama."
As the Washington Post, AP and most un-blinkered analysts
agree, the Obama administration increased federal spending by 9.7 percent in
2009 and 7.8 percent in 2010. The rate of spending growth only began to slow
significantly with the election of a Republican House in 2010. As a share of
gross domestic product, federal spending under President Obama jumped from 20.8
percent (fiscal year 2008) -- a bit higher than the post-World War II average
of 20 percent -- to 25.4 percent, the highest rate since the war. And unlike
the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which passed during the Bush tenure as a
one-time deal, much of the spending on Obama's watch on programs such as Head
Start, Medicaid, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families, and the Earned Income Tax Credit are intended to
be permanent -- the new normal.
It was silly for the administration to attempt this
feeble historical revisionism. Voters will not easily be persuaded that
Democrats are not the party of big government and increased spending. Obama was
better off characterizing his huge expansions of government as essential
"investments." That was open to refutation as well, of course, but at
least it wasn't a lie.
There's a lesson here for Mitt Romney, too. If voters are
quite certain that Democrats are the party of big government and big spending,
they are also inclined to think that Republicans are the party of the rich.
Sixty percent of those responding to a Pew Research poll agreed that Republican
policies "favor the rich." A Gallup survey in 2011 found that nearly
two-thirds of Americans are "worried that the Republican plan for reducing
the budget deficit" will "protect the rich at the expense of everyone
else."
It isn't so much Mitt Romney's personal wealth that
presents a problem. Americans have not been notable for punishing wealthy
aspirants to high office. It's even possible that Romney's success may be
interpreted positively in a time of economic anxiety, if people conclude that a
little "turnaround" action is just what our ailing economy needs.
But the lingering doubts about Republican motives may dog
Romney, which is why it is so crucial for him to frame the coming debate in a
larger context than simply "vote for the business guy who knows how an
economy works." The risk is that too many voters may conclude that it will
"work" only for those at the top.
Romney has said privately and publicly that he believes
2012 to be a "hinge" election -- a crucial turning point that will
decide whether we follow Europe into economic sclerosis and declining standards
of living or whether we revitalize our once vibrant and thriving private sector
by cutting government down to size. He should say it more often and more
prominently. Here it is on a bumper sticker: If you want a paycheck, vote
Romney. If you want an unemployment check, vote Obama.
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