Dick Morris had a pretty interesting analysis in yesterday's New York Post. It's worth a read. For the record, I think he's mostly right.
My only point of dissent:
Presidents and politicians can have a strong effect on an economy. It's just that very few of them do. Sweeping regulatory reform can have an effect. Dramatic tax reform can. We haven't had anything like that in over 20 years. Prior to that, we hadn't had anything like it since the 1930s. We only see that sort of thing once every generation at most, and it takes a raging crisis to make it happen. We haven't had a major economic crisis in this country since the 1970s.
Otherwise, the only effects a President--any President--can have are policy changes with very long-term effects, the sorts of things that aren't visible for many years after they're implemented. Even then, they are usually less important than things that Presidents have no control over at all.
I suppose the other way is in helping to set the national mood. Or, I suppose, a President can scare the bejeezus out of everyone. But that rarely happens either. In fact, I'm not sure it ever has.
In short, the political class, if it's stable and not doing insane things, has very little to do with the economy. Voters are increasingly aware of this, both because we're more media-savvy and because more than half of us are in the stock market now. As such, we are starting to understand things that seemed very mystical to most people in the past. It's changing politics. In very healthy ways, I might add. But anything that helps destroy the class-warfare and "government as saviour of the people" mentality is healthy if you ask me.
Dean,
You should read the flip-side article to this one -- it's by Michael Kelly of the Washington Post. I've linked to it here at E Pluribus Unum.
Kelly basically says Bush's Presidency is slipping away from him because he's lost control of the war on terror as well as the economy.
Ah yes. If the President's not in the control room, pulling levers and pushing buttons and turning wheels, it all comes a-crashin' down.
The man's been on vacation, what, a week and a half now? And already the Presidency's slipping, the war is nearly lost and the economy is grinding to a halt. Recent news stories have also implied that he's responsible for the drought in the Dakotas, fires out West, and even the flooding in Prague. My God, what a powerful man! Behold the Mightly Dubya! Two weeks on vacation and the country, mayhap even the world, teaters on the brink of collapse! His powers are a wonder to behold!
Ya think if we sacrifice a bull to him, it'll help?
Bush's critics would have more credibility with these silly claims if they actually had any, you know, specific suggestions as to what to do differently on the economy. They don't, so they just look like dorks.
Bush clearly believes that the tax cut combined with his hard-fought win on fast-track trade promotion authority are the best long-term economic strategies. He won both of those battles. He also seems to believe that there is no short-term strategy he can put in place that's going to make a big difference. He's right about that.
By the way, isn't it amazing that, after spending a year fighting for fast-track, Bush won it only a few weeks ago? And yet already his critics are saying he's ineffectual and isn't doing anything?
Whether one agrees with his policies--and many people do not--in terms of sheer action, he's done more in his first two years as President than Clinton did in his entire first four. At least as far as actually passing legislation. Whether the programs in question are successful or not is a different question, but in terms of visible action, we haven't had a President this busy in 20 years.
Astonishing how a two-three week lull in the news cycle, while he and Congress are on vacation for God's sake, is suddenly proof that the Presidency is slipping away and the man ain't doing nothing. Ye gawds. Pundits are a silly lot at times. Especially the ones desperately hoping for massive Democratic gains in November.
As for the war: we'll just see about that, won't we?
Vic Hanson said it best:
The destruction of confidence in capital markets, auditing firms, and corporate leadership as the price to enrich a few is not merely criminal but nearly traitorous — for soldiers in the field and ordinary taxpayers who have lost a third to half of their retirement plans and now must pay for a war with borrowed money.
Our president must connect such violations of trust with a betrayal of those Americans now on the field of battle, without access to astronomical earnings but entirely dependent on the ability of American capitalism to supply daily their food and shells.
We cannot ask kids from Bakersfield to defend the freedom of Ken Lay to profit illicitly — unless we make it clear that they are, in fact, his moral superiors, who fight in the grime and dirt to save other Americans for the price of a mogul's shower curtain. So the crime of Wall Street is in its timing as well as in its deceit.
...he needs to make a speech?
....A...speech?
Count me in as among the lost. Maybe I'm terminally clueless. What he's supposed to say that he hasn't already said in countless speechs I've already heard, I have no idea. Maybe all those corporate crooks going to jail in the headlines are invisible to everyone but me. I dunno. Count me as lost.
Perhaps, Dean, they should actually "listen" to his speeches and then they would know that he has made them.
Novel idea.
Listening....nah, it's too hard, let's just criticize him - it's okay to do that ya know because he's a Republican.