Posted on 08/26/2011 6:35:31 PM PDT by neverdem
“Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president?” Jonathan Alter writes in his column.
Alter tells us he’s not talking here about Obama as a tactician and communicator, and he’s not interested in hearing ad hominem attacks or about people’s generalized “disappointment.” (Neither am I.) He wants to know on a substantive basis why Obama should be judged to have failed so far.
In Alter’s words, “Your mission, Jim [or anyone else for that matter], should you decide to accept it, is to be specific and rational, not vague and visceral.”
Consider the mission accepted.
In one sense, the answer to the Alter challenge is obvious: Obama has failed by his own standards. It’s the Obama administration, not the RNC, that said if his stimulus package was passed unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. It’s Obama who joked there weren’t as many “shovel-ready” jobs as he thought.
It’s Obama who promised to cut the deficit in half. It’s Obama who said if we passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care cost curve would go down rather than up. It’s Obama who promised us recovery and prosperity, hope and change. What we’ve gotten instead is the opposite.
What makes Alter’s challenge particularly delicious is during the Bush years he spoke out about the importance of a “reality-based” presidency (as opposed to a “faith-based” one). “They [Republicans] could end up winning in November by distorting the argument,” Alter said in 2006. “But on credibility and the facts, they’ve lost.”
With Alter’s devotion to credibility and facts in mind, let’s take an empirical, reality-based look at economic life in America during the Age of Obama:
* Under Obama’s stewardship, we have lost 2.2 million jobs (and 900,000 full-time jobs in the last four months alone). He is now on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era.
* The unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent v. 7.8 percent the month Obama took office.
* July marked the 30th consecutive month in which the unemployment rate was above the 8 percent level, the highest since the Great Depression.
* Since May 2009 — roughly 14 weeks into the Obama administration — the unemployment rate has been above 10 percent during three months, above 9 percent during 22 months, and above 8 percent during two months.
* Chronic unemployment is worse than during the Great Depression.
* The youth employment rate is at the lowest level since records were first kept in 1948.
* The share of the eligible population holding a job has declined to the lowest level since the early 1980s.
* The housing crisis is worse than in the Great Depression. (Home values are worth roughly one-third less than they were five years ago.)
* The rate of economic growth under Obama has been only slightly higher than the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression. From the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011, we experienced five consecutive quarters of slowing growth. America’s GDP for the second quarter of this year was a sickly 1.0 percent; in the first quarter, it was 0.4 percent.
* Fiscal year 2011 will mark the third straight year with deficits in excess of $1 trillion. Prior to the Obama presidency, we had never experienced a deficit in excess of $1 trillion.
* During the Obama presidency, America has increased its debt by $4 trillion.
That is to say, Obama has achieved in two-and-a-half years what it took George W. Bush two full terms in office to achieve — and Obama, when he was running for president, slammed Bush’s record as being “unpatriotic.”
* America saw its credit rating downgraded for the first time in history under the Obama presidency.
* Consumer confidence has plunged to the lowest level since the Carter presidency.
* The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.
* A record number of Americans now rely on the federal government’s food stamps program. More than 44.5 million Americans received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, a 12 percent increase from one year ago.
There is more that can be said, but you get the point.
What makes this record doubly horrifying is rapid growth is the norm after particularly deep recessions — but under Obama, our recovery has been historically weak. President Obama (and Alter) can blame his predecessor, the Tea Party, the Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami, events in Europe, ATM machines and even athlete’s foot for his predicament. It doesn’t really matter, as even Obama conceded during the early months of his presidency, when he declared, “One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable.”
Indeed. Obama “owns” the economy, as both his senior aide David Plouffe and the chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have said.
“If you lose a common ground of facts on which to move forward as a society, nobody can agree on anything, and you can’t pull together to solve problems,” Alter told Keith Olbermann during the Bush administration.
I agree. And it is on the common ground of facts that we can declare–in a calm, specific, reasonable, rational and empirical manner–Obama to be an utter failure.
I agree. The duty of the fourth estate in a democracy is to be a watch dog of government. They have failed miserably. Everything else followed from that failure.....
I frequently use it. This Great Recession, rooted in the subprime loan disater of bad debt, is almost a carbon copy of the Great Depression which had bad debt at its root too.
same reason that Nancy Pelosi is a commander of an aircraft carrier
same reason the Barney Franks isn't a Navy SEAL..
cause they don't have a clue as to what the job is about and how to even fake it.
Incompetence and resume fraud also come to mind. If TOFUS was in the private sector, he'd have been to human resources to collect his stuff and escorted off the property. He's going to be a national laughing stock and his freak fest supporters should just be ignored as the clown posse they are.
The lawyers finally figured out that the press, at high levels, could be bought. It irritates me to no end when I hear people, even on this site, state we elected our politicians and it’s our fault. The media decides, for the most part, who is electable and who isn’t. The Tea Party is our last, best hope. Hang the lawyers and the msm, as far as I’m concerned. Bill Shakespeare only got it half right, it would seem.
BINGO !!!
He truly believes America is “the Great Satan” .. that’s what his father taught him.
...hence the divot on jobs...
The Old ‘Not Enough’ Excuse (True believers in government spending can never be proved wrong) Victor Davis Hanson
London vs. Olympic Shooting - The city’s mayor decides that children shouldn’t watch the sport.
Perry and Global Warming - Do warmists questioning Gov.Perry really believe in science and math? MUST READ
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
R E S P E C T!
Obongo Bozo has no respect for America, American culture, American traditions or the American people!
He has disrespected everything American since long before he began his run for the Presidency.
He is unfit to be a garbage collector, much less President!
Is it 2012 yet?
““They [Republicans] could end up winning in November by distorting the argument,” Alter said in 2006. “But on credibility and the facts, they’ve lost.”
He knows Bamer is going to get creamed. After the landslide tossing this dweeb out this will be the spin.
Thanks for the ping!
Thanks neverdem.
His actual talent is as a dissembler, a circulator of roorbacks formulated by others, and as a dispenser of desinformatsiya.
He's a model Democratic journalist, in other words.
Your statement is weak, in that you appear to believe that their intention was one thing, but their result another. Instead, they may have actually succeeded admirably -- if you can get your mind around that.
It’s George Bush’s fault.
/s/
thanks neverdem, additional:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2769258/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2769306/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2769570/posts
The way to defeat liberals is to NEVER ACCEPT THEIR PREMISE. Once you start arguing on their terms, you’ve lost.
That needs to be repeated and learned over and over.
“Next question?”
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The next question and the one I would like to ask of Alter is how could he and so many others be so insulated from reality and so WILLFULLY IGNORANT, just plain stupid, idiotic or whatever you want to call it as to think that such a creature as Barrack Hussein Obama would be anything other than a total disaster. These same pathetically deluded types seem to think they can watch MSNBC, a propaganda outlet so absurd as to make Al Sharpton a regular and get the truth whereas Fox News dispenses one hundred percent lies.
They either think “He’s Black, he’s a Democrat, what more do we need to know?”, or they agree with him that this country must be “fundamentally transformed” (destroyed).
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