The amnesia candidate

~ susie

Krugman continues to be an honest broker:

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.

Published by susie

6 thoughts on “The amnesia candidate”

  1. And Krugman does let Obama off the hook:

    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.

    (Above three grafs placed in blockquote tags — Oh, please, dear gods of blogs, may they now work!)

    Oh, and, Paul? Obama is acting as if he Bush got a third term….

  2. Hmmm — Susie, was there an editorial decision to remove blockquote tags from working when you redisgned the blog? Are you trying to discourage using quotes? Some other reason?

    If so, I won’t use quote. But I sure miss having the use of blockquote tags: It’s a visual indication that something is being quoted.

  3. The new template has a lot of small glitches and we’re working on them, one by one.

    In the meantime, you can always use actual quotation marks.

  4. The “know nothing public.” FDR wasn’t a liberal, he was a Capitalist. For all intents and purposes he saved the American Capitalists and their crumy Capitalist system. If the 99% have no jobs then they have no money. That’s called a depression. If they have no money they can’t buy stuff from the 1%. That’s called deflation. When that takes place the 1%, the Capitalists, go the way of the dodo bird. Here’s the difference between Obama and almost everyone else in both political parties. He’s prevented a war with Iran (fuck the Zionists) and he’s prevented an austerity program from being implemented (fuck the greedy Capitalists). Everything else he has or hasn’t done pales by comparison.

  5. T/U so much for the update — look forward to the missing tags. Glad to know it’s not an editorial decision. Thanks for keeping us posted.

  6. Imhotep — FDR actually understood capitalism, as opposed to the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs of today. They want to take us back to feudalism.

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