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The economy and the campaigns
September 24, 2008
When I read this piece of a few days ago by Michael Barone, arguing that “the old rule that economic distress moves voters toward Democrats doesn’t seem to be operating,” I found it somewhat persuasive. He argued that blame for the crisis cannot easily be pinned on Republicans alone, and that voters may fear that taxes will rise faster under Obama than they would under McCain (regardless of the fact that Obama is promising more tax relief for most Americans than McCain), which in turn would be more bad news for the economy. But a new poll this morning seems to say otherwise.
Turmoil in the financial industry and growing pessimism about the economy have altered the shape of the presidential race, giving Democratic nominee Barack Obama the first clear lead of the general-election campaign over Republican John McCain, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News national poll.
Just 9 percent of those surveyed rated the economy as good or excellent, the first time that number has been in single digits since the days just before the 1992 election. Just 14 percent said the country is heading in the right direction, equaling the record low on that question in polls dating back to 1973.
More voters trust Obama to deal with the economy, and he currently has a big edge as the candidate who is more in tune with the economic problems Americans now face. He also has a double-digit advantage on handling the current problems on Wall Street, and as a result, there has been a rise in his overall support. The poll found that, among likely voters, Obama now leads McCain by 52 percent to 43 percent. Two weeks ago, in the days immediately following the Republican National Convention, the race was essentially even, with McCain at 49 percent and Obama at 47 percent.
It’s just one poll, but still. I do think Obama is handling the crisis much better than McCain–not because he is suggesting better remedies (he continues to say little), but because his instinct to reflect before opening his mouth and his impeccable taste in advisers are both working to his advantage.
These factors I think are much more important than the supposed popularity of standard Democratic positions on economic management. Unlike McCain, Obama offers no instant bold responses, needing to be qualified or withdrawn or forgotten soon after. As ever, he looks calm, methodical and unruffled–and has his picture taken in conference with Paul Volcker, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers, who command wide respect. His response may be thin, so far, on content, but it is an altogether more reassuring posture than his rival’s tendency to hasty and exaggerated certainty.
This difference of intellectual temperament has often been seen as one of Obama’s biggest drawbacks, including by many of his own supporters. Sometimes his altitude over the issues, and his reluctance to commit himself to simple straightforward positions, have indeed hurt him. But the complexities of the crisis are putting those traits in a much better light.
Clive,
I spoke with the UPS delivery man this morning. He did not have much to say about the bailout either. I was equally impressed by his “intellectual temprament”, though he is not running for President.
Perhaps he needs his picture taken in conference with some of the nitwits that brought us Fannie Mae and Freddie mac to build up his intellectual heft.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | September 24th, 2008 at 8:07 pm | Report this commentGeorge W Bush has said even less than Obama. He has not intervened at all and has left it to the expert technocrats and to Congress to thrash it out. So why change horses? In fact, who needs a president? It is not too late to cancel this election.
Posted by: RCS | September 24th, 2008 at 8:42 pm | Report this commentMcCain putting the campaign on hold and going to Washington? When I heard the news I thought it must have been for health reasons.
Posted by: J.J. | September 24th, 2008 at 9:00 pm | Report this commentIt has already become manifestly obvious that Obama’s presidency will signify the accelerated fall of America’s international standing — he simply cannot reach decisions. The dithering will last for four years, precious years during which America, like the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era, will recede by virtue of not advancing.
Posted by: RCS | September 24th, 2008 at 9:09 pm | Report this commentSenator McCain’s request to postpone the “debate” has nothing to do with deliberations regarding the proposal for the slush fund by the Bush Administration. This is another rash, ill-considered decision by Senator McCain with no reasonable basis whatsoever unless he somehow thinks that this makes him look responsible.
It does not, just more foolish and arrogant towards all those who have spent who knows how long and with what effort to make preparations for the “debate”.
The presence of Senators McCain and Obama in the Senate will have no impact whatsoever on the deliberations. Each could send a representative in any case to be on site. There also happen to be excellent communications available through the Internet for remote attendance. Not that Senator McCain has any clue about that.
Who knows what the motivation is, but McCain’s statement is as bizarre as any of his other statements and actions since his becoming the presumed then actual nominee.
JBP: Good management of anything is often correlated with postponing decisions as long as possible. Most “problems” take care of themselves without someone doing something to look “decisive”.
Fortunately in this situation there is least one Republican, Senator Shelby, who seems to be willing to act as a classic conservative in strongly condemning this ludicrous request from the Bush Administration. The arrogance of the request in all ways is truly astonishing.
There are clear alternatives to foisting costs on the tax-payer to resolve the “crisis”.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | September 24th, 2008 at 9:36 pm | Report this comment“It has already become manifestly obvious that Obama’s presidency will signify the accelerated fall of America’s international standing — he simply cannot reach decisions.”
No evidence for this statement whatsoever.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | September 24th, 2008 at 9:52 pm | Report this commentWM,
If it is considered “rash” to delay a vaporous set of political windage, I will take a dose of chicken pox to infect myself with the same.
It is certainly possible that a lack of action can lead to good results. It is also possible that it can be a sign of poor leadership. Sen. Shelby seems to be taking a stand, as opposed to Sen. Obama, and in opposition to Paulson/Bush. Fair enough, but shouldn’t our Presidential candidates be capable of making some decisions sometime?
Sen. Obama’s sandbagging on the 2nd amendment (for it in the country, against it in the city, but votes against the constitution in the capital) is a classic example of mealy minded politics trumping any decisive leadership. If he is actually a leader, he should lead rather than hedge.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | September 25th, 2008 at 2:58 am | Report this commentWendell Murray you are right. That is no way to submit a scientific paper.
Posted by: RCS | September 25th, 2008 at 2:59 am | Report this comment“It has already become manifestly obvious that Obama’s presidency will signify the accelerated fall of America’s international standing — he simply cannot reach decisions.”
Yeah, because having ‘The Decider’ in charge has been working out so well for everyone…
…if McCain has been saying more - does anyone agree with what he has been saying?
He seems increasingly to be winging it and getting caught out.
Posted by: Dave | September 25th, 2008 at 9:11 am | Report this commentWell said, Clive. Perhaps this is a good time to have a president who actually believes in thinking, and who surrounds himself with people who know what they are talking about.
But I have to be fair to John McCain. He also has a record of choosing economic advisers who know their field well - Phil Gramm, the Senator from Enron, who has a plan to help America overcome its whining crisis, for example.
RCS’s joke about canceling the election actually took a more serious turn four years ago, when the Republicans (obviously worried that Kerry might win) actually started floating a suggestion that the election might have to be “postponed” for “national security” reasons because of “recent” (though actually old) “intelligence” that some people who might have looked a little bit like Middle Easterners had been seen taking photos of a couple of buildings in New York’s financial district and in Newark NJ’s insurance district.
By the way, I hear that the Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres ads are being cranked up again. All that we are missing now is another Bin Laden tape with an “authoritative” translation explaining that he supports Obama’s economic proposals (not to mention religious affiliation).
But don’t rule this out. After all, October hasn’t even begun yet.
Posted by: algasema | September 25th, 2008 at 9:34 am | Report this commentDon’t worry Roger, Sen. Obama “barely” knows Bill Ayers for only 20 some years now.
There is no way to connect the failed education policies of Bill Ayers with the sure-to-fail education policies of Sen. Obama, as the media has consistently ignored the $100 Million project in radicalizing the Chicago Education system that Obama and Ayers managed. (The project didn’t work by the way, the system is awful, but not really radical).
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | September 25th, 2008 at 12:12 pm | Report this comment“I do think Obama is handling the crisis much better than McCain–not because he is suggesting better remedies, but because his instinct to reflect before opening his mouth and his impeccable taste in advisers…”
Well, intelligence does count.
America has played the Emperor’s New Clothes for eight years pretending the incompetent boob in the White House is someone to take seriously.
The worst president in American history is now prepared to bow out, leaving a genuinely toxic legacy, both at home and abroad.
I cannot imagine even Americans now voting for The Tired Old Man and his sidekick, the cheerleader with over-active glands.
Posted by: JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO | September 25th, 2008 at 12:40 pm | Report this commentWendell Murray,
Your comments on McCain’s self-serving request is absolutely accurate.
I do believe there is another element too.
McCain is getting nervous about debating Obama. He just has to know he is going to look and sound bad.
This cheap trick, while seeming in his own mind, to put him in a self-sacrificing light, is intended both to delay the debate and to put Obama, who has spent a couple of days preparing for the debate intensively, off-balance.
But Obama answered him almost perfectly.
If indeed McCain does not show up for the debate, he’ll look ridiculous and the coward he truly is, for despite his superficial reputation as “hero” the facts of his career and war service smell of the most genuine cowardice.
His selection of running mate - a low-intelligence, high-hormone cheerleader with delusional beliefs - shows how much he really cares about anything beyond himself.
She just bought him the loyalty of the party’s Religious Right, and undoubtedly it was vaguely hoped she would attract some Hillary disaffected, a hope which now itself seems delusional since every time she opens her mouth she frightens people.
He just wanted to cap his career with being president, and couldn’t care much about anything else.
It’s in many ways another case of Bush trying to compete with a superior and somewhat overbearing father.
McCain is actually a rather pathetic figure.
Posted by: JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO | September 25th, 2008 at 1:15 pm | Report this commentThe Vice President is suppose to fill-in when the President is unable to fulfill his duties - let Palin/Biden debate Friday night and Obama/McCain can take their slot next week. After all, the VP is suppose to be always ready to step-up and fill-in for the President.
Posted by: James McCarthy | September 25th, 2008 at 3:00 pm | Report this commentJC,
Sen. McCain as coward is a just a juvenile statement. Debating a gasbag such as Sen. Obama is incomparable to being a Vietnam POW.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | September 25th, 2008 at 3:02 pm | Report this commentAs the ordinary American wallows deep in troubled times, troubles indeed that have been lingering and hovering above us for a fair time like that nimbus cloud threatening all the time.
It’s a shame and shame on you all; whether you have any stake in these elections or not; for all the B.S that is being spewed here. Anyone who really cares for America would at least use their IQ however minutiae.
With everyone having a right to spew idle literal verbosity on this blog. I would like to thank you for being what you are. And what else is left for the naked eye not to see. You can be as partisan as hell, but please save the B.S to yourself. RCS, JBP etal… You do not have to like Obama; you have no obligation to think of any positive in this man. But please any blind-eyed moron would think through John McCain. Enough is enough! Of you all; Obama never started this mess we are in right now. If you are to pick the bones clean here, failure in the economy stems from a wide range of issues. Which have been existent for a very fair time?
Were there leaders by then? I guess so. A president George W Bush, and guess what he had many other leaders around him including John McCain. What kind of policy was pursued and how was it effected. I guess the so called smart pants bloggers just stubbornly ignore this or even dare not scratch on this surface.
Enough is enough if you do not like Obama that’s okay, but please do not give me this B.S about the other sugar-coated old pickle.
Posted by: Steven | September 25th, 2008 at 3:20 pm | Report this commentCall whatever names you will, McCain is a coward, the truest form of coward.
He likes to burst out with bold-sounding words every once in a while, as though he is challenging the status quo. Then, every single time, he backs off and apologizes shortly afterward. It is his pattern, over and over, for his entire political career.
When Bush attacked him unmercifully in 2000, with the lowest, garbage propaganda I can recall in a primary, McCain still crawled back to him and ended up in Bush’s arms, literally, for there is a disgusting photo on the Internet.
Not only that, during the actual campaign, McCain worked to promote Bush, coming close to crawling for votes - a disgusting display when he well understood Bush’s low intelligence and dishonest nature.
When McCain attacked the Religious Right in 2000 for their meddling in politics, one of the few very true things he has ever done, he backed off almost immediately afterward.
Then he crawled quietly around apologizing to moral cretins like Falwell and Robertson.
Of course, there was McCain’s serious involvement with the Savings and Loan Disaster, something he never paid any penalty for and for which he went around, again, apologizing fulsomely. This was not some simple little scam but a massive case of corporate fraud, and McCain had his part in it.
McCain’s efforts at campaign-finance reform, years ago, went nowhere. He compromised in an ineffective legislation that has changed nothing of substance.
McCain, who supposedly was tortured in Vietnam, has defended recently forms of torture in the Senate. There really has to be a special place in hell for someone like that.
McCain was shot down over North Vietnam while bombing civilians in the Hanoi area. He is lucky not to have been torn to pieces. That is not the work of war heroes, but cowards who don’t mind killing.
During his imprisonment, a number of those imprisoned with him said he talked a lot to the North Vietnamese. They had a nick-name for him, calling him “songbird.” They have already spoken publicly to this.
McCain is given to insane, psychopathic jokes like the one in front of reporters some while back making fun of bombing Iran.
This aspect of him very much resembles Bush, who once made fun to reporters of the woman who was executed in Texas when he was governor and her pathetic pleas for mercy. The psychopath actually made fun of her tone of voice and words with a sickening effort at imitation.
Posted by: JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO | September 25th, 2008 at 4:12 pm | Report this commentSteven,
You’re right, Obama did not start the housing crisis, rather he perpetuated the lack of controls over Fannie and Freddie in exchange for $105,000 over the last 3 years.
McCain stood up for regulating the GSE’s and should be commended for that. Barney Frank, Bill Daley, Rahm Emmanuel have been battling Pres. Bush attempts to get some control over the GSE’s for years…Bush and the taxpayers lost, the politicians won.
McCain is right (so was Phil Gramm), the economy is still solid. Inflation is low, productivity is up, unemployment is middling, and home ownership is still at record high levels.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | September 25th, 2008 at 4:18 pm | Report this commentHello, all.
Mr. Obama looks more and more like a tyke throwing his rattle in the crib.
Had Mr. McCain not “pushed the envelope” in fighter pilots jargon, the Democrats would have “pork barreled” and thrown the tent flaps to the wind.. with a grand scenic view of “the bridge to no-where” as poster photo!
The really sick truth is that NO one really wins with this intervention and smoke along with all the mirror tricks get a cinematic remake.
At least some of us “voters” see the real vapidity of thought Mr. Obama tries to ply as intellectual acuity!
Posted by: matthew victor | September 25th, 2008 at 5:55 pm | Report this commentThank you.
m.victor
John Powers, if the economy is so great, why does McCain want to cancel Friday’s debate with BHO? If McCain is too busy saving the country in Washington, can’t he at least send in a couple of surrogates instead - Sarah Palin to handle the foreign policy part of the debate and Phil Gramm to deal with any economic questions?
Posted by: algasema | September 25th, 2008 at 7:38 pm | Report this commentRoger,
He is running an election campaign. Being correct gets you nowhere with the voters.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | September 25th, 2008 at 8:04 pm | Report this commentJBP “Being correct gets you nowhere with the voters”. hmmm goes along way ………pants on fire ……….a nose as a telephone wire….
Posted by: Steven | September 25th, 2008 at 8:16 pm | Report this comment“Being correct gets you nowhere with the voters” and I suppose peddling lies and failure to address real issues in the last eight years as well gets you nowhere. Right John?
Posted by: Steven | September 25th, 2008 at 8:21 pm | Report this commentWhom do you mean when you talk about “being correct” in the McCain camp. John? Of course, I will concede that McCain himself has sometime been correct, because he has had so many changing positions on so many issues that, like a broken clock, he can’t be wrong 100% of the time.
As for Gramm, of course he is correct. We are all whining too much. And Sarah Barracuda is always correct - at least in the view of people who think that the world is 5,000 years old and that this is just about long enough for this particular planet, so we can end it all by going to war with Russia.
Posted by: algasema | September 25th, 2008 at 8:59 pm | Report this commentBush asked voters to take some foul tasting medicine in the war on terror. It got us 7 years without a terrorist attack, but made him seriously unpopular with the media, and then the public.
Phil Gramm was correct. It got him fired. Voters want to hear that the FBI is arresting the baddies that caused the housing crisis, regardless of the facts of the matter.
McCain is posturing by delaying debate, like he postured by delaying the convention due to the hurricane. It doesn’t do much good, but voters seem to like it.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | September 25th, 2008 at 10:35 pm | Report this commentBravo, John Chuckman. John McCain’s entire political career consists of taking courageous political positions and then backing down. The only example you left out was immigration, where he was initially, along with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy, in the forefront of the fight for realistic, humane and fair relief for the millions of illegal immigrants in this country trying to escape poverty and/or persecution at home and fulfill the traditional American immigrant dream of seeking a better life in this country.
Faced with a withering backlash that led to the defeat of his bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill last year, McCain completely turned tail, caved into the racist, anti-immigrant right wing of his party and renounced all of his former pro-immigrant positions.
The only hope that immigrant rights advocates have from McCain is that if he is elected, he might turn again and double cross his right wing supporters, who have now come on board because of Sarah Barracuda. But one has to suspect that even the right wing true believers still don’t completely trust their new hero, John McCain.
Why should they? Why should anyone?
Posted by: algasema | September 25th, 2008 at 11:09 pm | Report this commentWhoa….that diatribe:
“Call whatever names you like….”
“Bravo, John Chuckman..”
Are way out there.
Let us get back to the thread here.
Certainly we are NOT being told the REAL reason a confidence restoration gesture of 700b USD is needed with URGENCY.
We may assume there are (as we’ve long read here in FT) peak volumes of “sub-prime” ARM resets due in October of this year; most of which we may well suspect will default. But, there must be vastly more problems hidden in the wood pile.
Today we read (in FT) of massive capital project freeze ups, China being less interested in buying US debt, (several days ago in FT and IBD) an unnamed source stating “a triple A rating is not God given for the US”.
Could it simply be a scheme to force balance of trade and foreign bank transactions (capital in-flow) to US Treasury through heavily biased exchange conditions?
Still….what is THE emergent need, especially in light of the attempt (Cheney?) to install a grand Monarch in the personage of Mr. Paulson?
These things alone convince me there is absolutely ZERO chance a no term political creation of whim (no matter the slick packaging and bravura of stadium tricks) could ever understand the forces and skeletal remains the next President will have to control.
By the way, let us not forget that Mr. Obama has long been the “darling” of the hedge fund crowd who dumped Clinton as soon as the gender moniker went to Ms.
Thankfully we have a few (damn few) people in both houses and on both aisle sides unwilling to be blindly led.
Posted by: matthew victor | September 26th, 2008 at 6:53 am | Report this commentmatthew
Obama should remember Woody Allen’s remark that “80 percent of life is showing up” and he should be at the venue tonight for the TV debate with McCain as arranged.
If the latter does not turn up, Obama will have the show all to himself and for sure he’ll have plenty to talk about and to say to “THE AMERICAN PEOPLE”.
Posted by: J.J. | September 26th, 2008 at 7:53 am | Report this comment