[Vision2020] The Amnesia Candidate

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>


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April 22, 2012
The Amnesia Candidate By PAUL
KRUGMAN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

Just how stupid does Mitt
Romney<http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/candidates/mitt-romney?inline=nyt-per>think
we are? If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning,
that’s a question you have probably asked many times.

But the question was raised with particular force last week, when Mr.
Romney tried to make a closed drywall factory in Ohio a symbol of the Obama
administration’s economic failure. It was a symbol, all right — but not in
the way he intended.

First of all, many reporters quickly noted a point that Mr. Romney somehow
failed to mention: George W.
Bush<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/george_w_bush/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
not Barack Obama<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
was president when the factory in question was closed. Does the Romney
campaign expect Americans to blame President
Obama<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per>for
his predecessor’s policy failure?

Yes, it does. Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr. Obama.
Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of 2009,
that is, before any of the new administration’s policies had time to take
effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney
campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don’t remember that
Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall.

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<http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/the-drywall-chronicles/>has
been disappointing — but it has been unambiguously better than Mr.
Bush’s over the comparable period of his administration.

This is especially true if you focus on private-sector jobs. Overall
employment in the Obama years has been held back by mass layoffs of
schoolteachers and other state and local government employees. But
private-sector employment has recovered almost all the ground lost in the
administration’s early months. That compares favorably with the Bush era:
as of March 2004, private employment was still 2.4 million below its level
when Mr. Bush took office.

Oh, and where have those mass layoffs of schoolteachers been taking place?
Largely in states controlled by the G.O.P.: 70 percent of public job losses
have been either in Texas or in states where Republicans recently took
control.

Which brings me to another aspect of the amnesia campaign: Mr. Romney wants
you to attribute all of the shortfalls in economic policy since 2009 (and
some that happened in 2008) to the man in the White House, and forget both
the role of Republican-controlled state governments and the fact that Mr.
Obama has faced scorched-earth political opposition since his first day in
office. Basically, the G.O.P. has blocked the administration’s efforts to
the maximum extent possible, then turned around and blamed the
administration for not doing enough.

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.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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