CNN: Blame game could 'boomerang' on Obama, strategist says
35 replies, posted
[b]CNN[/b]
[release]When signs of a severe economic downfall emerged more than two years ago, then-candidate Barack Obama was quick to point a finger at the man he hoped to replace.
Seventeen months into his administration, the message is often the same, and Republicans say it's time for him to drop the Bush bashing and take ownership of the problem.
"Nothing makes a president look weaker than pointing the finger at past administrations," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. "By blaming somebody, it looks like you are playing politics and people just want jobs. They don't care about whose fault it is. Playing the blame game only boomerangs on yourself."
Obama repeated that message this week when talking about the still-sputtering economy, twice reminding those at a town-hall meeting in Wisconsin that he "inherited" the economic mess.
It's a familiar message from his days on the campaign trail when criticisms of President Bush were as common as policy proposals.
"History will not judge President Bush kindly for his failure to act in a way that could have prevented or alleviated this economic crisis," Obama said in March 2008 shortly after Bear Sterns' collapse, slamming Bush for failing to instill confidence in the American people.
Recent surveys suggest Obama isn't the only one holding the Bush administration and Republicans culpable.
Though the Democrats controlled Congress in the last two years of the Bush administration and have controlled both the White House and Congress for a year and a half -- 41 percent of people surveyed in a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll said Republicans are responsible for the current economic problems. Twenty-eight percent blamed Democrats, and 26 percent said both parties share responsibility.
According to a Washington Post/ABC poll conducted in April, 59 percent blamed Bush for the economy, compared with 25 percent who said Obama is at fault.
Job numbers released Friday got mixed reviews. The Labor Department reported the U.S. economy lost jobs for the first time this year, as modest hiring by businesses only partly offset the end of temporary Census Bureau jobs.
The unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent in May. Economists had forecast it would climb to 9.8 percent, but the improvement was due mostly to discouraged job seekers not bothering to look for work and no longer being counted in the labor force.
Obama on Friday vowed to do everything in his power to create jobs, but the problem, according to economist Barry Bosworth, is there's not much more he can do.
"What can he do on the jobs other than sit around and wring his hands in agony?" he asked. "What could he do? That's the fundamental problem that we now face because it's a global problem."
Coming out of the Group of 20 conference, it was clear Obama's plans to continue stimulus spending weren't in step with other nations'.
"The whole world is going to turn toward fiscal restraint now, and he can either join it or he'll be an outlier," said Bosworth, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former adviser to President Carter.
After the numbers came out, Obama said the country is headed in the right direction but added, "The recession dug us a hole of about 8 million jobs deep."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, echoed the positive indicators, noting that they followed "nearly a decade of failed Republican policies."
But Bosworth said it's not fair to put all of the blame on the past administration.
"They didn't cause that crisis. Lots of people contributed to it. I really do not think that you can blame administrative authorities for what happened. You can blame a lot of economists because we didn't see it coming in the exact way it did, but there were many dimensions," he said, pointing out that in retrospect it's easy to recognize there was an unbalanced economy.
Bosworth said Obama now needs to move away from blaming Bush because the worst of what happened wasn't Bush's fault.
"I don't see that we are looking at a crisis that was caused by the Bush administration, and I don't think we are looking at a crisis where the Obama administration has a fundamentally different response to the crisis," Bosworth added, noting that the Troubled Assets Relief Program was passed under the Bush administration.
Economic recovery has been slow, but there are signs of improvement. The stock market, while wobbly, has risen since the lows reached shortly after Obama took office, and the economy is growing again.
Democratic strategist Julian Epstein said Obama needs to make the argument that the economy is on the climb and the stimulus has worked.
"The message has got to be optimistic and positive. It can't simply be, 'I inherited a mess and I'm doing the best I can.' It's got to be, 'I inherited a mess, but we've turned the corner and things are getting a lot better,' " he said.
The White House needs to go on a confidence campaign and perhaps take a page from President Reagan's playbook, Epstein said.
"He really needs to spell out how we are coming back and it's morning in America again," he said.[/release]
[url]http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/02/obama.economy/index.html?hpt=Sbin[/url]
If the rest of the world is turning towards fiscal restraint, did that mean their stimulus worked, or not?
Hold on. What the fuck is:
[quote]The unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent in May. Economists had forecast it would climb to 9.8 percent, but the improvement was due mostly to discouraged job seekers not bothering to look for work and no longer being counted in the labor force.[/quote]
Supposed to mean?
[editline]08:40PM[/editline]
I mean, if people weren't looking for jobs, wouldn't that mean that the unemployment rate would climb, not fall?
[QUOTE=yawmwen;23086915]Hold on. What the fuck is:
Supposed to mean?
[editline]08:40PM[/editline]
I mean, if people weren't looking for jobs, wouldn't that mean that the unemployment rate would climb, not fall?[/QUOTE]
That doesn't make sense to me, either.
The unemployment rate doesn't count people who are not looking for jobs, so it's saying that people who were listed as looking for jobs have given up, and are no longer considered.
[QUOTE=Elecbullet;23087006]The unemployment rate doesn't count people who are not looking for jobs, so it's saying that people who were listed as looking for jobs have given up, and are no longer considered.[/QUOTE]
Source? I'm pretty sure it just counts who has a job or not.
In the UK I believe it only counts people who're on job seekers allowance and to get this you have to prove you're looking for a job by going to interviews etc. So if you are not looking for a job you do not get this allowance and they have no real way of counting you. I assume America has a similar thing?
[QUOTE=yawmwen;23086915]Hold on. What the fuck is:
Supposed to mean?
[editline]08:40PM[/editline]
I mean, if people weren't looking for jobs, wouldn't that mean that the unemployment rate would climb, not fall?[/QUOTE]
Maybe they are being employed by the unemployment agencies?
It's all Obama's fault!
[QUOTE=yawmwen;23087028]Source? I'm pretty sure it just counts who has a job or not.[/QUOTE]
That's how they calculate it. A housewife is not unemployed.
[QUOTE=UserDirk580;23087415]That's how they calculate it. A housewife is not unemployed.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the source.
Anyways, [url]http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/07/june-unemployment-rate-declines-to-95/59101/[/url]
Fox says it's because of discouraged workers, this says that we don't know.
Oh look, Glaber is posting another right-wing piece of opinion fluff.
Can you explain how this is right wing or an opinion piece? After all, this came from CNN, not FOX so it should be more centered and it came from the politics section.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;23087755]Oh look, Glaber is posting another right-wing piece of opinion fluff.[/QUOTE]
So CNN is right wing now?
[QUOTE=Uberman77883;23089764]So CNN is right wing now?[/QUOTE]
CNN is centre, meaning they have opinion fluff from both sides.
But it's kind of negated when one article is posted standalone.
And yeah, this IS opinion fluff. It's the opinion of one man. Not news.
Unemployment only considers people who are looking for jobs and can't find them. If you've been unemployed for 2 years and finally give up looking for work, you're no longer part of unemployment; it's called the discouraged worker effect. Because of it, the unemployment rate is often deceivingly lower than it should be.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;23090722]CNN is centre, meaning they have opinion fluff from both sides.
But it's kind of negated when one article is posted standalone.
And yeah, this IS opinion fluff. It's the opinion of one man. Not news.[/QUOTE]
Well I mean, what has Obama been doing to create jobs? I haven't seen anything so it makes sense that unemployment would be up.
[editline]12:22AM[/editline]
[QUOTE=Bassplaya7;23090951]Unemployment only considers people who are looking for jobs and can't find them. If you've been unemployed for 2 years and finally give up looking for work, you're no longer part of unemployment; it's called the discouraged worker effect. Because of it, the unemployment rate is often deceivingly lower than it should be.[/QUOTE]
Maybe you could get a job as a bass player?
[QUOTE=Meller Yeller;23091291]Well I mean, what has Obama been doing to create jobs?[/QUOTE]
The census
All those jobs are only temporary though.
[QUOTE=Uberman77883;23091518]All those jobs are only temporary though.[/QUOTE]
temp jobs > no jobs.
holy fuck glaber posted a news article not from fox
the apocalypse is nigh!!
[QUOTE=wonkadonk;23092173]holy fuck glaber posted a news article not from fox
the apocalypse is nigh!![/QUOTE]
he does post CNN occasionally
but this isn't really a news article. it's fluff.
[QUOTE=wonkadonk;23092173]holy fuck glaber posted a news article not from fox
the apocalypse is nigh!![/QUOTE]
Only when he posts a left-wing article is the apocalypse nigh.
good point
i wish fluff articles like this were still against the rules
[QUOTE=wonkadonk;23092244]good point
i wish fluff articles like this were still against the rules[/QUOTE]
From the rules thread:
[quote][b]Sources[/b]
There should be a link to a source somewhere in your OP. If you're posting without a source, it should be a scanned image of a magazine.
The Onion isn't a source. Neither are Japanese Porn Websites. Editorials, blogs, and other opinion pieces are not news (certain blogs, like Kotaku, Huffington Post, & the Drudge Report are okay).[/quote]
No shit
Oh well, what goes around comes around
seems obvious
[QUOTE=Zeke129;23091415]The census[/QUOTE]
Nobody is going to be able to live off that since it's low paying and temporary so it won't help unemployment.
Even if this is right-wing fluff, at least it isn't completely untrue.
[QUOTE=Meller Yeller;23092821]Nobody is going to be able to live off that since it's low paying and temporary so it won't help unemployment.
Even if this is right-wing fluff, at least it isn't completely untrue.[/QUOTE]
The economic stimulus has created an estimated 682,370 jobs.
[url]http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx[/url]
[editline]09:16PM[/editline]
The article is fluff for the fact they keep referencing Obama blaming Bush for the country he inherited. The Republicans and even Bush blamed Clinton for all the economic downturns and otherwise since Bush took office up until he left.
That doesn't do shit to our 10% unemployment rate.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.