Dick Morris says that President Bush is becoming a Republican Jimmy Carter – which is about the worst insult one can give to a Commander in Chief. Morris argues:
Even when he seeks to develop an issue, his approach is half-hearted and ineffective. It seems that on any issue other than taxes and terrorism, he has attention-deficit disorder. He squandered his re-election “political capital” on a Social Security reform he spent six months pushing and a year and a half running away from…
And so, with no political immune system, he is subject to the infection du jour, be it the Dubai ports deal or the Iraq leaking scandal. In the meantime, his party is wallowing in a massive public perception of congressional corruption.
When Dick Morris is wrong, he’s wrong. When Dick Morris is right, he’s right. Sadly for the President, on this account, he does have it right. President Bush has basically allowed himself to become a human punching bag for his critics. A good politician knows how to get in front of the issues, and Bush has utterly failed to do that. Hopefully the upcoming White House shake-up will make the Administration less painfully reactive and more proactive in dealing with the constant political fire they’re taking from the relentlessly hostile media.
Morris suggests a few initiatives that might help the President, much in the Clintonian style of midnight basketball and other touchy-feely triangulations. Those may help, but what Bush needs to show now is real leadership. Bush rightly rejects the Clinton Administrations fixation with the polls, but they’ve also been completely asleep at the wheel when it comes to the political side of being President. They have the bully pulpit, but they’ve utterly failed to use it. Bush’s plummeting numbers are a direct result of the Administration’s lack of political pushback. Morris is right, on the war, on Social Security, on taxes, and on a whole host of other issues, the President has virtually surrendered to his critics. When the nation only gets one side of the story, it’s hardly surprising that the President’s poll numbers will start to sink.
A coherent energy policy would be a good start. The President should push forward with a crash program to develop safe nuclear technologies to augment and eventually replace coal. (Of course, that should be paired with economic development for key coal-producing states like West Virginia who might otherwise see such a program as putting them out of their jobs.) If the Chinese can work towards developing a network of advanced pebble-bed reactors to meet their energy needs, we can too – and we can do it better.
The President must push back on the economy. The perception of the US economy is bleak, while the reality of the economy is that unemployment is low and the jobs being created are well-paying jobs. The President has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on the economy by letting the narrative be written by his critics. Elections, especially local elections, are decided largely on pocketbook issues, and if Bush can’t sell a booming economy, how politically effective can he be?
The First Law of Politics is always be on the offensive – the Bush team needs to learn this or they could well end up spending the next two and half years as lame ducks. Given the challenges we face, from Iranian nukes to entitlement reform, the last thing we need is a malaise hanging over the White House. Bush must fight back, and he needs to fight back hard, or Morris’ warnings may yet come to pass.
“The President must push back on the economy. The perception of the US economy is bleak, while the reality of the economy is that unemployment is low and the jobs being created are well-paying jobs. The President has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on the economy by letting the narrative be written by his critics. Elections, especially local elections, are decided largely on pocketbook issues, and if Bush can’t sell a booming economy, how politically effective can he be?”
I beg you guys to run on the great economy. PLEASE! PLEASE! In an era of declining wages, worsening and/or vaporizing employee benefits, and rising costs of getting by (think spiraling energy prices, which are making the average American poorer today than they were three years ago when the economy was less statistically productive), all Republicans can see is spreadsheet growth statistics and a steadier uptick of McJobs than usual and then interpret it as a “booming economy”. Laugh off the anxieties of the 60% of Americans unhappy with the state of the economy at your own risk.
McJobs? Like application developers going for $85K (and not in Bangalore, India) but in good old middle America? DBAs going for $120K?
What is a McJob, anyway?
zzx, I think it’s safe to say that the few lucky souls scoring these boffo new jobs as application developers and DBA’s are not among the 60% of Americans unimpressed with the “booming economy” that Jay cites. Please keep up the cluelessness though. The more you infer that the going rate of pay for the new jobs runs between $85-120K, the more out-of-touch your party will seem to the “former steelworker/current Wal-Mart greeter” in the voting booth come November.
Yes, all the former paper mill employees in Wisconsin Rapids are going to go be application developers.
Mork,
Do yourself a favor and go buy a clue. You have no idea what ‘my party’ is. And while you are buying a clue for yourself, buy one for Erica, too. There is no such thing as a free lunch (or anything close) unless you happen to live in France where you get the two hour lunch and still get your job for life.
BTW Mork, what are McJobs? – you never answered the question, but that seems to be your strong suit. Bitch, whine, complain, and moan and demand the government train you, employ you, give you free medical care (which may be crap but free crap is better than no crap at all, right?), subsidized housing, etc.
What ever happened to “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you: Ask what you can do for your country.” Or is that too long ago in a galaxy far, far away?
Erica, what is the solution to the paper mill closing in Cedar Rapids?
Or is ‘your party’ fresh out of ideas and solutions?
I could be mistaken, but that is how your collective writing comes across.
zzx, Mork? I had an uncle call me that a few times when I was five….when the TV show “Mork and Mindy” wasn’t more than 25 years old. I would advise that any future attempts to ridicule someone’s name via popular culture reference should at least be from the past quarter century. Otherwise, the joke becomes not that person’s name, but how out-of-touch you are with the new millennium.
Sadly though, the “Mork” reference was probably the most substantive portion of your entire post. The fact that you need the term “McJobs” spelled out for you doesn’t bode well for your credibility in upstaging others. But for the slowest of the slow amongst us, “McJobs” refers to low-skill, low-pay, no-benefit, part-time jobs that all but monopolize the new job creation of the post-globalization “booming economy” you Republicans will hopefully decide to run on this fall.
I realize that your job allows you to piggyback on the oil companies’ exploitation of consumers at the pump, but unless you’re suggesting that all of the 100+ million members of the American labor force have the capacity to be on the oil companies’ payroll, your “Ask what you can do for your country” tagline fails the credibility test by a West Texas mile. But please….keep up the Marie Antoinette-esque snootiness towards the non-oil company segment of the American workforce who are falling behind. I’m sure the millions of Americans suffering declining wages and reduced benefits would love to hear an oil company hack lecture them about the need to take it on the chin and keep on asking “what they can do for their country”.
Mork,
Obviously I’m not Mr. Hip or just plain stupid for not knowing what McJobs are but you should now feel good about being able to educate one so out of touch or stupid.
You have a real gift for making claims such as
“I realize that your job allows you to piggyback on the oil companies’ exploitation of consumers at the pump” but for all you know I’m a janitor. You don’t really know what I do for a living.
Speaking of “…the oil companies’ exploitation of consumers at the pump…” how did you arrive at that conclusion? I certainly won’t hold my breath waiting for you to dazzle cyber space with your analysis of energy economics and energy politics because I frankly don’t believe you possess the correct information to do so.
“Ask not what your country can do for you..” must have hit too close to home since you are still whining. Could it be that the JFK quote flies in the face of your class warfare (“exploitation of the consumers” is the give-away) diatribe? Isn’t that Karl Marx us versus them, the have nots versus the haves a little out-of-touch for Mr.Hip? Or maybe that quote from 1960 is out-of-touch with today’s hip, happenin’ Marks and Morks. Personally I always thought JFK was a pretty credible guy but perhaps that kind of thinking is out-of-touch.
Is “I’m sure the millions of Americans suffering declining wages and reduced benefits…” just another claim or is that your way of asking your country for a bail-out like those rioting Mr. Hipsters in France?
zzx, you stated in a post last month that you work for an oil company in Texas. I was prepared to quote you from last month’s archive in a fun little gotcha moment. Unfortunately, Jay’s archives now only allow access to posts from the final four days of a given month so he ruined my fun. Whatever the case, is your new position that you are not employed by an oil company? That would either make a liar of you then or a liar of you now.
And I’ll save you from an education of oil economics and how your employer has decades worth of blood on its hands from manipulating markets, taking complete advantage of the desperation of the Third World, and suppressing investment in alternative energy that would make us less dependent on the fossil fuel enriching your employer. Ignorance is clearly bliss for you.
“Personally I always thought JFK was a pretty credible guy but perhaps that kind of thinking is out-of-touch.”
I’ll tell you what. Since JFK is the favorite Democrat of you and every other right-wing nutjob, I’ll make a deal with you. If wanna help re-create the JFK era where the top tax rate was 72% and the American labor force was 44% unionized, I’ll agree with you that JFK was more like Reagan than modern Democrats. Deal?
Look in the sidebar – there’s a dropdown for the monthly archives. You can also get them by putting the date in the address line as in http://www.jayreding.com/archives/2006/04 would get you all the entries from April of this year.
Hmmm… I should make that clearer in the next design…