48% Blame Obama for Bad Economy,
47% Blame Bush

Listen carefully and try to understand. Obama didn’t wreck the economy. He hasn’t had enough time to do that yet. No, Bush didn’t wreck it either. Both may have done things their opposition hasn’t liked, or the efficacy of which is in dispute, but as a general rule, Presidents don’t ruin the economy, the economy ruins them. If you don’t realize that yet, you need to spend the rest of your summer doing some remedial brushing-up before you utter another word.

Start with the following.

“The President's Effect on the Economy: Less Than You'd Think”

Lest some be tempted to dismiss the above as the biased rant of some wild-eyed leftist activist, be advised it was written by a stock analyst, who was probably a Republican, and was published on a stock research website, Seeking Alpha, in March 2007. The guy wasn’t talking about Obama.

Next, do the following exercise. Explain where you would have said the economy would be this year if someone had asked you for your prediction back in March 2009. Some of you probably don't understand how you're supposed to answer the question. (But you’re certain you know whose fault it is, right?)

In any event, here’s what real GDP has done over the last nine qtrs, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Where, in your most wildly optimistic dreams, would you have thought GDP might get to by 2010 q2?

Here's a little more information, to help you shape your answer.

Okay, got your number? Second quarter 2010 real GDP was reported up 2.4% (year-to-date about 3%). Is that what you would have said back then? .Here’s what the Congressional Budget Office thought would happen with GDP in their budget and economic outlook report of March 2009. How did your sense of future economic conditions back then compare with theirs?

Whoa, out on a limb, eh? All the way out to 2019. But if you know the numbers, then you know they were pretty close for the period 2008-2010. Gee, did they know the financial bailout would ruin us? Or that the stimulus package would inexplicably cost jobs? Or the auto bailout would be a boondoggle? How did their forecasts jibe with yours? Were yours better? The future? Well, who knows? Want to make a little side bet you can outguess them going forward?

The relative merits of direct spending versus tax cuts to stimulate the economy? By all means, that's a debate that earnest people need to have. Eventually the deficit must be dealt with. But how? And when? There is neither only nor always just one right answer. Multitudinous other honest policy differences need to be argued out as well. Both among the electorate and their elected representatives as well as by those who hope to replace the latter. But ruled by the head, not by the intestine.

Economists really do have a pretty good sense of where we're going and how we're doing. How good, and how not so good. And even they don't all agree. But where do most people get off even having an opinion about who personally tanked the economy? How many of these people even signed up for economics, much less hung around and passed the course? Lewis Black said he failed economics, and he’s smarter than you are. And a whole lot funnier in the bargain.


How is it that political discourse in this country so rapidly disintegrates to the level of high school football rivalries? 'Cause, we rock and you suck. How can a subject so serious and so complex be so abused and so often hijacked by partisan whack jobs and unprincipled opportunists and hucksters?

How is it that someone like Sarah Palin can decide it’s a good idea to frame comments around Arizona’s immigration reform bill in terms of the relative testicular heft of AZ Gov. Jan Brewer (who is female, for those who failed to notice) versus President Obama “in this desire of ours to secure our borders,” as she put it. And this while talking about a state law that, whatever its merits or shortcomings, has nothing remotely to do with border security. Those two words have a meaning not ever addressed in Arizona SB 1070.

How does such grandstanding inform the public discourse? And why aren’t more people rolling on the floor laughing? This is not an attack on what Palin believes, it’s an attack on what she says. You wanna wade in, wade in. But people should not be energized by statements like the one she made; they should be scratching their heads and moving a safe distance away.

Was some of our founders’ original thinking behind voter eligibility unwisely discarded? No doubt, many early voting restrictions were a violation of fundamental rights. But maybe no one should be able to vote who can’t demonstrate that (a.) they’re not an idiot and (b.) they’re not an ignoramus. For instance, potential voters might be disqualified if they express the belief that an opinion poll is a good way to decide the truth about the science of global warming.

And maybe the 24 percent of Republicans and 6 percent of Democrats who supposedly believe Obama is the anti-Christ should be barred from voting on the basis of having violated the Constitution’s proscriptions relating to separation of Church and State. (Harris Interactive Poll, March 2010, debunked by Newsweek). Maybe they shouldn't even be left outside unattended.

And, just as an afterthought, maybe elected politicians who knowingly misrepresent what they know is the truth in the interest of scoring political points could be subjected to wounding. Nothing serious. Just a flesh wound, But it should hurt, and it should linger awhile. Maybe after a couple of thousand got wounded, the rest would wise up and start showing more deference to the truth.

Breitbart hasn’t said where he got the tape but claimed he didn’t edit it. He wasn’t particularly curious about what he’d been given though. He didn't compare it to the whole speech to see if it had been manipulated or, gasp, even distorted. Which, of course, it had been.

3. Somebody must not like Shirley Sherrod. Or what she stands for. Or who she hangs out with. Or something. Who edited the tape? And to what end, if not to give to Breitbart? It would be interesting to learn the source. And find out why, assuming it wasn’t personal, they thought their purpose was sufficient to justify casually destroying an innocent person’s career just to make some kind of twisted point. Who does that?

4. Bill O’Reilly evidently doesn’t carry the journalist gene either. He should have a little more going for him in that department than Breitbart, with a (BA (History), from Marist, an MA (Broadcast Journalism) from Boston U., and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School.) While in graduate school he actually reported for some local publications. And Lord knows, he's desperate to pass himself off as a reasonable man.* Somewhere along the line, he should have learned fact checking. Especially with a video from a source whose avowed intention is to “bring down the institutional left.” Journalists who don’t get to the bottom of their stories, or get snookered by their sources, lose their jobs. Think Mary Mapes, Dan Rather’s producer on the Bush National Guard story in 2005, or even Rather himself.

5. Sean Hannity, not much of a journalist either. Then again, quel surpris.

6. Shepard Smith evidently does carry the journalist gene. He considered the source and laid off. Not bad for a guy who’s evidently still a few credits short of his journalism degree at Mississippi.

7. Glenn Beck may be a little like James Clayton Dean, the hero in the movie Enemy of the State. Beck never touched the story that Monday, Ms. Cook’s fears notwithstanding. And when he got around to it on Tuesday, he took Shirley Sherrod’s side. (He did manage to trash Sherrod on Monday during one of his radio shows. But with the death of James Brown this is, after all, the hardest-working man in show business. Long days; never enough material.) In Enemy of the State (1998), Will Smith as labor attorney Dean concocts a desperate scheme to escape from some corrupt NSA goons whose scheme to murder a Congressman he has stumbled upon. His fellow captive, Gene Hackman, as former NSA rogue "Brill,” has been dubious about Dean from the onset and whispers to him, “You’re either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid.” In the film’s chaotic dénouement, Brill escapes unnoticed back into anonymity muttering with faint bemusement, “Not so stupid.”

8. Someone else at Fox News may be “not so stupid.” They had the story from 8am on that Monday morning. (Maybe even longer. Supposedly someone called Sherrod the previous Thursday with a taunting message about how her past was about to come back to haunt her.) It’s hard to believe Brietbart would not have tipped Fox off before Monday. They knew each other well. How come no one at Fox ran the story all day long? All they did with it was publish a piece on a Fox website, Fox Nation, at around 1:30pm. Who made the decision to sit on it? Were they toying with the White House?

9. Maybe not so smart either. Not just O'Reilly, but no one at Fox remembered a news organization ought to check out the source? Especially given that the veracity of Breitbart’s Acorn tapes turned out to be pretty much discredited. The only guy who could figure it out was Shepard Smith? And then he told only Glenn Beck? Doesn’t make much sense. And why throw O’Reilly under the bus at the end of the day? So he could be the stand-up guy who apologizes to Sherrod on camera the following night, in keeping with his image of fair-mindedness?* Or could the Folks at Fox just not hold it any longer?

10. The News business certainly isn’t what it used to be. Ever see a story fall off the cycle so fast? A quick rehash on the Sunday morning shows, and Shirley Sherrod pretty much slipped back into anonymity. (Maybe she can resuscitate things by suing Breitbart.) In view of the various deficient behaviors evinced in the way this story was handled, might there be some lingering concerns and questions? Nah, on to the 96,000 leaked Afghanistan documents and the lost billions in Iraq (a story already seven years old). Avanti! Yes, yes, the lights must never go out, and the music must always play, but, surely, that was one true Emily Latella moment in the annals of news reporting. “Never mind.”

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* except when in the presence of Sen. Al Franken (D. MN)

Sen. Dirksen indeed acted as a linchpin in getting the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed. And he did a great deal more than just offer up his desk. He rewrote large parts of the bill to help it break a Senate filibuster. Then he risked his career in a long and skillful campaign to sway enough Republicans over to gain the bill’s passage.

Democrats held a 67-33 advantage in the Senate, but southern Senators of the Democratic persuasion opposed the bill almost to a man. (There was only one Republican Senator from a southern state, John Tower-TX, in those days; southerners were still very much committed to their long-simmering grudge against the party of Lincoln over the Civil War.)

Without Republican votes, which Dirksen won for him, Johnson’s Civil Rights bill had no chance of passage in the Senate. But his opposition wasn’t really the Republicans, it was members of his own party.

So one might say Lamar’s analogy limped a little. Where should the current President look to find a Republican leader with the strong, nay, passionate conviction that the time has come for Congress to move forcefully to create sweepingly broad-based, comprehensive health care reform, just the way Dirksen believed the country needed to pass a landmark Civil Rights measure in 1964, against all odds?

Should he look to Sen. Mitch McConnell, the current Minority Leader? Or Sen. Jim DeMint? Sen. Jim Bunning, perhaps? Sen. Jim Inhofe? How about Sen. Lamar Alexander? Are you up to the task, Lamar? Or were you just like, you know, talking?

Good luck with Health Care, Obama.

Anyway, the snow sure was pretty while it lasted. And soon it will be spring down here.

Let’s give those big guys the tax breaks. They actually seem more capable of creating large job swings than their smaller brethren. It’s just in the last decade they’ve been swinging the other way. Maybe we should concentrate on getting them to change direction with respect to the U.S. worker.

Maybe a bribe would work. Because when they do get around to hiring, the big companies have the capacity to put a lot more people to work.

By the way, in this recession in particular, it’s the smaller companies that seem even less eager, or able, to build their labor force. In this modern era, large companies, ever-obsessed with pesky distractions like profits and shareholders, shed jobs early in a recession and start rehiring late in the recovery.

The chances of small companies blazing a path to Boomtown this time are worse than usual, economists fret. "Harper's Index" in that magazine's March issue reports that, as of January 2010, small businesses account for 60% of the job cuts in this recession.

But the overall employment landscape really hasn’t changed much over the long term. Here’s what employment by different-size companies looks like, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

These numbers have declined in the last few years, more so for large companies—that’s why they call it a recession—but over time the proportions stay pretty much the same.