Can't Anyone Play This Game?

Christina Romer was sent out Sunday to Meet the Press to explain the nuances of "fundamentally sound":

"MR. GREGORY: But perhaps Senator McCain was right when he said the fundamentals of the economy were strong, because you have President Obama saying roughly the same thing now?
"DR. ROMER: I really think you're misinterpreting the president. I think the key thing that the president was saying is we have our eyes on the fundamentals, that is why we're concerned about.
"MR. GREGORY: Hm."

Maybe it would help if the President didn't repeat his electoral rival's exact vocabulary on the issue the President himself defined as central to the economy? Staff often have to explain "what the President really meant", but they aren't often required to explain that day is night and night is day, on national television, on the defining issue of the campaign and chief policy question before the nation. I'm not thinking that asking Dr. Romer to fix this is a sign of a great boss. This was a serious mistake by the President himself, and he should have found an opportunity to clean it up. How could anyone but the President "explain his meaning"? He did actually say exactly the same thing as Senator McCain did last fall, and there is no getting around it.

I did imagine one answer: "The President thinks many elements of the economy are quite sound, and is very confident of our future once we fix the problems holding us back. So I suppose he does agree with Senator McCain in that. The difference is the moment and the emphasis. Senator McCain spoke as we were beginning to see the depth of the problem, and before it was clear that he or anyone understood its complexity and scale. At that time, the President sought to avoid diminishing the importance and scale of the challenge -- that was what that debate was about. I think everyone now sees the issues much more clearly. Certainly there is little doubt that the President thinks we have some serious challenges, or that he is doing all he can to address them. So now that we're agreed on the problem, in a way we weren't last fall, yes, it is time to make sure that everyone also understands that we have terrific opportunities once we solve the problem."

Well, shorter. And I'm not sure that's an accurate account of Senator McCain's stance at the time. But it is surely accurate enough by the standards of this White House! And I came up with that five minutes after knowing the question was out there. Dr. Romer is no one's spinmeister, but surely she should have been better prepared for this?

It seems to me that they don't entirely understand what they are doing. Perhaps there is a disconnect between the political mind, which might have come up with something like my idea, and the economic mind, which might not remember the campaign as well as it should? If the development of policy and politics aren't intertwined, their proposals won't solve the problem or won't be salable to the public. Interleaving the two is hard, and I don't see much facility in the Administration for it. We've seen that in a "stimulus" bill that seems to serve political priorities first, and to view economics as a serious of rhetorical justifications for the package.

And perhaps they aren't thinking things through, and beginning to respond reflexively to events. The President is told he has to be more positive, he agrees, they quickly write up some points to check that box, and somehow "fundamentally sound" slips through.

Their staff and culture also lack deep grounding in economics and history. Chris Wallace used a quote from the Budget including the phrase "commanding heights" -- surely the White House should be sufficiently literate to avoid Leninist terminology?

And while verifying the quote (Budget, p. 5) I noticed this: "Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care, and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected." Really? I thought Al Gore campaigned on putting the surplus in the Social Security lockbox, and Bush advocated for putting it in tax cuts because Washington would eventually spend the money if it were retained. (He then went on to spend the money anyway, which is how we got here in the first place.) Is the Budget now saying that George Bush was right and that the money would have been "invested"? I don't recall the Democrats complaining that the GOP was spending on the wrong things, just that it wasn't spending enough, and raising the deficit to boot. Telling Americans that the alternative to Bush's spending was not deficit reduction, but Obama's spending on top of Bush's, is probably the only thing that could validate Bush's economic policies as the least bad alternative.

This sort of thing has been scattered over Obama's history and campaign. They really make me wonder if Obama is as smart and competent as everyone says.