A Little Patience For the Patient

The Obama Administration is taking fire from all sides right now. Figures across the intellectual spectrum -- Brooks, Gergen, Buffet, Dowd -- are expressing concern about overreach and misaligned priorities. Responsible, thoughtful conservatives and free market types are suggesting connections between the Administration's proposals and the stock market. The less responsible are just pinning the market on the President. Political conservatives are cheerfully reminding the recently unsettled among Obama's moderate supporters that they warned of these policies all along.

Some are taking the opportunity to revisit the signs that perhaps Barack Obama thinks he knows a bit more than he actually does. Rich Lowry has a mildly sarcastic column about Obama's temperament: "Last fall, Barack Obama was deemed by all the great and good as the man to save the country from its financial crisis because of his calm. As John McCain flailed around, Obama stayed steady, and commentators ascribed to him the most extraordinary leadership qualities based merely on his equipoise. How is that working out?"

Well, we don't yet know, do we? And the outcome of those policies will provide the test of those leadership qualities, won't it?

Treasury's plans might work. They are preparing plans to finance these public/private partnerships, which will purchase "toxic" assets from the banks. They are working on these "stress tests", which will provide an occasion to reassess bank capital and identify the quantity of assets they will have to offload.

I don't entirely understand the financial issues, and the system has issues outside the banks. (The overall decrease in leverage, for one.) But if those steps stabilize confidence in the banks, we'll have secured a core element of a system that is full of uncertainties. That would provide a basis for moving forward to address other financial issues.

The Obama Administration has been criticized for the pace of its efforts and the seemingly low priority assigned to financial stabilization. But preparing a stabilization plan might always have taken considerable time. If they are moving as fast as they can on that, why shouldn't they address their other priorities? If the stabilization plan works, the complaints about timing will be forgotten, and the concerns about priorities relieved. And if the stabilization plan works and the market recovers, won't the Administration deserve as much credit for the responsibility assigned to it for the market's collapse?

There is little that I like about the Administration's economic policies, and much reason to worry they will fail to stabilize the markets or the economy. But the whole question is how those contemporary worries will eventually translate to long-term conclusions.

To the extent the current alarm over the Administration gets people thinking seriously about how the government can and can't foster Americans' productivity, that's a tonic against the recent excess of naive faith in government action to enact "common sense" reform. To the extent they are now taking seriously concerns about Obama's philosophy that were dismissed too quickly in the campaign, that's a useful reminder of the basic choices facing any government. If the nation is suddenly realizing that there is less to Obama's "new politics" than meets the eye, it will move toward a more healthy vigilance.

But it is far too soon to assign Obama responsibility for the stock market, or draw conclusions about his policy and temper. Such conclusions can't possibly have any certainty, not at this moment.

Obama's calm may be confident or arrogant. But it is also consistent with a de-emphasis on conclusions based on the very limited information we have at this particular moment, in favor of patient attention to core issues and grounding in solid information. Since last summer I have regarded Obama's political skills as highly over-rated. But he has a real gift for avoiding over-reaction to events. He seems to decide on the fundamentals of a political problem, devise strategy addressing those fundamentals, and stick to that strategy through the noise and chop of the day to day. That might seem insensitive when compared to the hypersensitivity of the typical American politician, but that doesn't mean it is the wrong posture. I don't want politicians to emulate Obama's candor, but it wouldn't hurt them to emulate his patience.

Let's focus on the fundamentals. Is policy hastening or halting the recovery? Are we laying groundwork for American productivity or not? Does the Administration improve or diminish our national debate or not? As we debate those questions, let's avoid acting as if we yet know more about the answers than we actually do.