"Blame for Downturn Not Fixed on Obama"

[Clio the Leo]

Blame for Downturn Not Fixed on Obama
By Jon Cohen and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 31, 2009; Page A01

The number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since Barack Obama's election, and the public overwhelmingly blames the excesses of the financial industry, rather than the new president, for turmoil in the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

At this early stage in his presidency, Obama continues to benefit from a broadly held perception that others should bear the bulk of responsibility for the severe economic problems that confront his administration. Americans see plenty of offenders, but only about a quarter blame the president and his team for an economy that's in the ditch.

Despite the increasing optimism about the future, the nation's overall mood remains gloomy, and doubts are rising about some of the administration's prescriptions for the economic woes. Independents are less solidly behind Obama than they have been, fewer Americans now express confidence that his economic programs will work, barely half of the country approves of how the president is dealing with the federal budget deficit, and the political climate is once again highly polarized.

The percentage of Americans in the new poll who said the country is on the right track still stands at just 42 percent, but that is the highest percentage saying so in five years and marks a sharp turnabout from last fall, when as many as nine in 10 said the country was heading in the wrong direction. Fifty-seven percent now consider the nation as moving on the wrong track.

(more)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/30/AR2009033003415.html?hpid=topnews

[bullimiami]

1. no shit. it took years to pillage our economy and kick the legs out from under the rest of the world

the 25% are bushbot morans and their opinion is permanently fixed.

[Thrill]

2. No one with a brain can blame Obama

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Well, maybe not exactly.

Nobody who assumes their audience has brains can blame Obama.

The fact that all the talking heads are rattling on about obviously biased and false notions such as blaming Obama, when everyone knows better, has to be hurting their overall credibility. And I don't think those talking heads have a whole lot of credibility to expend.

[Clio the Leo]

7. lol, oh the irony.

(not speaking about you of course)

[high density]

3. Which means the media will spool up their turbocharger in the Obama slime machine

They desperately want to chain him to this mess and can't stand that he remains this popular.

[Jennicut]

4. Get ready for the attacks.

[BlooInBloo]

5. They're pissed that it's only rightwingers and DUers who are into the ihateobama bullshit.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Every Democratic President in my lifetime has disappointed me in some measure.

And I was born during the reign of King Franklin and Queen Eleanor.

You expect that of Presidents. They just aren't going to do everything to your satisfaction. I still have high hopes that Obama will be a far better President than any of his predecessors since FDR, but I don't expect him to do everything to suit me. And I reserve the right to squeal, tantrum and pout when he does not. There has never been a President, at least a Democratic President, who didn't need his feet kept to the fire by the very ones who voted for him.

Yeah, I'm unhappy with the appearance of several major policy thrusts right now, particularly the apparent shuffling off of single-payer health care and the apparent giveaways of taxpayer money to the super-rich. However, I also recognize that, in the case of the health care proposal, we don't know anything about what sort of plan is shaping up, and Obama has something of a track record f feinting toward his opponents and then, if they don't cooperate to the extent he wants, veering away from them and essentially doing what he wants. The stimulus package and the case of the Recalcitrant Republicans is an example; the current GM situation is maybe another. So he could end up putting out a health care plan that is much better than it now looks.

Likewise the bailout of the American financial empire. The fact of the matter is that I am not an economist, I don't fully understand the ramifications of everything that Obama and his acvisers have to be considering, and anyway there may still be a feint-toward-the-enemy move in there somewhere.

I am glad that the Keynesians are back in force--Stiglitz, Krugman, Roubini, Galbraith--and I have the sense (following Robert Reich's analysis) that the Obamites are Keynesians at heart. But there is a vast world of difference between being an academic (or even applied) economist and being a politician who has to balance off many different factors, economic and otherwise, in arriving at a policy for a nation. The economists only have to deal with one part of reality--a part that doesn't include the political realities, or the need to sometimes make moves that appear to be 90 or even 180 degrees from the place where you want to end up.

So I know where I want to go with health care in grand terms, and I know that ultimately I want the common people to have a greater share in the wealth they produce, and I want to have a clean, thermally stable, and healthy environment. But sometimes you just got to trust they guy you hired to do the job for you. You need to keep reminding him of the outcome you want, but you have to let him turn the knobs and levers to get you there.

[BlooInBloo]

9. self-delete - dupe.

[uponit7771]

10. 25% of these fuckers are idiots, they believe anything Limbaugh et al says....

[geek tragedy]

11. Limbaugh or Nader. n/t