On Meet the Press today, Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was on a roll:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...
Well, I think sometimes you listen to the Romney campaign, and they do think a lot of people in this country are stupid. Because, David, their message is, 'You didn't clean up our mess fast enough.' Okay? As I said, we've had 11 consecutive months of positive economic growth. 25 consecutive months of positive private sector job growth," Obama reelection campaign adviser Robert Gibbs said on NBC's "Meet The Press" this morning.
(the linked article includes the video) Video also here (the quotation above is at 2:09):
Distilled to its essence, that is Romney and the GOP's economic message. Obama didn't clean up their mess fast enough.
This is an article that appeared in Vanity Fair in 2007.
When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.
This was written well before the full magnitude of the global economic collapse had manifested itself. It was before what we now call the Great Recession, and over a year before Barack Obama actually set foot in the White House. It was written when unemployment stood at 4.6%. Still, like the ominous hints of wind that presage the hurricane, this was also the time of:
a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.
Joseph Stiglitz wrote that whoever took over the reins of power in Washington would be facing that hurricane, put, through no fault of their own, in a near-hopeless position reminiscient of that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, tasked to clean up Herbert Hoover's mess:
The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.
Stiglitz recounts the implementation of Bush's massive tax cuts benefitting the wealthiest Americans and the corresponding expansion of inequality: a rising tide he describes as one that "lifted all yachts." As of December 2007, four and a half years ago, he saw exactly where this was leading us:
A young male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago. Some 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than were living in poverty when Bush became president. America’s class structure may not have arrived there yet, but it’s heading in the direction of Brazil’s and Mexico’s.
Then there was the disastrous, unnecessary War in Iraq, the extraordinary unfunded expansion of Medicare through the Prescription Drug Act, and the inevitable reaction of the Federal Reserve in attempting to keep the economy functioning, lowering interest rates until they were negligible, while simultaneously introducing punitive Bankruptcy legislation intended to punish the victims of Bush's unfunded binge on the nation's credit.
Credit was shoveled out the door, and subprime mortgages were made available to anyone this side of life support. Credit-card debt mounted to a whopping $900 billion by the summer of 2007. “Qualified at birth” became the drunken slogan of the Bush era. American households took advantage of the low interest rates, signed up for new mortgages with “teaser” initial rates, and went to town on the proceeds.
All of this spending made the economy look better for a while; the president could (and did) boast about the economic statistics. But the consequences for many families would become apparent within a few years, when interest rates rose and mortgages proved impossible to repay. The president undoubtedly hoped the reckoning would come sometime after 2008. It arrived 18 months early. As many as 1.7 million Americans are expected to lose their homes in the months ahead. For many, this will mean the beginning of a downward spiral into poverty.
If McCain/Palin had won the 2008 election there would have been either no fiscal stimulus or one which would have exacerbated economic ruin with more unwarranted tax cuts. If McCain/Palin had won the election unemployment would likely have reached 15% and our country would have experienced what many countries in Europe are suffering through right now. As Stiglitz wrote:
Whoever moves into the White House in January 2009 will face an unenviable set of economic circumstances. Extricating the country from Iraq will be the bloodier task, but putting America’s economic house in order will be wrenching and take years.
Perhaps Obama's action in extending the Bush Tax cuts was an unforgivable dereliction of economic responsibility, perhaps it was a necessary act of political expediency intended to forestall a far more harrowing future. There is a long litany of initiatives that were not taken up by this Administration, and they are well-outlined in Stiglitz' article. But it is indisputable that had the Republican formula been employed in addressing the economic crisis, we would now be living in a far more damaged country under far worse conditions than anything we are experiencing now. Faced with an implacable opposition that valued the interests of its uber-wealthy supporters more than the welfare of the rest of the country, Obama nonetheless began the process of cleaning up Bush's mess.
And perhaps the Republicans and Romney are right--he really did not clean up their mess fast enough. But as Mitt Romney recently pointed out, "it's still about the economy, and we're not stupid."
No, Mr. Romney, we're really not.
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