Group items tagged

I chose this article, from The Economist. It's long, and pretty boring, but I think it addresses the issue of Obama's economic record from an (as far as I can tell) objective standpoint. Obama and Romney are making conflicting claims about the state of the American economy under Obama, both of them citing statistics, and, unsure of who to believe, I went in search of an article like this.      The article neither adulates nor lambastes Obama, which I think adds to its credibility. Interestingly, it seems to support Mitt Romney's characterization of Obama as a starry-eyed idealist, saying "Mr. Obama's personal priorities carried the day... Mr. Obama has always portrayed himself as a pragmatist, not an ideologue. In practice, though, he usually chooses bigger government over small."      The articles casts Obama as having arrived to the Oval office with unrealistic goals, but still having made progress despite not living up to those goals. These unrealized goals, though, can still be used against him by the Republicans to win disillusioned Obama voters over to the right.

The point Cody brought up about unrealized goals, but goals with progress, is one that I see being key to the arguments both sides are making. It's a good summary of what's at the heart of Obama's hope to "finish the job" and Romney's sad portrait of the last four years. I think the article really gets at the tough place he is in: are we supposed to criticize or praise Obama for doing basically everything a president should do, but not delivering what he promised? The way it talks about the mini-recession that occurred just because of the transition sort of sells me the claim that a lot of went wrong can't be pinned on him. Granted I don't know that much about economics, the decisions he made for sections of a tanking economy (stimulus, etc.) seemed level-headed, and seemed like they came from a pool of options limited to a "Democrat" choice and a "Republican" choice. Also, debt vs. deficit?

I thought it was interesting to read the description of Obama's unique position as a president influencing the US economy. Comparing him to FDR's response to the Depression shed new light on the difficulty of Obama's position and the complexity of his response. Being reminded that the months between FDR's victory and his inauguration were the worst months of the Depression put perspective on Obama's need to both quickly gain credibility and take some serious risks. It was interesting to read that The Economist felt that his stress tests were more effective because they were tougher and more transparent that those set up in Europe. In fact, the only clear criticism they make is that he didn't take the risk to spend a lot of money on the mortgage crisis. I would have thought a more conservative magazine, like The Economist, would think the government should have spent less. It is interesting to think that with all these complicated decisions, Obama's biggest mistake may have been that he promised too much. I think that might be right. Listening to him now, he seems to understand that. His speeches are less inspirational, but in may ways more realistic.

This NYTimes article uses data gathered by the Pew Research Center, and the Rothenberg Political report to chart the different factions of the Democratic Party according to their relative influence, motivating issues and standard bearers. It exposes important unifying issues like equity (fairness) and uncovers differences on other matters like immigration and the size of the federal government. It will be interesting to look at the motivating issues of each group and compare them to the issues Obama focuses on in his speeches and which he stays away from. According to this article, the southern democrats, formerly a large powerful group, are shrinking. Is that because they donít agree with other Democratís position on social issues like gay marriage and positions on immigration and the environment that they are concerned affect employment? Itís also interesting to imagine how this information is gathered and how accurate it is.

It's weird how many of the groups in this are classified as "social conservatives." I feel like living in San Francisco there are a lot of people who support Obama purely because of his positions on abortion and gay marriage. I see a lot of people to whom it seems social issues are pretty much all they think about politically, so its interesting for me to think about people who vote against their personally held social ideology to support their economic interests. Gives some perspective.

The "standard bearers" section of this article really stood out to me. Almost all of those politicians described as "standard bearers" spoke at the convention. Because all of these different prominent politicians in different groups all spoke at the Democratic convention, I believe it shows a united party. If there was a similar analysis of the Republican party, I don't think all of their "standard bearers" would be featured in the convention. For example, the Republican party worked hard to keep folks like Ron Paul off the center stage at the convention, even though he has plenty of supper within the Republican party.