Reagan recovered... in time for the "Morning in America" election of 1984. And so we naturally forget those days when he seemed doomed to be the fifth consecutive president to leave office a failure, rather than the first since Eisenhower to complete two terms and leave more or less respected. (I was kind of shocked to learn of the magnitude of Reagan's slump myself, although I was alive and politically aware at the time.) He recovered not because of his message or his political operation... but because the economy recovered.
August 22, 2010
Obama is more like Reagan than Carter, says Mark Schmitt.
But he needs the economy to recover so we can perceive it.
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The difference, of course, is Obama is doing precisely nothing to make the economy want to recover.
Obama is cutting taxes like Reagan? He's pushing supply side economics?
No?
Then how is he like Reagan, just because Reagan broke out of the mold of the previous 5 Presidents, and Obama has yet to do so?
The only thing offered in the article to say that Obama is like Reagan more than Carter: poll number comparisons.
That's it.
So, what's the point being made here exactly?
A case can be made that despite the current low poll numbers, Obama is still positioned to be reelected in 2012.
What matters today is the upcoming Congressional elections in November. Anything that can slow down the Democrats "the will of the American people be damned" attitude and actions is a good thing.
A very good thing.
Dude's totally clueless. Reagan was using water to put the fire out; Obama's spraying gasoline on the fire. Goshdarnit, all of those ivory tower theories said that any old liquid would put out a fire! Who knew that gasoline was flammable?
P.S. Given Ann's aversion to men in shorts, I wonder how outraged she would be about the Chinese bang ye phenomenon?
Reafan fundamentally had a positive image of America and it showed.
Carter and The Won? Not so much...
Both were Scolds
You mean an incompetent baboon in the service of corporations?
Yeah, that's probably true. Carter was simply an incompetent baboon.
Obama supporters need something to explain Obama's unpopularity without admitting he's a bad President. Hell, Obama is looking for it himself.
Expect to hear this one a lot more in the coming months!
Reagon took his lumps for doing the hard things (on the economy) [in some areas, not in all - he had plenty of faults too - ha, but he sure looks better and better over time].
Obama just kicked the can down the road. His moves have made it more difficult for the economy to recover. We haven't really begun the hard times, and people are just starting to figure that out [I hope - nah, forget that, they'll buy whatever BS comes along next}.
Comparing B. Hussen to Reagan is like comparing a koala to a grizzly by pointing out that both are called "bear."
Of course one is a bear and the other isn't just like one is patriot and the other is intent on destroying America by instilling marxism.
It's a mindless article with the intent to provoke and increase readership while preposterously giving hope to democrats.
For Obama and his base, high and low, staying the course means destroying America. Beyond that he and they cannot see and don't care to see. America destroyed is the capstone for Obama the resentment filled avenger. Reagan nullified you could say.
I was a home owner during the Carter and then the Reagan years. Inflation and interest rates were running absolutely wild during Carter, then Reagan managed to get everything back to a more normal state. Things got better and people knew it. Obama? He doesn't have a fucking clue.
If I google [Mark Schmitt's employer] "suck up", will Mark Schmitt's name come up?
Future article by Mark Schmitt:
A Win is a Win: Why the Washington Redskins' win Sunday in their last home game before the 2012 election bodes well for Obama.
News Flash!
Mark Schmitt is an idiot.
Reagan? Bizzaro Reagan perhaps.
I would rather him be Carter than Bizzaro Reagan. Carter did less damage.
Reagan also had a hostile press that incessantly ran nightly stories and front-page articles on the homeless and how he was wrecking the economy. “Those poor people!” Also, lets not forget the stupid old man who was always falling asleep theme. And of course, he was a cowboy warmonger who was going to blow up the world. Plus, he was personally responsible for the AIDS crisis because of his funding policies prevented “the cure” from being discovered. Epidemiological precautions were just anti-Gay bigotry. No alternate media then.
Given all that, plus more, it is surprising his polling numbers were that high. Does the classic media hold Obama responsible for anything?
Jason (the commentator) you can start by pointing out Obama is against gay marriage.
I am for gay marriage. He is against it.
You should hold his feet to the fire for that one.
Duh!
But the economy hasn't recovered!
Like I said the last time this trope came up, Obama will be like Reagan when we have 7% GDP growth and he wins 49 states for his reelection.
I wouldn't count on it.
I don't understand why people keep talking about the recession as if it is part of a natural business cycle. This "recession" seems to me to be the natural result of government mismanagement of housing finance. Since this mismanagement continues, how can the recession end?
I wonder if Mark Schmitt comments under the alias of Alpha Liberal. This is one of his rants to the letter.
The idea The Zero is cutting taxes because the increases come out as a net loss if you include the people who don't pay taxes is the sort of thing that otherwise gets you sent up the river for five to ten.
[Reagan] recovered not because of his message or his political operation... but because . . .
. . . the slump was MSM-generated BS in the first place.
This was still back in the day of CBS, NBC, ABC, and NYT having firm control of 90 percent of public opinion because they had 95 percent control of the information industry. And they HATED Reagan and did their best to sell the idea that he was a failure. Hence the slump.
It took some time, but Reagan eventually was able to talk over the heads of the MSM and, when people began to understand the truth (and saw what a bad-ass he was after being shot in the chest at close range), they loved him.
It was the beginning of the end of the MSM stranglehold on information.
My bad- I confused Mark Schmitt, this writer, with Google's CFO Eric Schmitt.
wv - scizi [almost scuzi]
I agree with Schmitt on this much: It's silly to compare Obama to Carter based on poll numbers. Those poll numbers have much more to do with the state of the economy than with the actions the president has taken in the first 18 months in office.
However, the longer a president is in office, the more the state of the economy reflects what he has done, or failed to do, while in office. On that test, I believe President Obama is closer to Carter than Reagan.
Reagan's recession is a direct result of Paul Vocker's dramatic rise of interest rate aim at curbing the inflation. You guys remember the stagflation? Once that front was taken cared of, reduction of tax and return to norm interest rate give the economy a gigantic boost.
It is quite bizarre to see a liberal using Reagan as a success story when Reagan is still despised by our liberal betters in the ruling class.
The big difference is that Reagan's economic advisers -- according to their own words! -- applied the theories of Friedrich Hayek and Arthur Laffer while Obama is working from the discredited theories of John Maynard Keynes and thinks that the Chicago School of economics is so much bunk.
I hate "instant-history"
The analysis only begs one response:
No he's not
and then we quickly switch to discussing
the Mosque
Paul Volker and Donald Regan knew what the hell they were doing. Bernanke and Geithner have no clue.
(What makes Bernanke so amazingly bad is that he claims to be a student of the great depression yet is repeating exactly the same mistakes.)
Actually Bernanke is even worse than I said. I think he knows that the current policies are corrupt and doing more harm than good, but he's more interested in being liked than right and has completely compromised his beliefs.
(At least Obama and Geithner have the excuse of being just plain dumb.)
After seeing how liberals skew the poll numbers even today when there is gobs of information as to polling techniques, pool samples, questioning bias, God knows how really skewed those pollsters were against Reagan whom the lefties detested as much as Nixon (or insert any Republican pres). So not having those sample percentages now for comparison, I'd say Obama is much more unpopular because the leftie pollsters are skewing the samples.
Mark Schmitt is full of bull scat, as are most writers for the American Prospect. They believe in progressive magic, where deficits bring prosperity and price controls produce plenty.
I have a theory that every 30 years or so we have to elect a progressive idiot just to relearn the lesson that their methods don't work. The problem is that they can do so much damage that 30 years isn't sufficient to recover from the havoc they wreak, let along reverse the overall direction of drift toward loss of freedoms.
Bernanke is doing the best he can with what he has to work with. Unfortunately it was easier Volker to cut inflation with interest rate increases.
Greenspan and Congress (both parties) created a housing bubble that collapsed on W's watch. Housing was, and is, way overleveraged. All that debt has to be unwound.
Things would be no worse if Obama and Pelosi had done nothing. By piling on uncertainty about taxes and health care regulations while still trying to prop up zombie lenders they have prolonged the agony.
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