Although our president has no speech impediment to blame for the repetition inherent in almost all of his economic offerings lately, many Americans are wondering how Barack Obama has lost most of his facility with words to rouse them to embrace even the slim possibility of real economic recovery on main street.
We have the indices on Wall Street that took a beating this past two weeks but then we have a much longer trend down with the jobs situation. The housing market. And the very real prospect that we are already mired in a second recession. Here is the President on three different lines today speaking (barely intoning) on the driest take a politician has ever made on sinking economy:
"Leaders who can put aside their differences to meet our challenges."
We are going to get through this.
Things will get better. And we're going to get there together.
Italics mine for Obama's distinct way of clipping his emphasis.
The first line speaks for itself at this point. Your take. Frightening? Insane? Or my take: a tragic tone deafness has set in after listening to his own regurgitated appeals to accept that politics MUST be a monoculture of steady state agreement on "what's best for America".
The second line is true: We. Are. Going. To. Get. Through. This. Although that was true three years ago. Two years ago. Yesterday. And probably tomorrow.
Finally, things WILL get better. It's the last part of that third...sentiment?...that I get tripped up on: "We're going to get there together".
Huh.
If I were to go on the experience of the last three years since Lehman Brothers and Fannie and Freddie, and AIG and Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, BoA and meltdown and Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, the $700 Billion TARP, the $14 trillion, the green shoots, the "summer of recovery, the "welcome to the recovery", the record bonuses, the QE,QE2,QE3, and the list never ends really, I would have to say that "together" does not mean what he thinks it means.
And therein lies our President's problem: His words appeal to the nation coming together, of a "going forward together", like all presidents resort to with rhetoric. But all the evidence is piling up month after month that we have two very distinct economies and it is only in brief collisions of the two parallel universes such as yesterday's index tanking that we have any passing attention to what might be considered an urgent memo to a political campaign seeking re-election. This does not bode well.
"Both parties share power. Both parties share responsibility for our progress. Moving our economy and our country forward is a Democratic or Republican responsibility...[it's not a public or private responsibility]; it's a responsibility of all Americans."
So now in conclusion, Obama believes that to address the situation at hand, the second leg down into a double dip crisis (because this is beyond what the word "recession" can convey) that this is the responsibility of all Americans.
This as you may suspect, is meaningless tripe. What does that mean to say we all are in the drivers seat? As most adults realize by the time they are of voting age that we live in a Republic and not a direct democracy. We are commissioned as citizens to elect leaders and representatives who offer to take on the responsibility of governing through effective political discourse and policy. It is not the responsibility of the abstract American to pull this country out of a nosedive. It is not the responsibility of the private sector to pull this country out of severe economic contraction. That is why we have a government in the first place, Mr. President. That is what economists and historians and political scientists and regular progressives have been trying to convince our leaders of in this singular and secular meltdown. Your time is now. You have to make the choices NOW.
And unfortunately you don't seem capable of the moment. Whether the Congress is in session or not. And the responsibility this time will be laid squarely at your feet come a year November. And rightfully so.
We will get through this. Things will get better. And there will be responsibility. But we are not necessarily going to experience it together.