As of a few hours ago, the July 11th edition of New York Magazine is now online, and headlining five pieces on Mitt Romney and the Obama administration’s record on the economy is, IMHO, what’s certainly the most powerful commentary I’ve read in a long time by none other than one of our country’s most respected opinion columnists, former New York Times’ op-ed writer Frank Rich: “Obama’s Original Sin.”
I’m sure some Democrats will have a hard time with some of his statements, and that’s because he speaks the inconvenient truth.
Rich says a lot of things that need to be said.
I strongly urge all that are reading this post to read Rich’s tome in its entirety (linked above). I’m excerpting his closing three graphs, immediately below. (I’m not going to attempt to paraphrase anything. That would simply be a disservice to both Mr. Rich and those that are going to take the time to read his work as only he could present it.)
Obama’s Original Sin
The president’s failure to demand a reckoning from the moneyed interests who brought the economy down has cursed his first term, and could prevent a second.
Frank Rich
New York Magazine
(Published Online July 3, 2011)
July 11, 2011 Edition
…Some Obama fans think it’s tactical genius that’s holding him back—his fabled long ball. Americans are no longer as angry as they were in January 2009 so much as they are defeated, depressed, and jaded by the slow recovery and by four decades of raging inequality that tells them the deck is stacked no matter who’s in Washington. Better, then, not to ruffle these still waters—or those easily rattled independents fetishized by political consultants—and instead scare seniors about imminent Medicare cutbacks and plot deep-think policy initiatives that (like health-care reform) might fix America over time. But the voters’ placidity hardly augurs well for Democratic turnout in 2012. And it may not last. All that’s required is one more economic panic to shatter the phony peace and whip the rage back to center stage, once again to the right’s advantage.
“A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,” Obama declared at his inauguration. What he said on that bright January morning is no less true or stirring now. For all his failings since, he is the only one who can make this case. There’s nothing but his own passivity to stop him from doing so—and from shaking up the administration team that, well beyond the halfway-out-the-door Geithner and his Treasury Department, has showered too many favors on the prosperous. This will mean turning on his own cadre of the liberal elite. But it’s essential if he is to call the bluff of a fake man-of-the-people like Romney. To differentiate himself from the discredited Establishment, he will have to mount the fight he has ducked for the past three years.
The alternative is a failure of historic proportions. Those who gamed the economy to near devastation—so much so that the nation turned to an untried young leader in desperation and in hope—would once again inherit the Earth. Unless and until there’s a purging of the crimes that brought our president to his unlikely Inauguration Day, much more in America than the second term of his administration will be at stake.
We live in a world with an extremely fragile economy. As Rich notes, above: “All that’s required is one more economic panic to shatter the phony peace and whip the rage back to center stage, once again to the right’s advantage.”
We’re already aware of many events that are certain to stir the economic pot between now and the 2012 Presidential election.
There will be many federal budget cap and deficit “knock-down-drag-outs” over the next year-and-a-half. If nothing else, the GOP will see to that.
As economist Brad DeLong just noted, there’s a one-in-three chance that unemployment may still be at 9%, or greater, 16 months from now.
The cover story of this weekend’s Barron’s Magazine tells us there’s a high possibility (their take on this story is, actually, more definitive than “high possibility”) that oil will be $150 per barrel by next Spring, with spikes as high as $170 also more than likely.
And, I’m not even bringing up record-breaking income inequality, nor am I mentioning long-term joblessness and a housing/mortgage meltdown currently in the throes of a double-dip recession––both of which are now exceeding records previously set during the Great Depression.
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You may want to checkout four related pieces to Rich’s commentary, also in the July 11th edition of NY Magazine:
“Inside Job: The Summer Sequel,” by Charles Ferguson, the Oscar®-winning Director of “Inside Job.”
“Haunting Romney,” “A word with Randy Johnson, a union operative with unfinished business.”
“Coulda, Woulda, Shouldas From White House Alumni.”
(Brief comments by Christina Romer, Larry Summers, Jared Bernstein and Neil Barofsky.)
“The Obama Economy By Barack Obama.*”
(*As culled from public appearances.)