Steve Rattner: "Check out what's happened to new claims for unemployment insurance since Obama became POTUS--and give him some credit"
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Now, as for the part of the question about the country running well…. As I and many others have written, presidential popularity and national election results are strongly related to the performance of the economy. And the economy has actually been turning out fairly good numbers recently. Jobless claims are down and economic growth is surging. So why hasn’t this benefited Obama politically?
Basically, because the good news is relatively new. The American economy is still emerging from the shadow of the worst crash since the Great Depression, and the recovery up until very recently has been rather paltry. Remember, GDP growth in the first quarter of this year was actually negative. And even consistently strong growth takes a while to affect voters’ impressions of the economy and the political system.
Matt Dickinson on foreign policy crises:
Yes, each of these situations is unique in important respects. Moreover, partisans on both sides can and will argue the merits of their preferred leader’s particular choices. But to the objective observer it often seems that presidents are damned if they do intervene, damned if they do not, and damned if they opt to do both. It is hard to see how changes in leadership styles, at least as characterized in the short-hand jargon of political pundits, has had much impact on presidents’ ability to effectively address any of these international crises. Instead, the lesson seems clear – a president’s ability to “solve” foreign policy crises has much less to do with his (someday her) personal leadership qualities, and everything to do with the nature of the crises themselves. When there are no good solutions, changing leadership styles is hardly likely to matter, despite what partisans critics on both sides of the political aisle would have us believe.
Don't ignore Congressional responsibility for inaction as well.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Daniel W. Drezner on foreign policy leadership style:
A decade ago, Ron Suskind wrote a pretty memorable New York Times Magazine cover story about the George W. Bush administration’s worldview. The memorable part is this paragraph:
The [White House] aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
In listening and reading a lot of foreign policy punditry this year, I’m coming to the conclusion that the divide laid out by Suskind’s source persists to this day when it comes to understanding world politics. The events of 2014 are segregating America’s foreign policy community into one of two camps. At the risk of incurring the wrath of Thomas Friedman the foreign policy gods, let’s call these two camps the “Reality Creators” and the “Zen Masters.”...
I’ll have more to say about this divide this week, because it helps to explains a few of the foreign policy frictions that are going on right now. For now, however, I’ll simply note that from a Beltway perspective, it stinks to be a Zen Master. Even if the American public currently supports the Zen Master approach to the world, they’re still not thrilled with the short-run outcomes. On the other hand, the compelling thing about being a Reality Creator is the profound belief in the will to act, to do something to alter the tides of history. The optical bias in politics always favors action over inaction.
This is a variant of the 'wrong but strong' argument often favored by conservatives. Don't just stand there, do something awful. That's what got us into Iraq.
Brendan Nyhan:
How much do members of the opposite party dislike whoever happens to be president? A lot, and the feeling seems to be getting stronger.
A Quinnipiac University poll found that Barack Obama was the most frequent choice of Americans who were asked to name the worst president since World War II (33 percent compared with 28 percent who named George W. Bush). As a measure of people’s considered beliefs about presidential quality, the question is likely to overrepresent more recent presidents. But this sort of poll is instructive about the extent of the polarization among the public – in particular, about the visceral hostility to the president that has become routine among opposition partisans.
Sarah Kliff:
This is arguably the most unexpected piece of news in the new Medicare Trustees report: the government's hospital insurance program might be spending less money to cover more beneficiaries than it did a year ago.
Medicare's hospital insurance program — known to wonks as Medicare Part A — spent $266.8 billion covering 50.3 million people in 2012. In 2013, the the same program spent $266.2 billion to cover 51.9 million people. These figures come from Table II B.1 in the 2012 and 2013 reports.
Brett LoGiurato:
Overall, the lifespan of Medicare's major trust fund has been extended 13 years since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. When the trust fund runs out, the federal government would be able to pay only part of the benefits owed to seniors, and that portion would keep declining over time.
Though the report highlighted the fact healthcare reform is helping to extend the life of the major Medicare trust fund, the trustees said more still must be done to shore up the long-term life of the program. The trustees estimated that without further action, the government would be able to pay out only 85% of Medicare benefits in 2030.
The Medicare trustees' report builds on the overall optimism surrounding the slowing of healthcare costs in the U.S., which the trustees said on Monday were due to a mix of overall factors that include Obamacare, a weak economy, and other various reforms. Aside from the life extension of the Medicare trust fund, Medicare spending is slowing rapidly.
But see Seth Masket (above) about how long it takes for good news to filter down.
And a last word on Halbig from Ezra Klein, who reviews comments from Jonathan Gruber:
Gruber's comments aren't getting so much attention because anyone actually believes them. They're getting so much attention because some people want other people to believe them.
