Thread: Mort Zuckerman: Obama Is Barely Treading Water

Mort Zuckerman: Obama Is Barely Treading Water
The president's problem is simple: the economy and jobs
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman

Posted: July 2, 2010

The hope that fired up the election of Barack Obama has flickered out, leaving a national mood of despair and disappointment. Americans are dispirited over how wrong things are and uncertain they can be made right again. Hope may have been a quick breakfast, but it has proved a poor supper. A year and a half ago Obama was walking on water. Today he is barely treading water. Then, his soaring rhetoric enraptured the nation. Today, his speeches cannot lift him past a 45 percent approval rating.


There is a widespread feeling that the government doesn't work, that it is incapable of solving America's problems. Americans are fed up with Washington, fed up with Wall Street, fed up with the necessary but ill-conceived stimulus program, fed up with the misdirected healthcare program, and with pretty much everything else. They are outraged and feel that the system is not a level playing field, but is tilted against them. The millions of unemployed feel abandoned by the president, by the Democratic Congress, and by the Republicans.

The American people wanted change, and who could blame them? But now there is no change they can believe in. Sixty-two percent believe we are headed in the wrong directionÂ*—a record during this administration. All the polls indicate that anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment is greater than it has been in many years. For the first time, Obama's disapproval rating has topped his approval rating. In a recent CBS News poll, there is a meager 15 percent approval rating for Congress. In all polls, voters who call themselves independents have swung against the administration and against incumbents.

Even some in Obama's base have turned, with 17 percent of Democrats disapproving of his job performance. Even more telling is the excitement gap. Only 44 percent of those who voted for him express high interest in this year's elections. That's a 38-point drop from 2008. By contrast, 71 percent of those who voted Republican last time express high interest in the midterm elections, above the level at this stage in 2008. And these are the people who vote.

Republicans are benefiting not because they have a credible or popular program—they don't—but because they are not Democrats. In a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, nearly two thirds of those who favor Republican control of Congress say they are motivated primarily by opposition to Obama and Democratic policy. Disapproval of Congress is so widespread, a recent Gallup poll suggests, that by a margin of almost two to one, Americans would rather vote for a candidate with no experience than for an incumbent. Throw the bums out is the mood. How could this have happened so quickly?

The fundamental problem is starkly simple: jobs and the deepening fear among the public that the American dream is vanishing before their eyes. The economy's erratic improvement has helped Wall Street but has brought little support to Main Street. Some 6.8 million people have been unemployed in the last year for six months or longer. Their valuable skills are at risk, affecting their economic productivity for years to come. Add to this despairing army the large number of those only partially employed and those who have given up their search for work, and we have cumulative totals in the tens of millions.

Many people who joined the middle class, especially those who joined in the last few years, have now fallen back. It's not over yet. Millions cannot make minimum payments on their credit cards, or are in default or foreclosure on their mortgages, or are on food stamps. Well over 100,000 people file for bankruptcy every month. Some 3 million homeowners are estimated to face foreclosure this year, on top of 2.8 million last year. Millions of homes are located next to or near a foreclosed home, and it is the latter that may determine the price of all the homes on the street. There have been dramatically sharp declines in home equity, representing cumulative losses in the trillions of dollars in what has long been the largest asset on the average American family's balance sheet. Most of those who lost their homes are hard-working, middle-class Americans who had lost their jobs. Now many have to use credit cards to pay for essentials and make ends meet, and they are running out of credit. Another $5 trillion has been lost from pensions and savings.

But it is jobs that have long represented the stairway to upward mobility in America. For a long time, it was feared they were vulnerable to offshore competition (and indeed still are), but now the erosion is from economic decline at home. What happens as those domestic opportunities recede? Middle-class families fear they have become downwardly mobile and have not hit the bottom yet. The financial security that was once based on home equity and a pension has been swept away.

In a survey just released, the Pew Research Center explored the recession's impact on households and how they are changing their spending and saving behavior. Nearly half the adults polled intend to boost their savings, cut their discretionary budgets, and cut their debt loads. The report concludes that the present enforced frugality will outlast the recession and its overhang. Fully 60 percent of those ages 50 to 61 say they may delay retirement
. What does that mean for the young would-be employees entering the labor force over the next few years?

The administration's stimulus program, because of the way Congress put it together, has created far fewer jobs than anyone expected given the huge price tag of almost $800 billion. It was supposed to constrain unemployment at 8 percent, but the recession took the rate way above that and in the process humbled the Obama presidency. Some 25 million jobless or underemployed people now wish to work full time, but few companies are ready to hire. No speech is going to change that.

Little wonder there has been a gradual public disillusionment. Little wonder people have come alive to the issue of excess spending with entitlements out of control as far as the eye can see. The hope was that Obama would focus on the economy and jobs. That was the number one issue for the public—not healthcare. Yet the president spent almost a year on a healthcare bill. Eighty-five percent in one poll thought the great healthcare crisis was about cost. It was and is, but the president's bill was about extending coverage. It did nothing about the first concern and focused mostly on the second. Even worse, to win its approval he accepted the kind of scratch-my-back deal-making that suggests corruption in the political process. And as a result, Obama's promise to change "politics as usual" disappeared.

The president failed to communicate the value of what he wants to communicate. To a significant number of Americans, what came across was a new president trying to do too much in a hurry and, at the same time, radically change the equation of American life in favor of too much government. This feeling is intensified by Obama's emotional distance from the public. He conveys a coolness and detachment that limits the number of people who feel connected to him.

Americans today strongly support a pro-growth economic agenda that includes fiscal discipline, limited government, and deficit reduction. They fear the country is coming apart, while the novelty of Obama has worn off, along with the power of his position as the non-Bush. His decline in popularity has emboldened the opposition to try to block him at every turn.

Historically, presidents with approval ratings below 50 percent—Obama is at 45—lose an average of 41 House seats in midterm elections. This year, that would return the House of Representatives to Republican control. The Democrats will suffer disproportionately from a climate in which so many Americans are either dissatisfied or angry with the government, for Democrats are in the large majority in both houses and have to defend many more districts than Republicans. In any election year, voters' feelings typically settle in by June. But now they are being further hardened by the loose regulation that preceded the poisonous oil spill—and the tardy government response.

The promise of economic health that might salvage industries and jobs, and provide a safety net, has proved illusory. The support for cutting spending and cutting the deficit reflects in part the fact that the American public feels the Obama-Congress spending program has not worked. As for the healthcare reform bill, the most recent Rasmussen survey indicates that 52 percent of the electorate supports repeal of the measure—42 percent of them strongly.

It is clear that the magical moment of Obama's campaign conveyed a spell that is now broken in the context of the growing public disillusionment. Obama's rise has been spectacular, but so too has been his fall.

http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/mzuc ... l?PageNr=1

America's fragmenting, failing in my opinion, at this point short term it looks bad, long term I have hope, we must control immigration,stop bleeding money to other countries, stop nation building, and return to a manufacturing base and manufacturing superiority in that the world buys from us, simply common sense. Unless that happens say hello to a rich/poor society and then our working people will be looking for borders to cross. Could that be the administrations goal.

Originally Posted by oldguy

America's fragmenting, failing in my opinion, at this point short term it looks bad, long term I have hope, we must control immigration,stop bleeding money to other countries, stop nation building, and return to a manufacturing base and manufacturing superiority in that the world buys from us, simply common sense. Unless that happens say hello to a rich/poor society and then our working people will be looking for borders to cross. Could that be the administrations goal.

That's just it! What country are American citizens supposed to run to when their country is flushed down the toilet? mexico, ( yea right) Canada, Europe? Nobody would take pity on American citizens like we have taken pity on the rest of the world!

There's nowhere to run to!

oldguy wrote,

America's fragmenting, failing in my opinion, at this point short term it looks bad, long term I have hope, we must control immigration,stop bleeding money to other countries, stop nation building, and return to a manufacturing base and manufacturing superiority in that the world buys from us, simply common sense. Unless that happens say hello to a rich/poor society and then our working people will be looking for borders to cross. Could that be the administrations goal.

I agree with your post. How do we get there? The monetary system leads us to where we are. Where is it headed in the future?

If you wanted to move people, a nation, in a pre-determined direction, how would you do it? Looking at it from the central planners point of view.

Religious affiliations could be manipulated to move those that are religious. Racial issues could be used to move different and targeted races. Perhaps sexual orientation could be used as a motivator for some. Gender?

What can move all in the same direction?.........Monetary policy? Everybody moves to the dollar.

With that in mind, what can people do to move in the direction they would desire?

If we are Americans and believe in the Constitution and free enterprise, the freedom to participate in our market place, individual consumers participating in the open market, can we think differently and make our market choices work towards the ends we see fit?

If I were a huge international conglomerate of corporations and wanted, err, needed growth, as that is what a corporation must have in order to flourish and attract investors, I would buy entertainment and media outlets, advertising corporations, politicians, and political parties, and flood the atmosphere all around with the world I was after to further my ends.

Can the individuals, think differently and make their desires come about? Only by moving in a direction which requires thoughtful purchases and monetary planning on the individuals part, coupled to masses of other individuals. Individuals making individual purchases for their needs, not to keep up with the Jones', or to buy due to subliminal messages they recieved from the constant onslaught of predirected behavioural stimuli.

The opposite of the homogenization of America. Instead of McDonalds, why not Bill's Bronco Burger joint? Instead of Roto Rooter, Phil's Plumbing. There must be others, even if they cost a bit more, what is the cost of the direction we are going?

How many family homes have a TV? Herd mentality? If a TV were like a toilet I could understand the need for every family to have one,...or two.

JMOs, not yet adjusted for inflation.

Where is it headed in the future?

World bankruptcy. No one will be able to repay the debt. There will be a fabulous plan like the TARP that we must do to survive. Debt will be forgiven in return for shedding sovereignty to world government. The failures of big government all over the world will be solved if we'll only sign on to huge government.