The Great Capitulator

On January 1, 2011, the Bush tax cuts for the super rich end, and the Obama tax cuts for super rich begin. There are no spending cuts and another $800 billion will be added to deficit, with Republican encouragement and support. This is not the first time he has said one thing and done another, that started before the election, but few noticed.

Mr. Obama may not like it, but here is how people everywhere judge see things: if you promise much and deliver little, we don't want you to start telling us that we expect too much. Your promises set our expectations, that is why we hired you and not someone else who promised less, but more than you have produced. Calling the people who hired you "stupid" or "not realistic" is not the way to keep your job, especially when we don't see you making any effort to do what you promised. Waiting for a deal to show up is not the same as proposing a deal that is good for us, and then making it come true. Call it the "audacity of results."

There are many examples of promising much and delivering little, here are a few:

1) Mr. Obama said that he wanted to review NAFTA, a program that has cost U.S. workers many good paying jobs and has created low paying jobs unloading boxes stamped, "Made in Mexico". After the Canadians complained, an emissary was dispatched to tell Canadian officials it was just campaign rhetoric. There was no review after he was elected, it was just rhetoric.

2) Mr. Obama did not have a health care plan until he noticed that Hillary Clinton was getting a lot of traction from having one, so added one, but said that it would not cover everyone (meaning that you could get sick and then start paying for health care - an impossible condition, like buying auto insurance after you have a wreck). Once elected, he was unable to clearly layout what a health care plan would look like,so he waited while many plans were proposed, and the public option, the only one that would have constrained costs, was eliminated by more than 300 lobbyists. His final solution included fines for not getting coverage, starting very small (less than $2 a week); too small to have any benefit, and large enough to anger people.

3) During this campaign, Mr. Obama ran an ad, showing a typical young middle class family, and promised that he would work to see that their jobs were not outsourced. Within weeks he received $7.8 million from CEOs of body shops seeking more visas to bring low wage workers to the USA, taking jobs away from U.S. citizens right here. What difference would it make to that couple if they lost their jobs to worker in India,or the same worker brought to the USA? After election, with unemployment running high, Obama invited the (mostly Indian) CEOs to the White House to assure them that they would be able to continue replacing US citizens with low wage workers from India and China. He did not invite the 50% of college graduates who can not get a job requiring the degree they are still paying for, to reassure them.

4) Once elected,Obama appointed a BP executive to hlp run the government regulation of off-shore drilling. We know how that worked out.

5) In the rescue of GM and Chrysler, Mr. Obama insisted that union worker,s making $28 per hour, accept the same wages as non-union workers earning $24 per hour; wiping out benefits of thirty years paying union dues. (compare to item below)

6) When he supported the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he supported salaries greater than $5 million, paid from the taxes of workers earning an average of around $30,000.

7) Mr. Obama was too modest in his stimulus package,giving in to Republican demands, and ended up with spending in 2010 of around $250 billion, which has a very small effect on an economy of about $15 trillion; chump change, but he told the American people it would be enough to reduce unemployment. Telling the American people that the stimulus package is enough, when it is too small is like a mechanic fixing your car and telling you that it will get you home. When it breaks down on the way, you do not think that you are dealing with a quality mechanic. In designing a too small stimulus, Obama ignored the advice of liberal Nobel laureates in economics Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, and took the advice Republicans who had been wrong about the housing bubble meltdown. Ignoring guys that have been right time and again is risky, and those two were correct one more time; the stimulus was too small. Saying it would work was an error in judgment, leading to higher unemployment and anger.

8) Mr, Obama deferred to Wall Street in his financial reforms, leaving us with reforms that experts and voters are not convinced will prevent another bank bail out.

9) Mr. Obama convinced the house to pass a poor (and poorly understood) cap-and-trade bill that most of the public did not like (why not a just a simple tax on pollution, and give the money collected back to those who buy cars getting better mileage?). The cap-and-trade vote looked like a giveaway and its handling cost many representatives their seats. High unemployment and incompetence do not win campaigns.

10) After months of discussion, Obama was too weak to stand up to the generals on Afghanistan, sending in 30,000 more troops, costing the US taxpayers $1 million each per year. We can't afford it, and most Americans know that Afghanistan next year will be pretty close to what was like last year, a see of corruption and wasted lives.

11) Mr. Obama freezes the wages of public workers without any discussion with union leaders, and without any concessions from taxpayers with incomes over $1 million. So much for shared sacrifice.

Today (7 Dec 2010) Mr. Obama lashed out at at liberals and independents who are unhappy with his leadership by saying that he had done, or tried to do, everything that had promised in his campaign. Many of his supporters, enough to cost him re-election in a campaign against Mitt Romney, do not agree. In fact, he is making George W. Bush look like he may lose the title of the nation's worst president ever. Mr. Obama said:

“I’ve said before that I felt that the middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high-end tax cuts,” Mr. Obama said. “I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people, and I was not willing to see them get harmed.”

First, calling Republicans hostage takers is not reaching across the aisle, and second, our government runs (sadly) on bribes and deals. If you want to fix that, we support you, otherwise learn to make a deal that benefits your supporters. Third, giving the middle class, and the very wealthy, a tax break now, added to deficit, to be paid back later, is not a huge favor for the middle class. Most people accept shared sacrifice, but think that very rich are not sharing. What Obama did in making this deal causes many to think that those who benefited from running up a huge deficit never will pay. And that does not give confidence to the middle class. A week ago you were telling us that the deficit was harming us, and now you and your Republican posse say that more deficit means less harm.

William Edwards Deming, an expert on value, said that most of us see high quality as delivering at least a little bit more than you promise. He defined low quality as delivering a little less than you promise. Mr. Obama may not like the verdict, but the truth is that he has delivered much less than was expected, and that is how you lose elections.