When Obama Is Out of Order

Yesterday ABC broke a story that had the feel of an exclusive, but was simply a willingness to talk about what others prefer to ignore: Obama faces serious popularity problems. In these pages we reported a relevant poll by The Washington Post and ABC about the beleaguered health care reform efforts, but the problem is bigger than that.

Obama wanted us to believe that within his first hundred days he was going to make reforms that emulate the interventionist measures that Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed during his first hundred. Thank God he did not live up to these expectations, because now there are many of us who think that the main cause of the long duration of the Great Depression was not the 1929 crash but instead the wrong policies Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed in 1933. Like Roosevelt, Obama thinks that the best way to get out of the current economic debacle is to saturate the system with subsidies, calling this a stimulus package – a brilliant euphemism.

Obama and his Congressional allies passed a 1,071-page bill in under 48 hours that outlined the stimulus program. In apocalyptic terms, Obama pushed his legislation on February 13, warning of ruinous consequences if it did not pass. The republican minority was not able to block it. Obama also asserted that his plan would reinvigorate the economy. This has not been the case.

Today, democrats in Congress predict that the recession will persist despite the immense public funds that have been spent to try to activate the economy. Even more, the president´s empty rhetoric is becoming more and more obvious. For months Obama has argued that the reforms that he proposes in health care, energy and education are tools for reactivating the economy. The strategy is smart politically, but with the passing of time it has become clear that his strategy to face the economic crisis is fundamentally flawed.