We're not fooled:

Obama:

To those who may still run for office planning to privatize Social Security, let me be clear: as long as I'm President, I'll fight every effort to take the retirement savings of a generation of Americans and hand it over to Wall Street. Not on my watch."

Although to judge by the way this was reported at TPM (David Kurtz), "Obama takes a clear shot at House Republicans", maybe Obama has fooled some people who should know better.

UPDATE: Just to make it clear, Obama is fooling people when he speaks out firmly against Social Security privatization, yet never utters a word defending Social Security from proposals that would reduce benefits (e.g. by raising retirement age or other ideas his Deficit Commission will come up with).

This recent statement by Obama along with a weekly address last month was so obvious in that it hewed strictly to attacking privatization, but nothing else. Why doesn't he say more than that? Social Security is the least of our concerns, is in good shape for 30 years, and paid for. People would be much more reassured if Obama defended Social Security in toto, instead of merely attacking only one of the many approaches to weakening the program.

UPDATE2: If Obama comes out and defends Social Security, basically as it is (there can be some minor tweaks), then I'll salute him and apologize for the post above.


posted by Quiddity at 9/07/2010 03:59:00 AM

Timing matters:

Via Chait, this observation by Martin Wolf:

Suppose that the US presidential election of 1932 had, in fact, taken place in 1930, at an early stage in the Great Depression. Suppose, too, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had won then, though not by the landslide of 1932. How different subsequent events might have been. The president might have watched helplessly as output and employment collapsed. The decades of Democratic dominance might not have happened.

I've been saying that privately for a long time.

Wolf continues:

But this time was different: the crisis brought Barack Obama to power close to the beginning of the economic collapse. I (among others) then argued that policy needed to be hugely aggressive. Alas, it was not. I noted on February 4 2009, at the beginning of the new presidency:

“Instead of an overwhelming fiscal stimulus, what is emerging is too small, too wasteful and too ill-focused.”

A week later, I asked:

“Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are not normal times. They are times of great danger. Today, the new US administration can disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it. Today, it can offer solutions; tomorrow it will have become the problem. Today, it is in control of events; tomorrow, events will take control of it. Doing too little is now far riskier than doing too much.”

This was right.

One thing that Obama could have done is, like FDR, stayed away from the administration while 2008 was playing out. Not hostile, but a studied neutrality. That way, when he took office, he would have been able to present a clearer distinction between his administration and the economic problems of the previous one.


posted by Quiddity at 9/01/2010 09:54:00 AM