I've actually planned this post for about a week given Obama's first 50 day milestone, but interestingly, tonight the Wall Street Journal released its economic forecasting survey of 49 economists, a majority expressing dissatisfaction with Obama's economic policies, giving him a grade of 59 (out of 100) and Treasury Secretary Geithner a 51. In case one believes that the survey was stacked against Obama, about 75% of the the economists had rated Obama's economic team over Bush's in January; Geither's current rating is below his much-criticized predecessor, Hank Paulson, whom last charted a 57 in January.
My personal evaluation: I give Obama a B+ on style and a D- on performance. There is no doubt that Obama possesses remarkable oratorical prowess, and he is maintaining consistently high (60%) approval ratings. But there are things which show a remarkable lack of judgment: the consistent alarmist rhetoric which has contributed to economic uncertainty has even drawn a rebuke from Bill Clinton; Obama let Pelosi and Reid drive highly partisan stimulus and omnibus budget bills, which has had the effect of unifying the opposition and essentially killing his post-partisan rhetoric; Obama continues to engage in Bush-bashing, straw man arguments, and polarizing class warfare rhetoric; and the White House decided to overreact to conservative entertainer Rush Limbaugh's criticisms. [Rush's influence in the GOP is legendary. After all, he, Coulter and others went all out last year to quash John McCain's bid for the GOP Presidential nomination. Oh, wait a minute: it didn't work.]
In particular, Obama--who argued during the Presidential debates he would not approve Congressional earmarks--quietly signed almost 9000 of them into law today. The real story: He doesn't want to alienate powerful senators and Congressmen he might need for tough votes down the line. So he wants to pretend the fiscal year ending in September is really Bush's, not his budget even though Bush was only in power for less than 4 months, and the clock on his no-earmarks pledge begins in October. Will earmark money be any different 7 months from now? Money is fungible. It's unseemly that while states and cities are having to cut workers and/or services, national legislators, looking to pick up political cred for reelection, push the cost of unworthy initiatives on the backs of our children and grandchildren.
As to Obama's performance: I feel that he has been unfocused and pushing the wrong policies, which is not surprising given our ideological differences. But looking to set up new massive spending programs on health care, education, and alternative energy while we are deep in a recession, Obama should focus on the economy and drive for business growth, which is the only possible way to finance our budget with an aging population.
Obama would be well-served to recall Aesop's fable about the dog and the shadow:
It happened that a Dog had got a piece of meat and was carrying it home in his mouth to eat it in peace. Now on his way home he had to cross a plank lying across a running brook. As he crossed, he looked down and saw his own shadow reflected in the water beneath. Thinking it was another dog with another piece of meat, he made up his mind to have that also. So he made a snap at the shadow in the water, but as he opened his mouth the piece of meat fell out, dropped into the water and was never seen more.Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
A leaner package of merit-based infrastructure development and relief spending, combined with faster business depreciation, lowered investment taxes and business tax bracket rates, passing free trade pacts, reforming immigration to allow us to invite and retain foreign knowledge workers and eliminating so-called "buy-American" programs, along with a moratorium on regulations, raising tax rates on higher income and on Obama's cap-and-trade initiative. Obama could make a significant difference in stabilizing the market by investing in troubled mortgages at net realizable value and advocating mark-to-market accounting principles. I am troubled by simply boneheaded policies: cap-and-trade, which is a de facto regressive tax on energy consumers in the middle of a recession; high-risk, low-probable-success investments in alternative energy, while we continue to import more energy, generated by foreign workers, and we shoot ourselves in the foot with unilateral legal barriers on our own oil and gas development efforts; instead of working to cultivate competition in health insurance, by providing tax-advantaged savings to every working American and allowing the marketing of policies across states without idiosyncratic benefit mandates and guaranteed access to reinsured state-base high risk pool programs, Obama wants to increase the federal footprint. Already Obama has all but abandoned two of America's crown jewel industries: pharmaceuticals and financial services.
