Post-‘Stimulus’

There was never any question that the "stimulus" – either in the form of an actual stimulus or as one big pork bill guised as such – would pass the Congress and be signed by the President. This was his first initiative. To reverse course and/or fail with overwhelming majorities in Congress during the zenith of his political power would have done irreparable damage to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. This was a short term battle neither he nor Congress could conceivably lose, and so they would ultimately persevere and pass something come hell or high water, no matter how ugly and painful the endeavor became.

It did get ugly (the most unpleasant sausage making possible, in fact), but the Democratic establishment did finally pass something. Though it was a lot more painful and difficult than anyone had originally expected, the President has his first legislative "victory." Accordingly, now is the time for a post-mortem – an assessment of what he has gained, what costs he has incurred, what he now assumes, etc.

Of the greatest foregoing significance is the fact that Barack H. Obama has now become of flesh and blood. His and the Democrats failure to shove the package through Congress without meaningful deliberation, debate, or scrutiny came at a tremendous cost to the President's image. Though he is still residually very popular, and probably will be for sometime yet, President Obama had to sacrifice his transcendent status and assume the mantle of yet another politician to get the bill through. The scattershot spending on parochially liberal plantation initiatives incurred public disillusionment (as well it should have) and put the President and Democrats in an uncomfortable position defending it. On the merits this was an impossible task, so the agent of a new politics resorted to the tried and true Washington fallback of partisan attack, falsely accusing Republicans of favoring total inaction over action and demagogically predicting economic Armageddon if the "stimulus" was not passed. This dashed, in quite literally a matter of days, the pre-existing illusion that he could and would govern while hovering above the partisan fray. Now that the pinnacle of Olympus has been surrendered it's not at all likely he will be able to reclaim it.

Lost too was the mantle of hyper-competence and good judgment. A handful of his nominees to significant administration positions have been disgraced by ethical issues, a string of developments which condemns him as either incompetent or hypocritical. (It's incompetent if his team's vetting process failed to find these red flags and it's hypocritical if the President who promised to have the most transparent and ethical Presidency in history selected these tax cheats and lobbyists in full awareness of that baggage.)

Such loss of capital doesn't augur well for the next initiatives of his Presidency. He and the Congress plan trillions more in spending to help the economy but they've already cried wolf. They claimed that disaster loomed if the "stimulus" did not pass. Doing so again when the next round of generational theft comes up will not carry the same credibility. The public already had a hard time swallowing this massive new level of spending – the pill is only going to grow larger and bitterer the next time they're asked to ingest. Beyond that, how he will be able to justify vast expansions in government-provided health care and other entitlement spending after all of these emergency spending programs is a gapingly open question.

Most importantly, as the President affixes his signature to this "stimulus" he at the same time affixes it to the deed of ownership for the economy. This package was laid at his feet and he recognized it as his own. To gin up support for it he traveled the country doing the only thing he has ever known and that which he is most adept at – campaigning. He promised it would "create" or "save" 3.5 million jobs. He said we would suffer economic catastrophe if it didn't pass. For that the American people will hold him accountable. If they don't see an equitable return in value for the price of a trillion dollars he and Democrats will suffer terribly. As Irwin M. Stelzer explains:

He now owns the recession. He has asked to be judged by whether this bill and other measures he will propose, create or "save" 3.5-to-4 million jobs, the number lost so far since unemployment turned up. Forget "save" -- if unemployment keeps rising, voters are not likely to rally around the slogan 'It would be still worse if I hadn't spent your trillions'. What the President has done is to promise what he certainly can't deliver in time for the congressional elections next year -- a reversal of job destruction, and millions of new jobs. If the voters prove patient in 2010, they are unlikely to remain as forgiving when the presidential election rolls around in 2012. Since employment is what economists call a lagging indicator -- employers are not confident enough to start hiring until economic recovery is well underway -- Barack Obama will have a lot of explaining to do. Unless, of course, the Republicans find a candidate so inept that the President can once again rely on his very attractive persona to see off any challenger.

Of course, his fear-mongering will only hurt him in this decisive regard. Speaking ad nauseam about how terrible the economy is sends a terrible message. Sure it managed to get the "stimulus" passed but only at the steep price of scaring away investment, consumer-spending, and other engines of economic growth and job creation. As Jen Rubin writes,

Usually, the president and treasury secretary in an economic crisis try to project calm, certainty, and a sense of command. The Obama administration approach is something new indeed. Perhaps it is some Zen-like exercise to 'be the panic; own the fear!' Whatever they are doing they should knock it off. They're going to scare the living daylights out of markets, consumers, and businesses."

It's hard to fathom what victory the administration thinks they're winning when to pass a bill to generate economic recovery the President has to employ rhetoric that only terrifies people away from behaving in a manner conducive to generating that recovery.

The President won his crucial first victory, but the content of the victory itself and the means that had to be employed in securing it pretty much assure that he is in a weaker position politically coming out than he was going in. In fact it's very possible that this initial success has sown the seeds of ultimate failure and pain for the President and his party in the long run, which is also bad for the American people. (There's also that little fact that we just exacerbated our country's debt by a trillion dollars for something that is likely to yield few, if any, actual benefits.)

Sweet victory, Mr. President.