Shaking Off the Obama Mediocracy
The February jobs report came out Friday, and over 300,000 new jobs sent the stock markets sky-rocketing higher. Hey - what’s going on here? In simple terms, we are seeing an overdue economic recovery that has been waiting to happen since 2009 - but could not because Barack Obama was THE constraint. It is a simple matter of addition through subtraction. Democrats might not like my explanation, but they can read me now and believe me later: President Trump's greatest quality is that he is NOT President Obama. Consumers, investors, and business leaders see this every day.
Even the dumbest Democrat in Washington, Nancy Pelosi, is walking back her dismissive tax-cuts rhetoric ("crumbs" and "pathetic"): "Certainly, we love it when people get a bonus, and if they get a raise." Poor gal - she could have stopped before turning into a but-monkey: "But if it is so small in comparison - if the choice was made for corporate America and the top one percent in our society, at the expense of working families, something is wrong with this picture." Translation: the picture is wrong because Obama or Hillary is not in it.
Obama was never going to support tax cuts as fiscal stimulus because he's a European-styled Social Democrat, who did not understand American-style economics or business. For this one reason, he weakened the American economy with his every decision. I am convinced his management of the economy is the worst since Gerald Ford made every White House employee wear WIN (whip inflation now) buttons. The results speak for themselves.
Trump is portrayed as a goofy public speaker because he says "jobs, job, jobs" until American minds go numb. This seemingly mindless repetition is actually smart economic management - because leaders get what they preach every day. Sadly, Obama did not understand this - and his economic message was all over the place: blaming George Bush for "driving the car into the ditch" and touting "clean industries of the future" and pushing health care for 10% of the US population and swearing 2% GDP growth was the best America would ever see again. If you have ever told a cocktail-party gathering Obama was a great communicator, shame on you. Great communicators make their mission clear to the dumbest mind in the room. Their message must be simple and consistent. Obama's economic message was neither.
Recessions are caused by a contraction of economic behaviors (consumption, production or investment). Even as the measurable behavior slows to recessionary levels, demand for economic activity still grows (pent-up demand). To unleash this demand to drive the economy on its own, Washington has always responded with a combination of fiscal (government) and monetary (central bank) stimulus. With Bush-era interest rates near zero, monetary stimulus alone could not provide the much-needed shot in the arm. The Obama stimulus was more entitlement spending. That might have been good for the poor, but it did not jump-start the economy. That is a fact.
Republicans like Paul Ryan delivered the right fiscal stimulus in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) - with zero Democrat support. It was actually the only fiscal stimulus open to the US (other than a guns-and-butter war). Times HAVE changed and Washington needed to re-position the US as the safest and surest investment in the global economy. The TCJA is attracting $trillions to be re-invested in the US, and it is encouraging corporate investment in employees, buildings and equipment. To his credit, Trump let Ryan carry the ball and kept "tax cuts" in the American conversation every day.
Economic historians will record Obama as one of the worst American presidents, especially if the current economic boom continues. It will be written that Obama increased entitlement spending without first fixing the economy that must fund entitlements (and reducing the roles of the needy). It will be written that Obama forgave millennial student loans, rather than provide a generation gainful employment opportunities - and had the gall to swear this is the best economy they would ever see. It will be written that Obama over-burdened US banks and businesses with regulations that damn-near killed the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Democrats are right: Trump is not that good. He did not pass legislation that made the stock markets soar, and his tweets distract from a positive economic message. This begs Democrats to answer the question: why is the economy responding under such a terrible president? The answer is simple: their anointed one, Barack Obama, was just that bad.