It's easy to be cynical in this presidential election
year, the rhetoric and posturing of the scripted, agnotological "debates," the Super
PAC ads, the robo-calls, the deluge of direct mail, sending out those sound bites
to "the undecided." But what
would this election cycle be like if McCain had won in 2008? Ironically, it would have been the Democrats
finger pointing about the economy because we'd probably be in a similar
situation, or worse, who knows -- it's impossible to prove an alternative reality,
but we can speculate.
The debt Romney carps about was first ramped up by the
Treasury Department of the previous administration, not by Obama, with the
enactment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008 to stabilize the
financial system and it was quite necessary at the time. Jobs were falling off the cliff before Obama
took office. Our financial system was in melt down. And what would have been a McCain
administration response as that crisis just continued to deepen? Go into an austerity spending mode? Cut taxes?
No, that would have been impossible.
The time for government to reign in its spending is when the economy is NOT
falling off the cliff and even a Republican administration would have had to
take similar action (and the Federal Reserve's Ben Bernanke was an appointee of
the Republican administration as well).
Reviewing some of the more distant past, Clinton enacted
tax increases in 1994, mostly on high income earners. Eventually, those, as
well as a booming economy (note, no loss of jobs due to raising taxes on the upper
1%), turned around President George Bush Sr.'s deficits into surpluses. After
three consecutive years of national debt reduction under Clinton, the surplus
in 2000 amounted to $230 billion.
The first fiscal year impacted by George W. Bush's tax
cuts was 2002 when the surplus swung to a $159 billion deficit, a $286 billion negative
change from the previous year. True, we
were now embroiled in the war on terror, but the administration persisted on raising
the stakes with tax cuts. Bush said
while campaigning for a local Alabama congressman. “In order to make sure that our economy grows, in order to make sure
the job base is strong, you need to have a congressman who will join me in
making sure that tax relief plan we passed is permanent and doesn’t go away.”
Where were the jobs after nine years of
this "temporary" but massive tax cut, mostly benefiting the upper 1%?
When Paul O'Neill, Bush's Treasury Secretary, argued
against a second round of tax cuts, VP Cheney purportedly said "You know, Paul, Reagan proved that
deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due."
This was Cheney speaking, not some
liberal Democrat. O'Neill said in an interview "It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how
to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society. And I
thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was
a lot more important than a tax reduction." For that view, O'Neill was eventually fired.
Obama clearly underestimated how long it would take to
reverse years of deficit spending, not only his administration's (necessary as
the private sector was not spending), but his predecessor's as well. (He also
didn't anticipate being stonewalled by Congress.) But if McCain had defeated Obama in 2008, he
would have inherited the same mess and today we might have Hillary Clinton
running against McCain (or Palin or Romney) making some of the same arguments
about fiscal responsibility being spun by Romney.
As I said, it is hard not to be cynical about this
particular election, but I respect Paul O'Neill's admonishment: "It
was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the
nation's resources to improve the condition of our society." That
is why I support President Obama and hopefully in a second term he would have
Congress' cooperation to achieve some fundamental tax reform and make inroads
in controlling the growth of entitlements.
And last night, as I was preparing to post this, a bit of
serendipity led me to watch the 1957 classic A Face in the Crowd on Turner Classic Movies. Directed by Elia
Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg, it depicts Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a
drifter who is found in a jail by Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal), who she
enlists to sing and talk on a local Arkansas radio station, he ultimately
rising to the pinnacle of media demagoguery.
He is nicknamed "Lonesome" Rhodes by Marcia, and she goes on
the journey with him from obscurity to fame to fall.
The relevancy of this film, made more than fifty years
ago, to today is striking. Lonesome is
drawn into the political arena, and is brought in to help transform the film's Senator
Worthington Fuller into a Presidential candidate. Lonesome instinctively and sardonically understands
the manipulative power of language and media.
When he first meets the Senator, he advises him to
abandon his stiff personality and give himself over to Lonesome's control: "...Your
problem is getting the voters to listen to you. Getting them to like you enough
to listen to you. We've got to face it, politics have entered a new stage,
television. Instead of long-winded debates, the people want slogans. 'Time for
a change' 'The mess in Washington' 'More bang for a buck'. Punch-lines and
glamour....We've got to find a million buyers for the product 'Worthington
Fuller'....Respect? Did you ever hear of anyone buying any product beer, hair
rinse, tissue, because they respect it? You've got to be loved, man. Loved....Senator,
I'm a professional. I look at the image on that screen same as at a performer
on my show. And I have to say...you'll never get over to my audience not to the
millions of people who welcome me into their living rooms each week. And if I
wouldn't buy him, do you realize what that means? If I wouldn't buy him, the
people of this country aren't ready to buy him for that big job on Pennsylvania
Avenue....I'm an influence, a wielder of opinion...a force. A force."
To Marcia he says :"This
whole country's just like my flock of sheep!....Rednecks, crackers,
hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea-pickers - everybody that's got to jump
when somebody else blows the whistle. They don't know it yet, but they're all
gonna be 'Fighters for Fuller'. They're mine! I own 'em! They think like I do.
Only they're even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for 'em. Marcia, you
just wait and see. I'm gonna be the power behind the president - and you'll be
the power behind me."
An actor on Rhodes' show asks him about Senator Fuller: "You really sell that stiff as a man among
men?" Lonesome Rhodes replies: "Those
morons out there? Shucks, I could take chicken fertilizer and sell it to them
as caviar. I could make them eat dog food and think it was steak. Sure, I got
'em like this... You know what the public's like? A cage of Guinea Pigs. Good
Night you stupid idiots. Good Night, you miserable slobs. They're a lot of
trained seals. I toss them a dead fish and they'll flap their flippers."
'Nuff said before next Monday's "debate" after
which the "undecided" can flap their flippers.
