Repeating Itself

I will admit that some of my criticism of Obama is based on hindsight - especially around the budget and economy. It seems clear to me that Obama should have talked about the economy way more and not spent as much time on budget deficits. But if I wanted to be more fair, I could recognize that at the moment, his decisions might have seemed like the right ones, even to me.

The problem is that Obama isn't learning from his mistakes. He is still not talking about the economy and instead is letting Republicans talk endlessly about budget deficits. If he learned anything, he would be out there every single day saying that we have an immediate and serious problem of unemployment and a potential long (or medium) term problem of deficits and debt. He would continue by saying that Republicans are ignoring the unemployment problem and pretending to be concerned about deficits so they can gut social programs - and somehow want to cut taxes at the same time.

My guess is that his hesitance is political. The election will be determined largely by the economy (though campaigns matter as well) and if voters think the economy is bad, the worse he will do. So he is doing nothing and hoping things outside his control make the economy improve. We'll see how that goes. Though if Europe has anything to say about it, that might be a disaster.