Oh, and one other thing. It clarified Obama’s re-election strategy. Like the sun rising in the east, he will, of course, continue to lob blame bombs in all directions. But, he’s also putting geographic distance between himself and Washington D.C.  He places a lot of faith in the out-of-sight-out-of-mind maxim, hoping physical separation will disassociate him from the mess he’s helped create.

Obama’s re-election game plan should not come as a huge surprise since it has a lot in common with his governance style. For the latter, he offers meaningless straw man proposals for chronic problems that can neither work nor be accepted. And when they aren’t, he casts aspersions on whomever for rejecting them.

The latest two examples are his “millionaires and billionaires” debt solution and is his jobs plan. Both are non-starters because there’s a lot more harm than the little good in them and so cannot responsibly be put in place. But, they’re great sound bites for those desperate for easy solutions to devastating dilemmas. Obama hopes enough of those folks are out there to keep him in the White House.

To be sure, Obama’s strategy, whether governance or re-election, is much easier than long hours at the negotiating table facing huge helpings of bitter choices. And at least part of that strategy is getting support from unexpected places. Democrat Congressman Heath Shuler, D-N.C., agrees that Obama should stay out of town.

Shuler is the co-leader of a bipartisan group of 100 representatives urging the Super Committee to cut the debt by $4 trillion. He doesn’t think a divisive President can help that effort. Obama has made himself such a lightening rod for political rancor that the resolution process stands a better chance of succeeding without him. That’s a pathetic commentary on the so-called leader of our Country especially from someone who sits on the same side of the political aisle.

Shuler’s bipartisan effort, co-led by Republican Mike Simpson (R-ID), is one ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak outlook. Unlike the rest of their colleagues, they and the other 98 representatives in their group, want all options on the debt reduction table. Without both revenue increases and spending cuts, there’s no chance of a sustainable debt reduction. Without both revenue increases and spending cuts, there’s no chance for a sustainable debt reduction.

The question is whether anyone in D.C. is listening to them. Some in Congress are already revving up the blame machine, as the Super Committee remains deadlocked. The prospect of failure looms so large that, today, the smart money in town is squarely on fiasco. Two years ago, Obama was labeled the “Great Mediator”. Where is that guy now? Oh, yeah, he’s out of town.

When asked, given the perilous economic times at home, whether the President would cut short his Asian trip, White House officials said no. They fear that a foreshortened trip would be a slap in the face to Asian allies. But, it seems a small risk in order to prevent people from growing old on our unemployment line.

What this Country needs, even more than debt reduction, is an actual leader. We just can’t seem to elect one.

See you on the left-side.

Obama has never been much for bipartisanship anyway. From his first days in office, when he rebuffed Republican overtures with his “I won” retort, he has shown neither the aptitude, nor inclination, for it. With the new Republican House, Obama’s notion of negotiation is a lot more like dictation. He only tried to work out a deal with Republicans on one occasion and that failed when he kept moving the goal posts. Most often, his approach has been as it was with his jobs plan. Unveiling proposals to everyone at the same time while unilaterally anointing them beforehand as bipartisan. That is, and will always be, an amateurish non-starter.

By the middle of September, Obama’s re-election chances were dimming, even without a consensus Republican opponent. His base, consisting of leftist groups, was increasingly disenchanted. Independents, whom he has pursued ardently for the past year, remained aloof. Even California voters, for the first time since Obama’s inauguration, disapproved of his performance. Special elections in New York and Nevada went to GOP candidates because voters spurned Obama’s policies.

Things got so bad for the President that Clinton Strategist, James Carville, urged him to fire his staff and learn how to actually compromise. Instead, Obama’s response is to become more combative, more divisive and more extreme. Dismissing voter rejection, the President believes that isolating himself on the political left and excoriating all who disagree is a winning strategy. If he’s correct, it will be the first time in American history that an incompetent wins re-election by a take-no-prisoners appeal to extremism.

Fortunately, Obama’s strategy isn’t working. Oh, he’s made those in his base less jittery with assurances that his next term will be more to their liking. But, the left can’t get him elected. He needs the Independent vote, which he carried in 2008. To attract them, Obama has engaged in emotional, and distorted, rhetoric aimed at making the Republicans look so bad that he looks good by comparison.

Among his weapon of words is legislation that has no chance of passing. Obama plans to introduce several bills of that kind just to paint Republicans as wrong for the country. Basically, our President will throw childish temper tantrums in an effort to make himself look better than the adults in the room. “Hope and Change” has become “The Best of the Worst”. Not even Democrats are getting in line behind that.

While rhetoric and Bush got Obama elected in 2008, he’ll need more than verbiage and the Tea Party to do it again. He’ll need Republicans to nominate the wrong candidate, a polarizing right-winger, like Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann, who makes thinking people cringe. A majority of American voters generally reject extremist candidates on both ends of the political spectrum. While fanatics do occasionally win elections, it’s because they are smart enough not to campaign as one. And neither Perry nor Bachmann is that smart.

Obama’s campaign swing this week was full of bombastic self-praise for his successful first term and exhortations for four more years of the same. If an economy and job market made perilously worse are accomplishments, if dead end government programs and spiraling debt are resume headliners, what’s failure? We’ll never know because we’ll be moving to Australia.

See you on the left-side.

First, Obama talks too much. He’s a man of big words and small deeds, long on rhetoric and short on results. In fact, his Administration has produced no sustained economic growth in its existence. We’ve heard the reasons for this failure repeatedly and the only thing that changes is the length of the list. It grows. And grows. Bush, the evils inherent in the American financial industry, the Tea Party, the Republican House majority, the Tea Party, the tsunami in Japan. But, when the smoke is blown away, what remains is what Obama has actually done. And it is a pitifully small pile of inconsequential, albeit costly, programs.

Lest we forget, the Republican congressional majority has existed for only the last 8 months or twenty-five percent of Obama’s time in office. For the first 24 months, he had his way with Congress, to the point of losing control of the House in the 2010 elections. What were the President’s economic accomplishments during that two-year period? Absolutely nothing that had a sustainable impact. Much of what he did had no impact at all.

The futility of the Administration’s efforts to jump start the economy is not limited to embarrassing hype programs like Cash for Clunkers. A much more telling example is Obama’s efforts to resurrect the housing market, the other elephant in the room that he mostly ignores. There was HAMP, 2MP, HAFA, PRA, HAUP and several others. Despite those efforts, and the billon$ they cost, the housing market is now in a double dip recession. You could argue successfully that it never arose from the first one. But, economists agree that, if it did, it fell into the second one last May. So much for the power of acronyms over actions.

Second, with his majority in the House a thing of the past, Obama must compromise to move the country forward. But, he either misunderstands compromise or simply can’t bring himself to engage in it. That’s really a coin toss. Compromise is not in his nature. For example, he is advertising his Thursday night speech, with its first word yet to be heard, as “bipartisan”. This billing could simply be political, as in everything the President says is bipartisan and therefore anyone who disagrees with him is necessarily partisan.

Or, as likely, Obama believes that if he moves away from any part of his original agenda, he is being bipartisan. But, this belief, of course, ignores the meaning of the word. Bipartisan means of, relating to or involving representatives of two different parties. Unless you suffer from a mental disorder like schizophrenia, you can’t be bipartisan all by yourself. The President needs to come to grips with this fact and stop listening to the little voices both in his head and in his Administration. He actually has to involve Republicans in defining solutions. Simply making unilateral pronouncements and daring his opponents not to accept them isn’t bipartisanship. But, it is a strategy for failure.

Third, making a significant, and sustainable, reduction in the unemployment rate is beyond Obama’s capabilities and those of his hand-picked advisors. This reason is the crux of the problem with all of his speechifying. He’s not very good at politics, but he’s even worse at problem solving. To gain acceptance of his ideas, he prays on people’s fears, distorts opposing viewpoints and protects sacred cows beyond our ability to support them. None of this will fix our unemployment quandary.

Joblessness cannot be dealt with in the vast vacuum of political posturing. The unemployment rate will come down when the economy recovers and not before, at least not in a lasting way. Getting the economy on track means taking strong actions. We are way past short-term fixes for political advantage. We need: (a) tax reform including, among other things, incentives to business, (b) repeal of much of the costly, burdensome business regulations put in place since 2009, and (c) a serious commitment to deficit reduction, which requires effective entitlement reform. These actions create the stable environment that businesses need in order to recover and begin hiring in earnest again.

The good news for Obama is that if he can get those things done, he can also get re-elected. But, as long as his speeches are major and his actions minor, he doesn’t stand a chance. And that’s good news for everyone else.

See you on the left-side.

The prospect of perpetual prosperity can be alluring. This enticement lies at the heart of Obamanomics, which promises endless entitlements for some through higher taxes on others. But, as the demand for entitlements increases through larger aging populations and expanding social services to many more, the price tag grows exponentially. This necessitates a bigger and bigger revenue pot or deeper and deeper annual deficits. Since most of Obama’s fellow democrats agree that deficits must be tamed, entitlements require a mushrooming revenue stream gushing into federal coffers.

Under Obamanomics, the funding source is higher taxes on the rich, of course, but the sustainability of that model is not addressed. The continuing ability of those footing the bill to meet the growing demand for their money is simply assumed. These people are supposed to be a perpetual moneymaking machine with a need-to-achieve compulsion that assures ever more federal revenue.

A telling dichotomy underlies this belief. While abiding achievement is assumed in one part of the population, indelible dependence is assumed in the other, much larger, part. Viewed in microevolution terms, this change in a once-unified group marks the beginning of two subspecies, producers and consumers. Under predictable evolutionary progression, producers prosper, even if it means migrating to more accommodating locales, while consumers eventually go extinct.

The analogy could not be clearer. The indispensable core of Obamanomics is also its inevitable demise. Friedrich Heinemann, the Corporate Taxation and Public Finance Department Chair at the Centre for European Economic Research, defines the problem as a forced morality change.

In a study of the long-term impact of social norms on the welfare state, Heinemann concludes that increasing benefits and unemployment fatally destabilize the system. A generous welfare state creates a dependency in those who take from it, undermining the social norms indispensible to its survival. People become so used to feeding at the public trough, they will cheat to keep the benefits coming. Heinemann’s is not a politically correct study, but reality rarely is.

The reaction of the Greeks to their Government’s austerity measures is also real and underscores Heinemann’s point. After decades of extravagant social spending, the Greeks have shot through dire straights and are dangling in mid air over financial ruin. Keeping them from falling into the abyss is the refusal of European leaders to see their banks and their economies undone by unpaid Greek loans. But, the eurozone’s rescue imposes “austerity” on the country, if living within its means can be fairly called austere.

And the Greeks don’t like it one bit. They burn. They loot. They riot. They vent their displeasure like spoiled children whose profligate parents are trying to change their ways. And yet, public support is critical to the success of reforms necessary to restore financial health. Whether it is ultimately given is anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile, in a show of resolve, Wisconsin voters rejected the bullying tactics of national unions, refusing to restore democrat control to their legislature. All the national boys could buy for their thirty-five million dollars in campaign spending was a net gain of two seats. Sounds vaguely like the federal deficit.

Granted, this was not a direct showdown on Obamanomics. But, it does maintain the reforms that were ushered in by the 2010 elections, which were a rejection of Obama’s fiscal policies. And you can bet that, had the unions succeeded, our president would be on the stump today pushing the result as next year’s victory predictor.

Will the country’s voters follow Wisconsin’s lead and opt for responsible government or will they burn and loot in the footsteps of Greek rioters? Is there really a choice? On October 8, 2008, the national debt stood at $10.1 trillion. Today, less than three years later, it has spiraled past $14.6 trillion for a 45 percent increase. Other than hand waving and smoke screens, all we have to show for it is an historic downgrade in our credit rating.

In 2012, voters can turn out the lights on Obama or tune up the orchestra because it’ll be time for “Nearer My God To Thee”.

See you on the left-side.

In the past, Do Nothing was a pejorative, a brand to be avoided. After all, politicians who sat around doing nothing were worse than leeches on the body politic. But in today’s political culture, it is a strategy to be cultivated, a way to get your way risk free. No one exemplifies the new thinking better than Harry Reid. Not that Do Nothing is his entire game plan. The whirlwind of legislation he helped to push through the 111^th Congress made the country’s head spin. Without question, he’s a bona fide dynamo when it comes to expanding government.

But, when it comes to paying the piper for all the cool new stuff, Harry is strictly Do Nothing. The Senate Majority Leader has ducked every opportunity to develop a detailed proposal to address the national debt. The last time his Senate even offered an annual budget was in March 2009 when the red ink was a demure $10 trillion. By the end of this year, it will tip the scale at almost $15 trillion.

How did it grow so big so fast? In the year of our last budget, the deficit, at $1.4 trillion, was the largest since 1945. 2010’s $1.3 trillion operating loss was the second largest in the same time period. According to White House numbers, the 2011 deficit will come in at $1.6 trillion, the largest in U.S. history. To put this into sharper focus, on only four occasions has the deficit breached 10 percent of GDP, during three wars and now.

With the debt rising like a surging tide, why has there been no budgets to stem it? These days, budgets require difficult choices with high degrees of political risk. To the politically driven, preaching from the Book of Platitudes is infinitely more preferable than thinning sacred cow herds. Kicking the can down the road beyond the next election is definitely the way to go. So, when absolutely pressed, Do Nothings choose to grandstand down to the wire, then erect a labyrinth of smoke and mirrors and declare victory.

Where does this leave us?  Pretty much left out. The ridiculous debt ceiling agreement just inked by Obama is a perfect example. The many commentators currently mired in the weeds of speculation about the political winners and losers of the deal are missing the big picture. First, there’s so little substance to the terms of the agreement that it’s no deal at all. Second, we’re all losers. The whole episode is an international embarrassment to the people of this country. Rather than coming to grips with a crippling debt of their own creation, our politicians brought us to the brink of disaster with political posturing. And in their wake, the only thing that changed is the growing crisis.

Why don’t the Republicans, and specifically the Tea Partiers, deserve the blame here as well? For starters, they have offered several plans for dealing with the debt. Granted, each of them is flawed, but the Democrats refused either to open negotiations or counter with equally detailed versions. More than that, if it weren’t for the unseemly behavior of Reid’s Party and their monster pieces of legislation, there wouldn’t be a Tea Party. The baggers are a response to what’s wrong with the current bunch of ruling Democrats.

During last fall’s Lame Duck Congress, Reid refused to raise the debt limit even though he had the votes to extend it into 2013. His motivation was purely political. He wanted Republicans to “have some kind of a buy-in on the debt”, which is double talk for taking some of the blame. Of course, that wasn’t his approach twelve months earlier when the Democrat-controlled Congress upped the limit on a strictly partisan vote. But, back then, Republicans were effectively without power, putting them out of blame’s reach as well. So, they weren’t much use to the Senate Majority Leader.

Will the debt crisis ever be solved? Not by the Do Nothings. Small people create big problems, but they rarely solve them. It’s time to elect some big people for a change.

See you on the left-side.

In a press conference yesterday, a coalition spokesperson explained that business takeover of government is necessary to restore the American value system. To avoid the devastating mistakes of the past, the coalition will run the country strictly on a profit motive.  Any endeavor that appears to be undertaken for altruistic reasons is viewed incorrectly.

The first action of the coalition is to sideline the U.S. Constitution. Once a viable document, it has become an excuse for masses of regulations that stifle business growth. Six Sigma is now the framework of the land.

Next up on the launch pad to oblivion are the three branches of government. There were just too many checks and not enough balance, with no hope for change. The destructive inefficiencies generated by large groups of dysfunctional people with a monopoly on laws build on each other eventually destroying the system they infect. It’s time to wipe that slate clean and start anew. Beginning immediately, the government is run by a Board of Directors populated by co-operating representatives of coalition members. Of course, Board members remain only as long as they successfully discharge their duties.

At the top of the Board’s agenda is simplifying tax-based revenue generation. All income, business and individual, is taxed at a flat tax rate of 5 percent. No deductions, no write-offs, no kidding. Tariffs, subsidies and other industry supports are also terminated.  However, business incubators will be funded to accelerate the successful development of growth industries.

Next on the list is a valuation assessment of government programs and agencies using best business practices. Those with the potential of at least breaking even will become independent cost centers. Those with benefit levels exceeding revenue generation capabilities will be cut. The national transportation infrastructure including, among other assets, roads and bridges, will be maintained and improved to promote interstate commerce.

American citizens who desire to participate one day in the benefits offered by government support programs can opt in by paying premiums to the agencies. These payments will serve as the basis for later eligibility payouts. The pay-as-you go mistakes of the Social Security program, like the branches of government, are history. Beneficiaries get what they pay for, augmented by revenue earned through prudent investment of the benefit fund.

Because people need it throughout their lives, healthcare is a special case. “Quality, affordable care” rolls easily off the tongue but, so far, has defied implementation. The subject requires further study. A panel of industry experts will recommend a delivery system to the Board before the end of the fiscal year.

One of the many advantages of a business coalition government is execution of long-term vision. Rather than being held hostage to frequent national elections that necessarily focus on the short term, the coalition can set and implement far-ranging goals.

Among them are self-help programs and services that strengthen the American economy through an educated workforce and full employment. As a first step, formal education from kindergarten through graduate schools will be provided gratis as will a wide range of community youth services. Similar investments in our future growth will follow.

Government regulations will be significantly streamlined, though not eliminated. While red tape’s stranglehold on business processes will be cut, reasonable safety measures to protect employees and the public will be preserved. At the end of the day, injured workers and consumers are bad for business. Arguably, poisoning the planet is even worse.

As far as the Department of Defense goes, it went, at least in name. It is now the Department of War because it should be called what it is. And there is only one justification for military conflict. Profit. Lots of it. No gain, no pain.

In broad strokes, that about does it. For those who think the world is controlled by a secret international society of business bad guys, they’re already running the government and everything else. For the rest of us, it would at least be worth a try.

See you on the left-side.

In attempting to influence voters, politicians too often aim their pitches at the primal parts of our mental processes. They excite our fears, our prejudices, our inceptive character traits, anything that represses critical examination of the positions they advocate. But, it is our ability for analytical thought that makes us more than the sum of our emotions and lesser cognitive processes. Every time it is defeated, we lose, too.

Barack Obama consistently appeals to our baser instincts to whip up support for his agenda. One of his favorite techniques is to demean those he opposes and then use ridicule, and often dishonesty, in his public pronouncements. There are almost as many examples of this technique as there are Obama speeches. In his 2010 State of the Union address, he chided U.S. Supreme Court justices, seated before him, for a ruling with which he disagrees. For good measure, he also mischaracterized the Court’s decision.

Last week, the president used a derisive red herring to impugn the integrity of business for being anti-regulation. He also launched into a dishonest bit of demagoguery about Republicans, the safety of children and corporate jets. Earlier this year, he invited key Republicans to his budget address only to deliver a partisan, and perfidious, attack rather than a serious proposal. A few days ago, he blistered the entire congress for lacking the study discipline of his daughters who are 10 and 13 years old. This from a ‘leader’ who has yet to offer anything substantive of his own.

On the other end of the political spectrum, too many conservatives also rely on emotional calls to action rather than thoughtful discourse. While not the name-calling petulant that is Obama, Michele Bachmann rarely speaks in other than the broadest of conservative strokes. Without a scripted speech, she usually makes little sense of it. Her most recent gaffe is confusing John Wayne, the movie star, with John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer. But, she also identified Concord, New Hampshire as the birthplace of the American Revolution. While Obama has too many states in his Union, she has too few Concords in hers.

When Bachmann has to extemporize, she talks in circles as in last month’s Fox News Sunday discussion of same sex marriage. She should be thankful that the voters in her congressional district have given her the House to call home and simply stay there.

As counterproductive as emotional political debate is, who is really to blame? Certainly, politicians are happy to engage us at that level. Emotional appeals are much easier than offering coherent and detailed proposals, which can be challenged and rejected along with their authors. But, is it also what voters want? Do we prefer our fears and prejudices heightened to figuring out the best solutions to the issues we face? Today, when knowledge is instantly available on the Internet, no political scholarship site ranks among the top five hundred most visited in the U.S.

We also have a tendency to substitute personality for scrutiny, preferring to base our assessments on who is speaking rather than what is spoken. But, fact finding is the guardian of our election process. In my case, for example, I have a human on my shoulder because I need more than just a spell checker to write my blogs. But, she remains in the background because we want our arguments to rise or fall based on their strengths or weaknesses. And, of course, I’m a lot cuter.

Perhaps, Ross Perot’s pie charts during the 1992 election campaign would be the brunt of jokes in any election year. If that’s the case, the laugh is on us.

See you on the left-side.

But, does Pawlenty’s performance in a single TV interview accurately portray the candidate? Or, is he even worse than he seems? Of course, smarmy is enough to cost him the nomination as outward appearances have outsized importance in our 24 x 7 video world. Digging for substance is simply too much work. In Pawlenty’s case, digging won’t make a difference because what you see isn’t as bad as what you get.

Let’s start with Pawlenty’s self-laudatory autobiography, Courage To Stand, published just in time for his presidential campaign. In it, and in speeches since, he takes credit for steering a liberal Minnesota down a conservative fiscal path. His biggest claimed accomplishment is balancing budgets through spending cuts rather than tax increases.

Unfortunately for TPaw, both Republicans and Democrats in the Gopher State dispute his claims and the disputes ring truer than the claims. Budget balancing was done, in part, with $2.7 billion in cuts later invalidated by the Minnesota Supreme Court including its Chief Justice, a Pawlenty appointment. Meanwhile, there were fewer costs to fund at the state level, but property taxes were hiked by $2.5 billion to cover the shortfall locally.

Later, necessary revenue increases were financed by upping cigarette taxes which Pawlenty called ‘fees’. He was also helped by $2 billion in federal stimulus money. Today, only months after his departure, Minnesota is facing a $5 billion deficit. So, yes, the numbers on the sheet did balance. But, it was done with smoke and mirrors and federal funds rather than hard choices.

Then there is Pawlenty’s Google gaffe in his Better Deal spiel. In order to make up for reduced revenue from his proposed tax cuts, Pawlenty would eliminate any government service also provided by private industry. He would find those competitive private services through Google. No wonder Pawlenty remains at the bottom of candidate polls. Substituting the world’s most popular Internet search engine for deliberative strategic decision–making is for losers.

These days, Pawlenty believes his road to success is paved with the carcasses of his opponents. At the beginning of his campaign, just a little while ago, he refused to criticize Romney and others. He believed his autobiography and Better Deal plan were all he needed to capture the lead. Now, he’s ripping into other Republicans like a greedy kid with his Christmas presents.

While criticizing the opposition is, of course, standard campaign fare, Pawlenty’s shots at Romney should backfire big time. He is busy filleting the former Massachusetts governor for RomneyCare, the precursor to the hated ObamaCare. And Romney is very vulnerable on that score. But, Pawlenty is similarly susceptible to attack. In his gubernatorial days, he was a huge environmental activist.

In 2007, he signed cap and trade legislation, calling global warming one of the most important issues of our time. Later, he appeared in an ad with Janet Napolitano, urging congress to pass similar legislation. Now, as a national candidate, he’s confessing the error of his ways. To distance himself from his activist days, Pawlenty claims he was never that enamored with going green, characterizing his ardor as a mere ‘flirtation’. But signing cap and trade into law sure seems like going all the way.

Pawlenty’s spine is so weak, he can’t help but flip-flop. Since the GOP’s current frontrunner is an expert at the triple backflip himself, the Party doesn’t need another flailing aerialist.

See you on the left-side.

How bad is this situation for Obama’s 2012 chances? No president since FDR has been re-elected with unemployment above 8 percent. Worse, only one presidential incumbent in more than fifty years has been re-elected with unemployment above 7 percent. That luck guy was Ronald Reagan who won the 1984 election with a jobless rate of 7.2 percent.

Faced with a persistently tough economy, Obama’s response for many months has been that “things would have been worse” without him. In fact, the White House goes so far as to claim that the Obama Administration prevented the second Great Depression. But, like a donut hole, these are hollow assertions because they are impossible to prove. Republicans are saying just as easily that things are much worse as a result of Obama than they otherwise would have been. The GOP contention is that the economy would be rosy by now if only someone competent had been in charge.

Voters generally avoid “would have been” dead ends, preferring the where-are-we-now reality check, which means the millstone is Obama’s to jettison. Accordingly, the pro-Obama strategists have come up with a different reason to forecast a 2012 victory for our current president. They believe voters will ignore the pain if the economy is showing steady improvement by November of next year. Apparently, the reasoning is that since things have been so bad for so long, some improvement will look even brighter by comparison, assuring Obama’s re-election. In other words, if you’re a long-time incompetent but can manage to rise to mediocre down the stretch, you’ll finish first.

Fortunately for the preservation of success as a national goal, the “steady improvement” bit is a tough sell. Experts announced the end of the Great Recession two years ago. But, since then, the same experts have been continually baffled by unexpected downturns and surprising stagnation. Just last week, economists were scratching their heads over May’s economic report of higher unemployment, a slowdown in manufacturing and a decrease in consumer spending.  Thanks to a flatlining recovery, double-dip is now on many a lip.

So, what will Obama end up doing about the millstone weighing him down?  From a big picture view, what he’s always done. Play his blame-games, lashing out in his trademark derisive manner at his two favorite targets, Republicans and “the rich”. In April, Obama blistered all of them in what was billed as a serious fiscal policy speech. Instead, it was long on inaccuracies and short on specifics that make dollars and sense. It was basically an attempt to exploit social divisions that Obama’s ‘unity’ presidency has fostered from its inception.

But, a broad-strokes picture of the progressive left vision isn’t enough to capture the wider spectrum of voters essential to Obama’s re-election. He will need at least a facade of facts that point the finger of blame for the economy outward. We’re starting to see the groundwork laid for that endeavor.

Liberal economists, such as former Chief Economic Adviser Christina Romer, argue that the stimulus package should have been much bigger. Something in the neighborhood of $1.2 to $2 trillion would have really gotten the economy going.  Of course, it was Obama’s congressional majorities that passed the stimulus package. So, even if you can stomach the argument, where does the blame lie for the less than adequate stimulus size?

On a recent Sunday talk show, Congresswoman Donna Edwards hinted at another faux fact to push blame for the economy on others. According to Edwards, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the rich are responsible because they’re hoarding their money instead of spending it.

Apparently disagreeing with Romer, Edwards lauded the stimulus but stated that it was stifled by the stingy folks with all the money. At the same time, her Progressive Caucus advocates taxing the rich out of existence. She can’t have it both ways and she, like Obama, needs to keep the rich around. Without them, who’s there to blame?

See you on the left-side.

Under that theory, if the election were held today, the elephant would win because the state of our economy makes most of us very cranky. And, according to the prevailing wisdom, people vote their wallets first and foremost. How bad is it? In the first quarter of this year, GDP fell to an anemic 1.8% from 3.1% in the previous quarter. Unemployment in April rose again to 9% while the number of people who gave up looking or settled for part-time work climbed to 15.9%. The housing market remains unstable. The huge government debt hangs like Damocles’ Sword over everything.

Of course, today is not November 6, 2012 and things can change between now and then. But, by enough? Probably not. Twenty eight months into Obama’s presidency, we’re still wallowing deep in the doldrums caused by the Great Recession. The recovery, to the extent it exists, is “uneven”. Robust is not a word on anyone’s lips, not even Obama’s. The remedies he has tried since January 2009 have not turned things around as he promised they would. In fact, things got worse than he claimed they would ever get. What he’s likely to do in the next 18 months has virtually no chance of making a significant improvement for a couple of reasons. It’s obvious by now that he doesn’t know how to jump-start a capitalist economy. And his record shows that even his instincts are wrong.

What we can expect to get from him is a lot of pious rhetoric, and taunting and mocking, of course. But, what we won’t get is a detailed plan for a return to economic prosperity. He never comes up with the specifics of anything. All he seems to do is hand wave his way through speeches loaded with emotional trigger words and pointless platitudes. Analyzing that for anything substantive is like catching grains of sand pouring through your fingers. Try as hard as you might, you’re not going to come up with anything solid.

The economy is much more likely to show signs of a real recovery before November 2012 if Obama gets out of the way. He just has to stop trying to raise killer taxes and over-regulate businesses. Give them breathing room and see what they can do. At least then all we’d have to contend with is his taking credit for the efforts of others. But, even if a sustained upturn begins later this year or next, is it enough to get Obama re-elected? I don’t think so. He turns too many people off with his leading-from-behind style, his government-can’t-get-big-enough expansion and his class warfare battle strategy.

Obama’s a politician, not a leader. He’d rather sit on the sidelines, ridiculing and jeering, than take the initiative in charting a course through hard times. He plays waiting games, baiting others to offer detailed solutions so he can attack them based on the current political wind speed and direction. Rather than facing up to difficult choices, he spews counterproductive rhetoric that divides when unity is sorely needed. Our President simply is not up to the commander-in-chief task.

His years of day-in-and-day-out failings are difficult to escape. Voters are unlikely to forget the difference between the promise of Obama in 2008 and the reality of his performance by 2012. Even now good feelings about him are less enthusiastic and fade faster than those enjoyed by other White House occupants. In the latest example, the bounce he got from bin Laden’s assassination earlier this month has evaporated. This week his Presidential Approval Index hit minus ten.

It is true that people vote their wallets. In this case, they can’t afford more of what Obama has been trying to sell. Rejecting his pitch is something to vote for. That, and the large gray circus animal.

See you on the left-side.