Even Obama's stumbles seem lucky

It occurred to me as I was talking to Robert Rector from the Heritage Foundation about the fact that Obama's "stimulus" bill essentially eliminates the Clinton-era welfare reform that not only reduced the number on welfare but actually reduced poverty levels, that Barack Obama may actually have been fortunate to have had some procedural and personnel stumbles. Here's why.

The MSM covered Bill Richardson, Geithner's, Daschle's and others' tax problems, and then Judd Gregg, treating them as setbacks for Obama and in some cases as evidence that he was unlikely to be the transformative leader able to transcend politics and leap tall buildings in a single bound. That gave them the ability to say, in essence, "see, we're critical, we're not in the tank, we're able to report on his shortcomings." At least they convince themselves that they're tough and hardheaded. One consequence, however, is an almost complete lack of analytical interest in the "stimulus" bill and the fact that it isn't stimulative at all. Giving people who didn't pay taxes another immediate "credit" might have actually been stimulative in the classic Keynesian sense and would have routed it through low-income people, but they didn't do it, instead expanding government and stretching out the spending. To call this a "stimulus" bill is to perpetrate a falsehood. Most of the media repeat the untruth several times a day.

Spending our way to prosperity -- not!

Much of the negative commentary about Obama's economic "stimulus" plan has focused on the obvious pork contained therein -- although Obama may be technically right when he said there were no earmarks -- not enough time to slip them in, and besides, practically everything from everybody's wish list had already been slopped in.

I think this Register editorial managed to get closer to fundamentals -- reminding readers that the Bush era had already been an era of big spending, and not only on the war(s), and that it was loose money, easy credit and moral hazard -- why be prudent if you know the gummint will cover your losses? -- that got us into this mess in the first place. We might get a temporary illusion of recovery from this massive spneding spree, but it will crowd out genuinely productive spending and entrepreneurial activities, foster inflation and possible create another bubble to be burst. I wouldn't mind being wrong, but I don't think I am.

Only stimulating pork

Peggy Noonan has a tendency to over-romanticize politics and its capacity to be ennobling or even sometimes constructive. Still, she has a point in yesterday's column. Obama missed a big chance to assert himself and come up with a "stimulus" that might have actually stimulated some economic activity instead of just being a pastiche of pork (assuming government spending is actually stimulative, which is far from certain. Tax cuts can be, however.). Both Democrats and Republicans couldn't wait to return to their hyper-partisan habits, with the Democrats crafting a bill with everything on their wish-list for the last couple of decades with zero GOP input, and all House Republicans taking a stand and voting against it. I'm inclined to agree that there's a stupid party and an evil party, and when they get together and produce something both stupid and evil they call it bipartisanship. But the swiftness with which both parties were so eager to let Obama know post-partisanship wouldn't last a week was kinda shocking. If he had had more legislative experience or had thought this stimulus thing through more, I think he could have knocked some Dem heads together and forced a slightly less obnoxious bill. Maybe it will happen in the Senate. Here's the Register's take on the situation.