{"id":10910,"date":"2011-08-29T12:09:35","date_gmt":"2011-08-29T16:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10910"},"modified":"2011-08-29T11:22:11","modified_gmt":"2011-08-29T15:22:11","slug":"kaus-ten-things-obama-should-have-done-differently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/08\/29\/kaus-ten-things-obama-should-have-done-differently\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaus: Ten things Obama should have done differently"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mickey Kaus<\/a> thinks the President would have been much better off (and the US economy too) if he’d done several things differently:<\/p>\n

\n

Excessively well-sourced Obama boosters are now channeling, not just White House spin but White House self-pity. Both Ezra Klein and Jonathan Alter wonder aloud why our intelligent, conscientious, well-meaning, data-driven President is taking a \u201cpummeling.\u201d \u201dWhat could Obama have done?\u201d (Klein) \u201cWhat, specifically, has he done wrong .. .?\u201d (Alter)<\/p>\n

They\u2019re kidding, right? There are plenty of things Obama could have done differently. Most of these mistakes were called out at the time. Here, off the top of my head, are ten things Obama could have done:<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

3. Made the UAW take a pay cut.<\/strong> Whoever else is to blame, the UAW\u2019s demands for pay and work rules clearly contributed to the need for a taxpayer-subsidized auto bailout. To make sure that future unions were deterred from driving their industries into bankruptcy, Obama demanded cuts in basic pay of \u2026 exactly zero. UAW workers gave up their Easter holiday but didn\u2019t suffer any reduction in their $28\/hour base wage. Wouldn\u2019t a lot of taxpayers like $28 hour jobs? Even $24 an hour jobs?<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

5. Not pursued a zombie agenda<\/strong> of \u201ccard check\u201d and \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d\u2013two misguided pieces of legislation that Obama must have known had no chance of passage but that he had to pretend to care about to keep key Democratic constituencies on board. What was the harm? The harm was that these issues a)<\/strong> sucked up space in the liberal media, b)<\/strong> made Obama look feckless at best, delusional at worst, when they went nowhere; c)<\/strong> made him look even weaker because it was clear he was willing to suffer consequence (b) in order to keep big Democratic constituencies (labor, Latinos) on board.<\/p>\n

6. Dispelled legitimate fears of “corporatism”<\/strong> — that is, fears that he was creating a more Putin-style economy in which big businesses depend on the government for favors (and are granted semi-permanent status if they go along with the program). I don\u2019t think Obama is a corporatist, but he hasn\u2019t done a lot to puncture the accusations. What did electric carmaker Tesla have to promise to get its Dept. of Energy subsidies? Why raid GOP-donor Gibson\u2019s guitars and not Martin guitars? We don\u2019t know. At this point, you have to think the president kind of likes the ambiguity\u2013the vague, implicit macho threat that if you want to play ball in this economy, you\u2019re better off on Team Obama. That\u2019s a good way to guarantee Team Obama will be gone in 2013.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh, and for a bonus bit of unwelcome news for President Obama, his uncle has just been arrested for drunk driving. His illegal alien<\/a> uncle, who now faces deportation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mickey Kaus thinks the President would have been much better off (and the US economy too) if he’d done several things differently: Excessively well-sourced Obama boosters are now channeling, not just White House spin but White House self-pity. Both Ezra Klein and Jonathan Alter wonder aloud why our intelligent, conscientious, well-meaning, data-driven President is taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,84,53,13],"tags":[158,698,278,162,392],"class_list":["post-10910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-politics","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-congress","tag-governmentmotors","tag-socializedmedicine","tag-unions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2PY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10910"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10912,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10910\/revisions\/10912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}