Morning Must Reads — It’s the Big Government, Stupid

While the president was in New Hampshire rebutting claims about his party’s health plans and offering more platitudinous  promises about proposals that he says will only make you give up the things that don’t help you, he wasn’t talking about why it’s necessary at this moment to turn up the volume on government control. This isn’t about Medicare reimbursement rates or even death panels. This is about liberty.

Balz, echoing Examiner colleague Michael Barone’s column, grasps that American politics exists on the continuum between libertarian and socialist, and that while the economic crisis that blew up a year ago shoved the national zeitgeist away from personal freedom and individual responsibility, American’s still aren’t enthusiastic statists.

Obama has unconvincingly argued that his expansions of federal power in auto making, banking, stimulating the economy and other arenas was unwilling. Bringing something as big as health care along as the caboose of that train is proving too much.

The heart of the debate over health is the question of a government-run insurance option to make it tough on private insurers. The president wants it and a bill might not pass the House without it.  Balz suggests that the time has come for Obama to start trying to sell his fellow Democrats on the idea of reform without a government plan. It’s a nice thought, but the president has already made a hash of the health debate. He is already fighting on too many fronts.

“Has the health-care debate reached a point at which he must make clearer what he regards as essential in a final bill, including the public option? That is likely to become a topic for debate inside the administration in coming weeks.

Obama might prefer to use the public option as a bargaining chip late in the legislative process. But would he be better off trying to reshape the debate now by saying he is prepared to take the public option off the table? Some of his staunchest allies believe that course would be prudent and might change the dynamic of the debate in the administration’s favor.

Obama can hope to affect the debate with rhetoric and salesmanship, which was the purpose of his trip to New Hampshire. But he also will have to take concrete action to steer the legislation toward success. Many of his allies believe the time for such action has now arrived.”

Wall Street Journal — A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?

Perhaps the greatest danger to the Obama presidency is the president’s own tendency to show off his intellectual chops. Especially on matters of great intricacy, President Obama prides himself on being able to dazzle with his grasp of minute detail.

Writers Neil King and Jonathan Weisman do a great job of explaining how that personality trait is affecting the way the administration works.

King and Weisman use the vehicle of the president’s daily economic briefing, an Obama invention that brings all of his top economic advisers into the Oval Office every morning that POTUS is in the White House, to explain how the president loves to get down in the weeds on derivatives trading or mortgage calculations, quizzing his Treasury secretary or the director of his national economic council on arcane points.

The point is that attention to detail can be distracting in a job that requires big picture thinking. The Obamanauts say the president can deal in detail and then snap back out to the 10,000-foot view because he’s so smart.

What the piece only obliquely discusses, though, is the fact that the attention to detail doesn’t matter without the will to act. If the president loves to talk about policy, but retreats to conventional politics, the detail is but a parlor trick. Without a vision, details are meaningless.

“Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, says Mr. Obama has taken some “very big bites of the apple” on issues like health insurance and financial regulation. But, facing a choice between his vision and making a deal, Mr. Obama has tended to choose the latter, Mr. Baker says. “He’s thinking big but being cautious.”

To Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the House Small Business Committee, “it looks a lot like he’s shooting from the hip, and he has no idea what he’s shooting at.” Mr. Graves met with Mr. Obama and his economic team in May on small-business policy, and says he told them that efforts to free up small-business lending would do little good if the administration raised small-business’s burdens in other ways, such as a new health-insurance requirement.”

Bloomberg — U.S. Enters Recovery as Stimulus Refutes Skeptics, Survey Shows

Writers Shobhana Chandra and Kristy Scheuble share the results of the monthly Bloomberg survey of top economists and find a surge in optimism and an average projection of 2 percent growth over the next four quarters.

Like an unsavory acquaintance dropped off at the bus depot late at night, the White House has deposited the final component of the proposed “overhaul” of the financial world with Congress in the midst of an August recess while the whole world is talking about whether we will tolerate living like Canadians. The proposal for regulating derivative markets like the one for credit default swaps is getting short shrift because what the administration hopes now is that the crackles of economic recovery turn into the hum of a healthy economy. The big changes discussed by team Obama months ago have given way to a collective intake of breath and some finger crossing. Also gone is the discussion of changing the way the American economy works. It seems that Democrats would be very happy to see the return of the heedless consumerism that fed growth for the past 15 years.

The White House has so far been cautious about claiming victory, but with the stimulus billions seeping out, they’re getting a little froggy. But before they can take credit, people need to get back to work.

“Americans are hurting as employers continue to cut jobs, albeit at a slower pace. The unemployment rate will average 9.8 percent in 2010, according to the Bloomberg survey taken from Aug. 5 to Aug. 11.

“The labor market is going to be the key,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. “The risk isn’t that it gets much worse, but that it doesn’t improve quickly enough. It’d be nice if the consumer found his legs.”

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, will rise an average 1.5 percent from July to December, up from prior estimates, the survey showed.

“What’s happening now is a leveling off, not a strong increase in growth, and that owes a little to the stimulus package,” said Robert Solow, a Nobel laureate and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Seeing the rest of it filter through to the economy in the second half of the year will be extremely helpful.”

Wall Street Journal — Clunkers Prove Common, But Dream Cars Are Scarce

The most successful and popular component of government efforts to pump up the economy is the cash for clunkers program. And many expect that when the $2 billion extension runs out, Congress will cough up more money to keep the good times rolling.

But carmakers can’t bet on that. What the program has done so far is clean out inventory for America’s overstocked car lots, not get assembly lines back to capacity.

Writer Joseph White looks at how the $2 billion is driving buyers to lots but not necessarily having them drive off in new fuel-efficient vehicles. The cars people want – like the Ford Focus – are gone, leaving more expensive or ugly vehicles behind.

That means the program will either be less popular or carmakers will take a huge risk on increased production in a down market.

“If you want a compact car, check out a Mazda 3 (47 days’ supply, Consumer Reports recommended). If you have a bit more money, the Acura TSX is a sporty compact with a luxury brand and, as of July 31, 60 days’ worth of stock. The Acura dealer might just be more flexible than a Ford dealer with nothing left but stripped purple Focuses left on the lot. Another compact car alternative: the Volkswagen Jetta. Not cheap, but recommended by Consumer Reports and at 44 days’ supply, not as scarce as it could be.

One of the toughest categories, for bargain-conscious shoppers, is compact crossover sport-utility vehicles, such as the Ford Escape. Toyota’s rival RAV4 was down to just 20 days’ supply after the July sales rush. Honda had just 37 days’ worth of its popular CR-V wagons left. The new Chevrolet Equinox was down to 25 days’ supply. But Hyundai’s Tucson is in relatively plentiful supply—93 days’ worth left on hand as of July 31. Consumer Reports lists the Tucson on its recommended list.”

Maureen Dowd — Toilet-Paper Barricades

Maureen Dowd is so mean. But you try to not laugh at her take on Hillary Clinton’s “KO in the Congo” when someone asked her what Bubba thought about the IMF.

But her point is that this ugly August is not what the president’s supporters had in mind for the postpartisan, postracial, post-Clinton-dysfunction world that Barack Obama was supposed to usher in when he hit town on his white charger, with turtle doves tweeting.”

“The young grass-roots army that swept Obama into office has yet to mobilize now that the fight is about something complicated rather than a charismatic hope-monger. No, they can’t?

Instead of a multicultural tableau of beaming young idealists on screen, we see ugly scenes of mostly older and white malcontents, disrupting forums where others have come to actually learn something. Instead of hope, we get swastikas, death threats and T-shirts proclaiming “Proud Member of the Mob.”

President Obama has proven quicksilver instincts, but not in this case. You would think that a politician schooled in community organizing and the foul balls of a presidential campaign would be ready to squash this kind of nuttiness. (Like it or not, Speaker Pelosi, that’s democracy in action.) Instead, the president’s overconfident Harvard Law Review side, expecting a high-minded debate, prevailed.”

 

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