The economy grew in the first quarter at “point one percent,” announced Mitch McConnell, and then repeated it by way of introduction to an attack on President Obama’s economic policies. Whether seeming to revel in the misery of a slow recovery that has kept unemployment high and wages low simply because it drives the president’s approval rating down is good politics I leave to politicians, “that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a … politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuation of affairs,” as Adam Smith put it.
But it certainly is bad economics. It is foolish to plant one’s feet in the quicksand of one data point, Smith’s “momentary fluctuation”—unless one is prepared to congratulate Obama if the predicted spring rebound occurs as consumers make up for snow-bound time, as they seem to be doing.
