“More Of The Same” With Obama
Politicians spit it out like an epithet; “only more of the same!” As if that’s always the worst option possible, give us anything but more of the same. Democrats and Republicans instinctively belittle the day when nothing new is offered beyond the oft ridiculed more of the same. Except when times are good of course. When times are good the temptation sets in to change absolutely nothing, not even your jersey if you’re a baseball pitcher on a winning streak. Keep a good thing going and don’t tinker with success. Politics flickers like a bad fluorescent light bulb; change, freeze, change, freeze. What gets lost in the strobe lights is usually common sense.
We know better in our own lives, at least most of us do. Our personal decisions are less mechanical. Just because drinking that first vodka and tonic brought about generally desirable results is no reason to assume that drinking a second, third, or fourth one will do the same. Most of us resist that blind assumption. Common sense and experience kick in instead. Likewise with life’s adversities. You start running a high fever so you see the Doctor. She says you have a bad infection and prescribes antibiotics as a treatment. You go home and take a full dose but still feel absolutely awful. Same thing happens in the morning: Little or no improvement. What do you do that evening? You go for more of the same.
It is the nature of calamities that destruction comes in s relative blink of an eye, while recovery can seem to drag on for eternity. An assassin nearly took Gabby Giffords life. The world she knew was obliterated in an instant. It required drastic action to save her, but there was no rapid way to restore her health. Gabby is an inspiration and an American hero. Everyday she faces more of the same; more stressful physical therapy, more frustrating mental exercises. Over and over the prescription essentially remains the same, because slow as it may be, that is the best route to her recovery.
We have all been schooled well about the weather. We know the difference between a category one, two, or three storm. Hurricane Cindy struck Louisiana during the same year that Hurricane Katrina did. Recovery from the former was rapid, not so the latter. Americans understand that not all hurricanes are the same. Neither are recessions. Over the past hundred years the United States has experienced numerous recessions, but only one was a category 5, and that was The Great Depression. Recovery from that one dragged on for nearly a decade, and many believe it would have taken even longer had it not been for World War II.
The Recession that President Obama inherited the first day he stepped into the oval office might not have clocked in then as a category 5, but it certainly rated a high category 4, the deadliest economic storm our nation has faced since the 1930’s. When Hurricane Cindy first struck Louisiana in July 2005 it was initially categorized as a Tropical Storm, but was later upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane in the post-storm analysis. Something similar happened with The Great Recession.
While President Obama fought to prevent an economic slide into a second Great Depression, he assured America that we could turn adversity around; that our worst fears would be averted, and that strength would be restored to America’s economy. As FDR once famously stated, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”, and Barack Obama worked hard to resstore consumer confidence in the American economy by proclaiming his own confidence in America’s future. He staked his political reputation on an economic recovery, and we are in one today.
Our recovery is slower than the President initially forcast, but it turns out that the recession itself was far worse than how experts were characterizing it when Obama actually made his recovery projections. That fact was revealed in revised figures documenting the actual GDP loss during the recession that were retroactively released by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis:
“The overall pattern of quarterly changes during the downturn was similar in both the revised and previously published estimates, though the revised estimates show larger decreases for 2008:Q4 (-8.9 percent compared with -6.8 percent) and for 2009:Q1 (-6.7 percent compared with -4.9 percent).”
http://www.bea.gov/faq/index.cfm?faq_id=1004
Americans love Super Glue and Duct Tape, but there isn’t always a quick fix for every problem. Some solutions play out over time, and require perseverance to achieve. Sometimes it takes more of the same. Sometimes it even takes four more years. One thing though is certain. No disaster victim is ever well served by sending them back to a disaster zone. Wrong policies caused our economy to crash in 2008. Restoring those who advocated them to power in Washington would be a change from “more of the same”. It would be more of what caused the disaster in the first place.
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