National Review: Obama: More a Carter than a Reagan
[From the editors]
There is a chart currently making the rounds that shows President Reagan’s approval ratings during his first two years in office overlaid upon President Obama’s. The trend lines nearly overlap. Liberal commentators are using the chart to argue that Obama’s unpopularity is almost entirely attributable to the weak economy and thus comparable to that of Reagan, who also inherited a recession. If the economy improves, the argument goes, then Obama’s approval ratings will bounce back just as Reagan’s did. Liberals add that Obama faces a more difficult task than Reagan did because he inherited a nastier recession. Some conservatives are taking issue with this, arguing that Obama has made his task much more difficult by going on a government spending spree, whereas Reagan cut taxes to stimulate growth.
Both arguments miss the important ways in which the recessions the two men inherited are similar and the important ways in which their approaches differed. Both men faced seemingly intractable economic problems with no easy solution, but Reagan understood that curing the nation’s debilitating inflation was going to involve a good deal of short-term economic pain and political unpopularity, and he was prepared to endure that. By contrast, Obama has done everything in his power to avoid painful corrections — at great cost to future taxpayers. It is increasingly evident that his policies have merely put off these corrections or dragged them out, and that we have not avoided them at all. Reagan’s willingness to accept painful and unpopular but necessary economic adjustments — and Obama’s lack of the same fortitude — is the essence of what separates the two men.
It is true that Reagan and Obama faced very different challenges. The biggest impediment to economic growth in the late 1970s and early 1980s was instability in the general price level that made it difficult for businesses to make long-term plans or invest with confidence in the future. As Robert Samuelson explains in The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath, the resulting stagflation confounded U.S. policymakers, who had come to rely on excessively cheap money as an easy way of keeping the unemployment rate low. President Carter nominated Paul Volcker in 1979 to head the Federal Reserve without understanding that Volcker would set out immediately to conquer inflation. “It is doubtful that, aside from Reagan, any other potential president would have let the Fed proceed unchallenged,” Samuelson writes, one of many reasons it is a lucky thing that Carter lost and Reagan won....
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There is a chart currently making the rounds that shows President Reagan’s approval ratings during his first two years in office overlaid upon President Obama’s. The trend lines nearly overlap. Liberal commentators are using the chart to argue that Obama’s unpopularity is almost entirely attributable to the weak economy and thus comparable to that of Reagan, who also inherited a recession. If the economy improves, the argument goes, then Obama’s approval ratings will bounce back just as Reagan’s did. Liberals add that Obama faces a more difficult task than Reagan did because he inherited a nastier recession. Some conservatives are taking issue with this, arguing that Obama has made his task much more difficult by going on a government spending spree, whereas Reagan cut taxes to stimulate growth.
Both arguments miss the important ways in which the recessions the two men inherited are similar and the important ways in which their approaches differed. Both men faced seemingly intractable economic problems with no easy solution, but Reagan understood that curing the nation’s debilitating inflation was going to involve a good deal of short-term economic pain and political unpopularity, and he was prepared to endure that. By contrast, Obama has done everything in his power to avoid painful corrections — at great cost to future taxpayers. It is increasingly evident that his policies have merely put off these corrections or dragged them out, and that we have not avoided them at all. Reagan’s willingness to accept painful and unpopular but necessary economic adjustments — and Obama’s lack of the same fortitude — is the essence of what separates the two men.
It is true that Reagan and Obama faced very different challenges. The biggest impediment to economic growth in the late 1970s and early 1980s was instability in the general price level that made it difficult for businesses to make long-term plans or invest with confidence in the future. As Robert Samuelson explains in The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath, the resulting stagflation confounded U.S. policymakers, who had come to rely on excessively cheap money as an easy way of keeping the unemployment rate low. President Carter nominated Paul Volcker in 1979 to head the Federal Reserve without understanding that Volcker would set out immediately to conquer inflation. “It is doubtful that, aside from Reagan, any other potential president would have let the Fed proceed unchallenged,” Samuelson writes, one of many reasons it is a lucky thing that Carter lost and Reagan won....