By Conn Carroll Washington Examiner
There is little question that President Obamas Friday press conference did major damage to his reelection effort. In case you have been on another planet Obama was asked to defend his economic record without blaming Europe and he
responded The truth of the matter is that as I said we created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months over 800000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine."
Within minutes the Republican National Committee had a video up using the presidents quote in a
carbon copy version of the ad Obama using Sen. John McCains R-Ariz. September 2008 quote"the fundamentals of our economy are strong." And within hours Obama tried to walk back his gaffe telling the press at a
photo-op later in the day It is absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine."
But yesterday on
CNNs State of the Union Obama adviser David Axelrod seemed far less willing to say flatly that the private sector is not doing fine. Asked if he agreed with Obamas doing fine" assessment Axelrod made the case for more government spending: Candy the press conference was called to press for hiring … to push to give state and local governments help to rehire some of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of teachers firefighters and police who have been laid off in this in this last couple of years."
Pressed again to state whether he thought the private sector was doing fine Axelrod said: The private sector we need to accelerate job creation in the private sector. … One of the ways that is we can do that is putting teachers and firefighters and police back to work because those are good middle class jobs." To which Crowley responded Thats the public sector." Axelrod shot back But that will help accelerate the recovery."
And that is why Obamas the private sector is doing fine" comment will stick: because he believes it. The Obama administration truly believes that the private sector is doing just fine and all the economy needs is a bit more Keynesian government spending on government employees to get demand going again. Thats their plan.
Tax reform cutting regulation ending the uncertainty of Obamacare and Taxmageddon … none of these problems are on the Obama administrations radar. They are simply incapable of seeing how government is still strangling private sector economic growth. This will be THE issue going forward in this election.
