Honey I Shrunk My Approval Ratings
By Karl Rove
In what will rank as one of the all-time presidential PR disasters were now well over half way through what the White House called the summer of recovery.
And what a recovery its been. All of this has helped shatter public confidence in the president.
- Earlier this month first-time claims for unemployment hit a nine-month high.
- The unemployment rate remains at 9.5 and 18.4 of workers are out of a job can only get part-time work or have given up looking for a job altogether.
- Sales of existing homes dropped 27 from June to July hitting the lowest point since data were first collected in 1999.
- The Conference Boards Consumer Confidence Index fell to 50.4 in July continuing a slide that started in February.
- And the stock market is down 11 from its peak in April.
In early May Mr. Obamas approval on the economy in the YouGov/Polimetrix poll was 42. By mid-August it was 35a frightening number for Democrats less than 70 days from a midterm election. According to this weeks Reuters poll 72 are very worried about jobs and 67 very concerned about government spending.
Mr. Obamas credibility is crumbling and for good reason: He and his people are saying things people dont believe. At the start of his summer of recovery road show the president flatly asserted that last years massive stimulus package had worked. Vice President Joe Biden not to be outdone promised monthly job gains of up to 500000 and insisted that the recoverys pace continues to increase not decrease as stimulus spending was moving into its highest gear.
Its slightly surreal. Who are you going to believe as Groucho Marx once said me or your own eyes?
The administrations claims have collided with reality in other instances as well. Mr. Obamas Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romerspeaking before the 2009 stimulus was approvedsaid unemployment would top out at 8 by the third quarter of 2009 and decline to less than 7 by the end of 2010. Even the White House now admits that the unemployment rate will stay at or above 9 through 2011.
The White House also frequently asserts that between 2.3 million and 2.8 million jobs were either saved or created by the $620 billion in stimulus money spent by June. Set aside the absurdity of the administration inventing the saved category and then pretending it can ascertain with scientific precision the number of jobs that have been saved. Since the stimulus passed 2.6 million Americans have lost their jobs and 1.2 million people have given up even looking for work.
Mr. Obama and his people also mischaracterize where most stimulus dollars go. Their constant prattle about shovel ready projects is an attempt to leave the impression that most goes to bricks and mortar. Not true: Only 3.3 of the $814 billion stimulus went to the Federal Highway Administration for highway and bridge projects.
The administrations misleading statements and obfuscations arent limited to the economy. On health care for example Mr. Obama continues saying that (a) health-care reform will reduce costs and the deficit (b) no one who wants to keep existing coverage will lose it and (c) the laws cuts in Medicare wont threaten any seniors health care. These assertions are laughable.
The presidents habit of exaggeration and misstatement has infected other Democrats. Speaker Nancy Pelosi for example routinely talks about how the recently passed Stimulus II spending bill protected the jobs of police and firemen.
But it didnt.
Stimulus II consisted of two parts: $10 billion for education and $16 billion for Medicaid. States cant spend Medicaid money for anything but Medicaid and they can only spend the education money on education i.e. they cant shuffle state funds around. Language allowing Stimulus II dollars to pay for police and firemen didnt make it out of the Senate. Yet Democratic leaders persist in saying that their latest stimulus has helped keep police and firefighters on the job. The claim is flatly untrue.
By overselling the stimulus before its passage in 2009 and exaggerating its benefits with layer upon layer of slippery half-truths in 2010 Mr. Obama has made voters angrier. This is not Americas summer of recovery; it is a summer of economic discontent that will ensure that Democrats take a pounding in the midterm elections.
Mr. Rove the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush is the author of Courage and Consequence (Threshold Editions 2010).
