SALON

Thursday, Nov 11, 2010 6:53 PM UTC

The big lie: Attacking the debt is good politics

Sure, polls show that Americans don't like big deficits. But that's not why they're really upset

By

Topics: Barack Obama, War Room,

The big lie: Attacking the debt is good politicsU.S. President Barack Obama delivers the keynote speech at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta November 10, 2010. Obama was given a rock star's welcome at one of Indonesia's biggest universities on Wednesday, where he charmed an audience with speech laced with local lingo and a message of reform. REUTERS/Barbara Walton/Pool (INDONESIA - Tags: POLITICS EDUCATION)(Credit: © Pool New / Reuters)

I’ll leave the debate over the policy merits of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles’ debt reduction recommendations to others. But one claim that is rapidly emerging as conventional wisdom among pundits deserves and demands to be refuted: the notion that pursuing the Simpson-Bowles blueprint would be a political winner for Barack Obama.

The argument goes something like this: Polls show that Americans are worried about growing deficits and want action. Embracing Simpson-Bowles will demonstrate that Obama is responsive to this concern while also allowing him to claim the middle, with ideologues on both sides vehemently opposing key components of the Simpson-Bowles prescription. As Andrew Sullivan puts it:

All of which leads to an obvious and compelling political and policy win-win for the president. He needs to embrace this opportunity to end the long-term debt and pivot to the center and call the right’s bluff at the same time. There is nothing that would restore Obama’s cred with Independents more than tackling his own party’s ideologues on the deficit and the debt

This may sound compelling, but it’s just not accurate. Sure, you can find polls that show an unusually high number of Americans expressing concerns about deficits and the debt, but this sentiment is explained by two phenomena: 1) Republican voters’ (and functionally Republican “independents”) echoing their party leaders (and right-wing talk show hosts and activists), who identified the debt as a political weapon to use against Obama from the earliest days of his presidency; and 2) authentic swing voters’ (that is, the small share of registered independents who really do swing back-and-forth between the parties) pointing to the debt as a top worry because their intense economic anxiety has made them receptive to the GOP’s doomsday warnings about runaway deficits.

So, let’s say that Obama actually did embrace Simpson-Bowles and got it enacted. Would this “restore his cred with Independents”? Not at all. First, as noted above, a significant chunk of the “independents” who are worried about the debt are actually functional Republicans — that is, they vote Republican in election after election but like to call themselves “independent.” These voters would not suddenly give Obama credit for tackling the deficit; they’d simply follow along with whatever line top GOP leaders and activists came up with in response. As for the “real” independents, the small chunk who aren’t functionally part of either party, their debt/deficit fears are driven mainly by economic anxiety, so they’d only give Obama credit if the economy simultaneously improved. At 9.6 percent unemployment, “real” independents aren’t in the mood for giving Obama credit for much of anything; they’re mainly looking for reasons to blame him.

Keep in mind that twice in the last 30 years the deficit has emerged as a top national issue — and both times it coincided with an economic downturn. In the recession of the early ’80s, it was Democrats who were pointing fingers at a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, for policies that sent the debt soaring. In 1982, at the height of the Reagan recession, “independent” voters also pointed to exploding deficits as one of their top concerns. Notably, Reagan continued to pile on debt in 1983 and 1984 (with even worse projections for 1985 and 1986), but the economy also came back to life in those years. Walter Mondale tried to make the debt — which had more than doubled on Reagan’s watch, with no slowdown in sight — the top issue of his 1984 campaign. He lost 49 states. Real “independents” had stopped caring about the issue.

Bill Clinton’s story is also instructive. He came to office in 1993 after a campaign in which the national debt had played an unusually prominent role (1992 was the year of Paul Tsongas and Ross Perot). Clinton immediately sought to set the country on course for a balanced budget. He abandoned the middle-class tax cut he’d campaigned on and pushed through a budget that raised income tax rates for the top 1.2 percent of Americans. Deficit watchdog groups like the Tsongas-founded Concord Coalition gave the plan high marks. But every single Republican opposed it because it contained “the largest tax increase in history.” The public turned against it too. Only years later, after it was clear that all of the dire Republican predictions had been bogus, did Clinton get any credit from voters for attacking deficits — and he only got that credit because the public, thanks to a booming economy, was in the mood to give him credit for just about anything.

The policy debate of Simpson-Bowles will be an important one. But let’s not pretend that Obama has just been handed some magical political opportunity. That’s just not the case.

Steve Kornacki

Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 37 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations