Alan Blinder and Those Hateful Republicans

Every week I wonder where and when the inspiration will hit for my next spout. I had finished my morning bowl of Rice Krispies and JD and was well into my favorite newspaper, the WSJ, when the inspiration came. As often happens I can’t stop myself from reading columns written by Alan Blinder, economics professor at Princeton. I especially love the pictures but this time he supplied the words that make writing this blog so much fun. The title of the article (WSJ, page A15, October 25, 2016) is “It’s Not the Economy Stupid. It’s the Political Gridlock.”

The main point of the article is that if voters and other people are not happy in the USA it is because of politics. The economy is just spiffy. It is the politicians that make us feel unhappy about our lives. And guess which ones are persona non grata? You got it. Those pesky Republicans did it.  I felt at first relieved that if I wanted to accuse someone for my irritable bowel I now know exactly who to blame. But then after thinking about it for about 10 seconds I realized that Professor Blinder was either kidding us or he was just plain wrong. Or maybe he was hoping that his column would sway voters to the Democrat party. You will have to ask him which explanation is correct for wasting our time on his article on October 25^th.

Blinder begins by quoting some well-known polls that show that people think the US is on the wrong track. Then he launched into the most one-sided discussion since Paul Winchell spoke to Jerry Mahoney about birth control. Blinder quoted all the economic indicators we are already familiar with. For example, who doesn’t already know that the unemployment rate is around 5%? Or that the stock market is much higher than its trough  in 2009? Of course, anything that might puncture his carefully constructed happy balloon was somehow ignored. Are people unhappy with zero interest rates? I think so. How do the recent stock market highs compare to highs before 2009? Not so great. The absolutely worse business capital spending and productivity increases that one can remember are not cause for indigestion? Export sales make us itchy. Even those at his former employer, the Fed, are lamenting the plight of souls who are still struggling despite a 5% unemployment rate. Most people just shrug when an economist explains that the economy has not grown so slowly for so long since the Great Depression. And even Fuzzy was not alive in the Great Depression.

To discount the economy as a major source of the country’s poor mental attitude is just plain wrong. But like most liberals these days Blinder doesn’t much care about the truth because he is all about politics and about making sure that liberal candidates get elected. Which gets me to the second part of his story. Blinder believes that our dissatisfaction with the USA today is not due to the economy but rather is due to “The fact that Republicans have blocked almost everything and proposed very little.” That’s it in a nutshell. Case closed. 

Lucky for George Bush, Alan Blinder is not blaming everything on him. Now it is all Republicans who make our people so unhappy. Spread the blame baby. Blinder cites Obamacare as evidence of Republican resistance. But Obama, with a huge majority rammed the largest change in social policy in decades down our collective pie-holes without one Republican to support it. Wow – who is the cause of political dysfunction there?  And please note the headlines reporting huge increases in Obamacare premiums. The Democrats created this monster – and now our negativity is the fault of Republicans?

And how can Blinder talk about blocking by Republicans? If the Republicans had a NFL team they’d be penalized for missing too many blocks – not too few. Listen to Obama make speeches today about all he has accomplished during his eight years. Listening to him you would think he was Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and General George Patton combined. He got Dodd-Frank. He got energy regulation. He stopped a pipeline. He stopped a recession. He contained ISIS. And there were examples of bipartisan support for a Doc Fix, a Highway Bill, a budget deal and so on.

No, Obama and the Democrats did not get everything they wanted. Yes, they met a determined opposition at every turn. But come on folks. Every President without a clear Congressional majority has had to fight tooth and nail. And that is as it should be since the absence of a majority government says that the country lacks agreement on key issues.

In summary, Blinder is very wrong to de-emphasize the role of a slow economy and to exaggerate the negative consequences of Republican resistance to a Democratic president. An honest appraisal would admit two things – it is the economy and it is a dysfunctional Federal Government that make us unhappy. Unfortunately extremes in both parties make the rest of us pay for their harmful antics.