"Given the history of recessions driven by financial meltdowns, it was inevitable we'd have a lingering unemployment problem. All the more reason to gear every possible policy toward augmenting job growth. Once he passed his ramshackle social–spending bill called the 'stimulus,' though, Obama devoted most of his attention to re–engineering key sectors of the American economy — health care, finance, energy — regardless of the economic consequences."
Rich Lowry
National Review
OK, I know that National Review isn't what anyone would call a progressive publication.
And Lowry isn't a liberal thinker.
But I opened this piece with a quote from Lowry because he does a reasonably accurate job of summarizing the situation. Sure, he has an agenda, but just because he has an agenda does not mean he is wrong when he writes of "a wide–ranging blight that affects not just people's incomes right now, but their sense of self–respect and their futures.
"Yet it's often been an afterthought for the president," Lowry continues. "He has repeatedly said he was going to 'pivot to jobs.' How could he ever have pivoted off of them?"
It's a valid question. Obama's got a year to decide how he'g going to respond to that one — and I think he can be reasonably confident that the eventual Republican nominee is going to ask it (repeatedly) during the 2012 campaign.
What Lowry writes is nothing new to me. I've been reading articles that said virtually the same thing for the last three years.
What would be new — and refreshing — would be to see politicians giving more than lip service to the unemployed simply because the politicians want their votes.
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