Just the Facts

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"The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely."

Bob Herbert
New York Times

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In case you haven't heard, Bob Herbert is leaving the New York Times.

His last column was published/posted on Friday. He says he plans "to write a book and expand my efforts on behalf of working people, the poor and others who are struggling in our society."

I'm sorry to see him go — but, if he can find a platform through which he can reach more people than he could as a columnist for the New York Times, all I can do is wish him godspeed.

Over the years, I have developed a great deal of respect for Herbert. I haven't always been able to read his stuff — and, with the Times apparently on the brink of returning to its unsuccessful pay–for–access policy, I probably wouldn't be able to read it in the future, either (although, I must confess, I don't know if everything will be restricted this time — or only selected content), so perhaps it is just as well that he no longer be on the staff.

I don't know if the "efforts" of which he speaks will include observations from a blog or a web site that I can access freely — but I hope they will because, if they do not, I will miss his insights.

He is one of the few writers out there who does not get carried away with emotion and still depends on facts to support his statements. I don't always agree with him, but at least he appeals to your head as well as your heart.

How times have changed. When I was in journalism school, it was presumed that, whether you were a newsgathering reporter or a columnist, you could support anything you wrote with facts.

If you could not, you simply weren't doing your job.

Speaking of journalism school, I recall having a professor during my undergraduate days who encouraged us to take the "Joe Friday approach" to writing about the news.

In my mind's eye, I can see him in the front of the classroom, reminding us of the catchphrase from the old Dragnet TV show and Sgt. Friday's gentle prodding to witnesses who got sidetracked: "Just the facts, ma'am."

I hope Herbert continues to give us the facts, whatever his platform may be.

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Facts Are Stubborn Things

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"Carl Van Horn, the director of the Heldrich Center and one of the two professors ... conducting the survey, said he was struck by how pessimistic some of the respondents have become — not just about their own situation but about the nation's future. The survey found that workers in general are increasingly accepting the notion that the effects of the recession will be permanent, that they are the result of fundamental changes in the national economy."

Bob Herbert
New York Times

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I have heard that the New York Times will go to a pay–for–online–access format in 2011.

The Times tried this a few years ago and eventually dropped it. Apparently, it wasn't paying off. But, with the horrid economy, the folks who run the Times — in spite of the somewhat obvious comparisons it invited to Einstein's definition of insanity — made the announcement several months ago that they would give it another try, starting in January.

I suppose we'll find out soon if all systems are still go for that move or if cooler heads have prevailed at the Times. But, acting on the assumption that the bean counters at the Times still can't see the forest for the trees, I have been checking in at the website more frequently — in case that will no longer be an option this time next week.

Well, I suppose it will be an option — but only if I pay the admission price.

My background is in journalism, and I guess I prefer this revenue–enhancing procedure to the one to which so many news outlets have turned — personnel cuts — but I'm not terribly optimistic that it will work.

I feel that way for several reasons, which I may explore next week if the Times follows through with its previously announced plans, but today I am interested in Bob Herbert's column in the Times titled "The Data and the Reality."

Essentially, Herbert reminds readers that, in spite of optimistic talk, in spite of the flurry of bills passed by the lame–duck Congress, in spite of Barack Obama's rhetoric during the midterm campaign, "in the rough and tumble of the real world, where families have to feed themselves and pay their bills, there are an awful lot of Americans being left behind."

In an America where the word "trillion" has become commonplace to describe budget figures, unemployment numbers that are measured in millions seem to have lost their impact on those who still have their jobs and homes — even though, in a nation of about 300 million, any number that has the word million in it should alarm people.

It doesn't, of course. In the America that existed nearly 30 years ago, when the last recession to see a double–digit unemployment rate threatened the re–election of a president, such numbers still impressed some people. They certainly impressed the Americans who lived half a century before that, when a quarter of the population was jobless in the darkest years of the Great Depression.

But in today's America, when people like Herbert remind us that "[m]ore than 15 million Americans are officially classified as jobless," I suspect that prompts knowing nods from people who are jobless — and mostly neutral shrugs from the rest of America, where six—figure monthly job losses were routine for a year or more.

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"The fact that so many Americans are out of work, or working at jobs that don't pay well, undermines the prospects for a robust recovery. Jobless people don't buy a lot of flat–screen TVs. What we're really seeing is an erosion of standards of living for an enormous portion of the population, including a substantial segment of the once solid middle class.

"Not only is this not being addressed, but the self–serving, rightward lurch in Washington is all but guaranteed to make matters worse for working people. The zealots reading the economic tea leaves see brighter days ahead. They can afford to be sanguine. They're working."

Bob Herbert

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And now, on the eve of the second anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration, we are told that four–fifths of the modest number of jobs that were gained in November were temporary.

Midway through his term, Obama's economic policies can't be seen as resounding successes — and it is on the economy — not health care, not judicial appointments, not his basketball game — that his presidency will be judged when voters are asked whether to re–elect him in 2012.

The unemployed — be they official or unofficial (the part–timers, the underemployed, the ones who should be counted but aren't because they no longer qualify for assistance based on some arbitrary guidelines that were enacted in another time by and for people who are mostly gone from the workforce now) — understand.

They are realistic, according to the survey about which Herbert writes today. "[W]orkers in general are increasingly accepting the notion that the effects of the recession will be permanent, that they are the result of fundamental changes in the national economy," writes Herbert.

The rest are not realistic. Perhaps they're in denial. Perhaps their ignorance is deliberate, sort of a self–defense mechanism. Perhaps they just became numb to the human suffering after awhile.

It's not a pleasant topic to discuss during the Christmas season, is it?

Actually, it shouldn't have to be discussed now at all. It should have been discussed long ago — by Obama and his advisers starting the day after the 2008 election, or, even better, by George W. Bush and his people before the election.

But it wasn't. It got the same treatment as energy independence and infrastructure and the other serious issues that have threatened the nation. It got swept under the rug by bureaucrats who hoped the ship would right itself.

No, no one wants to talk about human suffering at Christmas. I understand that. It spoils the illusion.

I give Herbert credit for trying.

But this is nothing new for him. He's been writing about this for a long, long time. People just don't seem to be listening.

I wish him success. And I'd like to watch and see if his future columns finally get some sort of response from the powers that be — as more and more Americans are sucked into the black hole, as inevitably they will be.

But if the Times follows through on its plans, I simply won't be able to read Herbert's columns online anymore.

I haven't had full–time work in more than two years. I've been working as an adjunct instructor at the local community college since August, but the income from that job only goes so far. I haven't been able to find anything to supplement it.

If the Times starts charging for access, the choice is mine, but it won't be much of a choice, I'm afraid. Fact is, as much as I like reading the Times' columnists, I like to eat more. And, with gas prices on the rise, I need to save whatever money I can simply to be able to drive back and forth to my part–time job.

If something must give, it will have to be the Times.

That's the reality of the unemployed, the part–time employed, the underemployed. It's like slowly bleeding to death while the people with the blood are arguing about whose fault it is.

I've been reading a lot of articles offering advice to Obama for the new reality he will face when Congress convenes in January. Most speak of him moving more to the center, as Reagan and Clinton did, and it would make sense to emulate those presidents who went on to win second terms. They demonstrated their leadership skills when the numbers on Capitol Hill were no longer as favorable for them.

Those numbers certainly don't seem terribly favorable for Obama right now. The super–majority his party enjoyed in the Senate has been gone for nearly a year, ever since the loss of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in last January's special election, and it is anyone's guess how much Obama will be able to accomplish with a six–seat advantage in that chamber.

Obama has not proven to be a pragmatic politician, but Senate Democrats, who hold two–thirds of the seats that will be on the ballot in 2012, need him to become one in a hurry. The longer his approval ratings remain mired in the 40s — or, worse, if they fall into the George W. Bush–like 30s range — the less inclined those senators are going to be to want him joining them on the campaign trail.

I certainly don't think they will be inclined to support many initiatives from a president, however popular, whose policies are perceived by the voters to be leading the country down the wrong road.

Of course, the likelihood that Obama will achieve anything in the House, where Republicans grabbed more than 60 seats from the Democrats in last month's elections, is virtually zero.

We're a long way from 1992, but it is still the economy, stupid.

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The End of 'Recovery Summer'

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The summer of 2010 is coming to a close — and thus, I suppose, "Recovery Summer" also is ending.

But, while the administration may have had high hopes when it launched "Recovery Summer," things seem to have flatlined, at best, and a lot of folks just aren't feeling it.

They aren't all Barack Obama's political opponents, either. Some of them are like Velma Hart (see video), an Obama supporter who told the president that she was "exhausted" from having to defend him and his administration while she has seen little evidence of improvement.

Hart joked about having thought that she was past the "hot dogs and beans" stage in her life, then meekly asked Obama if that was the "new reality." If so, she seemed prepared to defend that — as if that's the way it is supposed to be.

But it may be hard for millions of unemployed Americans to see how her life has been affected by the recession. She has a high–paying government job, with all the benefits it provides, and she and her husband are putting their two daughters through private school — which is a choice that they made (as opposed to losing your job, which, in most cases, is a decision that is made for, not by, someone).

Perhaps they have had to make some sacrifices — most Americans, after all, have had to make some concession to the bad economy, even if it has been something as modest as not eating out as often or going to the movies as frequently.

If that's all that Hart's family must do to weather this economic storm, though, they're undoubtedly a lot better off than most blacks in America. Bob Herbert writes in the New York Times about how "black voters ... have been hammered disproportionately by the recession and largely taken for granted by the Democratic Party."

The Democrats' neglect of their black base "is likely to translate into lower turnout among blacks this fall," Herbert writes.

Well, it wouldn't surprise me. Black voters haven't exactly been turning out en masse in this year's primaries the way they did in 2008. Of course, neither are young voters or liberal voters. Without them, Obama could not have won the election in 2008, and it is highly unlikely that the members of his party will succeed without them this year.

It really must be difficult for the Obama apologists, and it's only going to get tougher. We're down to six weeks until the midterm elections. If there is no truly dramatic improvement in the economy between now and November 2, the only thing that can possibly (but not absolutely) reverse the Democrats' fortunes would be an international crisis.

And no one — other than the Democrats who are all but certain to be defeated in November — wants that.

But those who all too eagerly embraced an imprecise call for "change" are realizing, I think, that, in 2008, many people attached many interpretations to that call — and darn few are satisfied with the results, no matter how much Obama may protest that his solutions are long term.

In hindsight, a number of things should be clear, but hindsight is always 20/20, they say. All of which makes it even more ironic that Jane Mayer writes in the New Yorker that former Vice President Walter Mondale sees many similarities between the Obama presidency and the one in which Mondale played a key role, the presidency of Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.

Now, I voted for President Carter in 1980. It was the first presidential election in which I was old enough to vote, and I believed that President Carter had been doing a good job in spite of the obstacles that kept being thrown his way. I was also deeply suspicious — and, I still think, rightfully so — of Ronald Reagan's policies.

But I was in the minority that year.

When Mondale tells Mayer that the American people "just turned against us — same as with Obama," I know exactly what he's talking about. I lived through it. And it has had a profound influence on how I perceive political movements in America.

Mondale is candid about the things that Carter did wrong — and the lessons Obama and the other members of his party should have learned from that experience 30 years ago but apparently didn't.

The former vice president does seem to have learned from the Clinton experience, noting that Obama "needs to get rid of those teleprompters, and connect. He's smart as hell. He can do it. Look right into those cameras and tell people he's hurting right along with them."

In other words, make sure the voters know that he feels their pain. With his professorial demeanor, he often comes across as a cold fish — which was one of the criticisms of Carter the engineer.

Carter, Mondale reminded Mayer, had an impressive list of legislative and diplomatic accomplishments, but they didn't seem to help him with the voters. And his image wasn't enhanced by his handling of Congress.

In all, Mondale favors a more hardball approach. "[T]he idea of turning things over to Congress — that doesn't work even when you own Congress," Mondale said, and he spoke from experience. Democrats enjoyed large congressional majorities in the post–Watergate years. "You have to ride 'em."

And he was critical of Obama's quixotic quest for bipartisanship. "You should explain clearly what you want, and, if [the Republicans] oppose you, attack them for it."

Mondale is somewhat encouraging in his assessment of Obama's future prospects. Unlike 1980, when President Carter was challenged for the nomination by Ted Kennedy, Mondale does not envision anything like that for Obama.

But I'm not sure about that. The National Bureau of Economic Research says the recession ended more than a year ago, but millions of Americans remain unemployed 15 months later. If things get worse in 2011, it isn't hard for me to imagine a Democrat challenging the president for the nomination — either seriously (i.e. Kennedy) or symbolically (i.e. Pat Buchanan).

That really isn't the worst of it for the administration.

As Catherine Rampell observes in the New York Times, "The announcement also implies that any contraction that might lie ahead would be a separate and distinct recession, and one that the Obama administration could not claim to have inherited."

Well, that's not really true. The Obama administration could still claim — although not plausibly — to have inherited it. Maybe they could get away with it. Probably not, though.

And the race card probably wouldn't work, either. And "change" can't be brought back for an encore because the voters already have seen how that one worked.

I guess the strategy will depend on how much Obama and the Democrats are forced to neglect the economy while trying to defend the tenuous turf they won in their extended skirmish over health care reform.

Because Republicans are making no secret of their desire to chip away at, if not repeal outright, the health care reform law.

Such talk was the fodder of jokes a year ago. It's no joking matter for Democrats today.

And things are looking bad for Democrats in places they never would have expected a year ago. Such as:

• West Virginia, where the state's voters must select a replacement for late Sen. Robert Byrd. Public Policy Polling says the Republican candidate leads the state's popular Democratic governor by three percentage points in a poll of likely voters.


• Wisconsin, where a Daily Kos/PPP poll of likely voters shows the Republican challenger holding a double–digit lead over three–term Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.

Many races in states and districts are volatile this year, more volatile than just about anyone predicted 18 months ago.

I remember, after Obama had been elected and Democrats were giddy with their victory, there was plenty of talk about which great American president Obama's administration would most resemble.

Not whether he would be up to the enormous challenge he faced. It was taken for granted that he would be.

Would he be another Lincoln? Or another Washington? Or another FDR? In some scenarios, he was going to be another JFK because, like Kennedy, he broke a barrier that many thought could never be broken.

But we're almost halfway through Obama's term, and the question must be asked by Democrats when they ponder the 2012 campaign. It can no longer be avoided.

Is it possible? In an electoral context, could he be another Jimmy Carter?

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Imperial Hubris

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"Mr. Obama and the Democrats have wasted the once–in–a–lifetime opportunity handed to them in the 2008 election. They did not focus on jobs, jobs, jobs as their primary mission, and they did not call on Americans to join in a bold national effort (which would have required a great deal of shared sacrifice) to solve a wide range of very serious problems."

Bob Herbert
New York Times

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At least once in every presidency, it seems that a president is said to have squandered a golden opportunity that had been given to him by the voters or fate or whatever.

More than once, for example, I have heard George W. Bush criticized for failing to use September 11 as a way to unite a divided America in a common cause. In fact, he did precisely the opposite. He exploited it for political gain. He used it to drive wedges between people, between races, between faiths.

I will always believe that Bush was a terrible president, but, in all fairness, he did nothing most other presidents did not do. He just had far worse results than most — perhaps because he utilized far worse tactics than most.

What did he do?

Well, he bought into the myth that the president is infallible. And when a president is seduced by that particular myth, inevitably he makes at least one bad choice — and then spends the rest of his presidency, if not his life, justifying and rationalizing.

I don't know when this idea of infallibility took hold. But most presidents seem to have concluded — even if they entered the presidency as "men of the people" — that they know best. The transformation seems almost biblical. Apparently, all one must do to become infallible is to repeat the presidential oath of office.

Maybe there is something magical about that oath. Or maybe the American people are just natural enablers. That might explain a lot.

I suppose the attitude at its most extreme was summed up best by Richard Nixon, who told David Frost, "[W]hen the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

I have seen no evidence that any other president crossed some criminal threshold in his actions, but history sure is loaded with bad presidential decisions.

And one of the worst may turn out to be Barack Obama's decision to emphasize health care reform over job creation when his presidency began — even though job losses had been increasing for months prior to his inauguration, and they continued, sometimes at alarming monthly levels, through his first year in office. (I criticized Obama in this blog last Labor Day when he declined to make any speeches about the nation's joblessness crisis — a decision that all too clearly demonstrated how much he cared about the unemployed.)

Despite occasional lip service, this president has done little in defense of the unemployed. He only seemed to discover the problem after his party lost its filibuster–proof majority in the Senate with Scott Brown's upset victory in Massachusetts.

That has been a tragic mistake.

The appearance of bipartisanship — so fervently desired that it was claimed to have been achieved if even a single Republican vote was drawn to the Democrats' side in either the House or the Senate — took greater precedence for Obama.

"Employment is the No. 1 issue for most ordinary Americans," writes Bob Herbert of the New York Times. "Their anxiety on this front only grows as they watch teachers, firefighters and police officers lining up to walk the unemployment plank as state and local governments wrestle with horrendous budget deficits.

"And what do these worried Americans see the Obama administration doing? It's doubling down on the war in Afghanistan, trying somehow to build a nation from scratch in the chaos of a combat zone."

From just about this time last year (when Democrat Al Franken was declared the winner in Minnesota) until this past January (when Brown won the seat that had belonged to Ted Kennedy), the Democrats could have done anything they wanted and the Republicans would have been virtually powerless to stop them. Why didn't they?

Why didn't they?

It's no wonder to me that people feel a disconnect between themselves and their government.

Want to know what really astonishes me? The administration's blase attitude toward unemployment in general has been stunning, but its apparent lack of interest in the joblessness epidemic among the nation's older workers truly is appalling.

Perhaps Obama isn't as smart as I gave him credit for. I mean, the numbers have shown that those who routinely vote in midterm elections are not the liberals or the young or the blacks — the groups that showed up in unprecedented numbers to elect Obama in 2008. Midterm voters tend to be older Americans. And CNN reported a few days ago that older Americans, particularly those 55 and older, who find themselves out of work face an especially daunting task in finding new jobs.

Doesn't common sense suggest that a president whose party holds majorities in both houses of Congress would want to do anything he could to appease older voters in a midterm election year? Including promoting legislation that would reward employers for hiring older Americans?

But Obama and the Democrats in Congress look backward instead of forward, assigning blame instead of standing up in defense of the jobless. They aren't accomplishing much for the unemployed, are they? A bill that would have extended jobless benefits through November failed. And, while Obama and the Democrats are justifiably proud of their achievement in passing health care reform, the truth in America today is that many must choose between health insurance and their daily expenses. Guess which one wins?

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"The Obama administration feels it should get a great deal of credit for its economic stimulus efforts, its health care initiative, its financial reform legislation, its vastly increased aid to education and so forth. And maybe if we were grading papers, there would be a fair number of decent marks to be handed out."

Bob Herbert

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"By nearly 2 to 1," Herbert says, "respondents to the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll believed the United States is on the wrong track. ... Mr. Obama is paying dearly for his tin ear on this topic. Fifty–four percent of respondents believed he does not have a clear plan for creating jobs. Only 45 percent approved of his overall handling of the economy, compared with 48 percent who disapproved."

Some of Obama's diehard apologists may think that is an aberration, but the truth is that other polls (NBC News/Wall Street Journal, Ipsos/McClatchy, Associated Press/GfK, ABC News/Washington Post) have reported similar, if not worse (Rasmussen) findings in recent weeks.

Things may well look different to most people three or four years from now, when the health care reforms are going to start to kick in. But right now, as Herbert points out, "Destitution is beckoning for those whose unemployment benefits are running out."

No matter what the Labor Department's figures tell you in a few days, most of America's unemployed could probably tell you they've had a bellyful of change.

But they're running short of hope.

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An Instinctive Response

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"May God stand between you and harm, in all the dark places you may travel."

Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty

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Each president carves out his own niche, based on his personality and his individual style.

He is elected to face the next four years as leader of the American people — who expect him to do so in his own way (although there are certain things that are expected of every president).

If the voters approve, the president usually is re–elected. If they don't, he might still be re–elected, but he's going to have to work a lot harder.

Which will be true of Barack Obama?

I don't know. A majority of Americans apparently liked what they saw in 2008 — but that was back in the days when many Americans didn't know nearly as much about him as they will by 2012, when they will have seen him on their TV screens every day for more than three years.

You really get to know someone you see every day, and this constant exposure has been the undoing of some presidents. Familiarity, don't you know, breeds contempt.

And it focuses attention like a laser beam on those traits with which people just aren't terribly comfortable. For example, have you ever been in a relationship in which one of you snored? The one who snored may have possessed several fine and endearing qualities, but the many positives may have been outweighed by the single negative.

Anyway, I realize that those comfort boundaries vary from person to person, but I'm seeing some things from the president in this Gulf oil spill crisis that I find unsettling — and unsettlingly familiar. And I wonder how many other people feel that way, too.

Let's get some perspective first.

Go back a couple of years to the presidential campaign, when Obama frequently spoke of eight years of "failed" Bush policies. Well, that's the kind of thing the opposition is expected to say during the heat of a campaign, and the circumstances surrounding the general election campaign were ideal for that kind of criticism.

And if any presidency in modern times deserved to be labeled a failure, the Bush administration did.

But when you've won the election and you take office, it's time to stop campaigning and start governing.

Oh, and you also take ownership of what has already happened (because the voters chose you to deal with it) — and responsibility for whatever will happen in the next four years (because voters deemed you more capable). It's part of the deal.

Now, I know that, in today's world, the campaign never really ends.

But crude oil started spewing into the Gulf when the offshore rig exploded in April. It is now June. I find it troubling that, when Obama spoke of the subject recently, he placed at least as much emphasis on fixing blame as fixing the problem, saying that he wants to know "whose ass to kick."

Obama won't be running for a second term for two more years, and this is the kind of crisis a president can use to make his case for re–election (if everything works out) — but this president acts like he's thrown in the towel on this problem and is focusing on his case for pointing fingers. I suppose that "ass" remark was his attempt to provide some of that macho swagger that lots of people (even some of his critics) admired about George W. Bush.

I know it must be frustrating for Obama. Bush certainly deserved to be blamed for much of the mess that was waiting for Obama after he took the oath of office. But he can't be plausibly blamed for something that happened more than a year after he left the presidency.

And that leaves Obama with a different problem. Who can be blamed?

This problem is a big one. Millions of lives and hundreds, if not thousands, of cities and towns hang in the balance. And I agree that, ultimately, at some point, someone's head must roll.

But obsessing about it now indicates to me that Obama does things in reverse order. Maybe that is his instinctive response.

If it is, I can sympathize — sort of. I remember when I was in ninth grade, and my algebra teacher gave me a problem to do. I went up to the board and did it in reverse order. I got the same result as those who did it correctly and in the correct order. I just did mine backwards.

I remember my teacher watching me with a puzzled look on her face, then, when I was done, she asked me, "Why did you do it that way?" I confessed that I did not know. It was just easier for me.

Well, it's one thing to do an algebra problem in reverse when you're 15 years old. It's quite another to be worrying about who to blame for something that could wreak such havoc in so many lives for so many years — when the problem hasn't been resolved.

This, it seems to me, is characteristic of Obama. Before becoming president, he had no experience in executive problem solving. That doesn't make him unique. But that may help to explain some things.

Perhaps, because of the times in which his presidential campaign was waged, Obama got the idea that being president was about two things — blaming someone else when things went wrong and making sure you get credit for showing up when things do go wrong, even if you don't provide a solution or, for that matter, much leadership.

I became accustomed to this approach from the start, when the Democratic Party's congressional lackeys boasted that they were "the jobs squad" after working out a compromise of the economic stimulus package. But when the jobs failed to materialize as advertised, they resorted to the pass–the–buck strategy. That mess we inherited was worse than we thought, they whined.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans who were employed the day Obama was sworn in joined the ranks of the jobless — and statistics suggest that many have remained there. We miscalculated, they said, and then they turned their attention to a Supreme Court nomination that was never in doubt and health care reform that won't begin to go into effect for several years.

I had a hard time swallowing that one. Obama was quite vocal in the fall of 2008 about his concerns for the U.S. economy. We were headed for a second Great Depression if we elected John McCain, voters were warned.

The scare tactics worked. A race that had been close before the economic implosion turned into a borderline landslide.

Now, certainly, there are things that candidates don't know — and won't know until they are approved by the voters and the transition process begins. But it seems to me that it's kind of hard to make a convincing case that you didn't comprehend how bad the economy really was when you used that kind of rhetoric to be elected.

Recent job gains notwithstanding, the stimulus has yet to create jobs at the rate this country needs. Yet, every time that I have heard a congressional Democrat asked in the last 16 months what was being done to create jobs, the response has begun with "Well, this is Bush's fault ..."

I know I can't speak for everyone, but, as one of the unemployed, my (typically mental) response has been "let's fix the problem."

But nearly every word I hear uttered from Obama's defenders is about blame. Not responsibility. Not what is being done to correct the problem. Blame.

Obama doesn't rely on blame as much as his supporters do, but he works his way into that fairly regularly — and subtly — nonetheless. Sometimes it comes in the form of Obama codespeak — "This problem was years in the making" so therefore it will take years to repair.

And sometimes it is implied. Obama doesn't seem to like discussing unemployment. He does it when he has to, like on the first Friday of each month, but not always. Last year, for example, I criticized him on Labor Day for failing to speak publicly about joblessness on that occasion.

I have often thought that Obama simply does not know what to do about unemployment. And I don't fault him for that. It's a daunting problem. There's no doubt it was daunting for FDR. And I suppose, if I were president, I would be tempted to do as Obama has done and quietly hope the problem resolves itself.

But I'm not the president — and FDR knew it was the most urgent problem his administration faced.

And I am certainly not the only one who thinks it is the most urgent problem this administration faces. Obama likes to present himself as proactive, but, truthfully, there is little a president can do to heal an ailing economy. He can encourage policies he believes will help but not much more than that.

I'm sure he feels a sense of outrage that is compounded by the problem in the Gulf, but he may also, as CNN's John Blake writes, be resisting the temptation to be the "angry black man" — because that is an image that many voters find disturbing.

If a president's skilled in the role of Empathizer–in–Chief, which Obama is not, he can address the unemployed in a heartfelt way and assure the voters he is doing everything he can to help them — even if he's really just blowing smoke.

Last week's jobs report gave the administration plenty of smoke to blow, but Bob Herbert of the New York Times saw through it.

"[T]he No. 1 problem facing the U.S. continues to fester," he writes, "and that problem is unemployment."

Whoa, that can't be right, I can hear the Obama defenders saying. Nearly half a million jobs were created in May.

Ah, the deception of numbers. "The government hired 411,000 workers to help with the census," points out Herbert, "but those jobs are temporary and will vanish in a few months." The private sector, meanwhile, turned in a "dismal performance," creating only 41,000 jobs in May.

And oil continues to pour into the waters of the Gulf as it has for more than 50 days.

There was a wonderfully understated — yet, at the same time, so telling — moment in "Thirteen Days," the 2000 big–screen dramatization of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In a conversation with presidential assistant Kenny O'Donnell, President Kennedy says, "I thought there'd be more good days."

I don't know if Kennedy actually said that or if it was a piece of manufactured dialogue, but it would be an appropriate thing for the current president to say. I certainly couldn't fault Obama for bemoaning the fact that there haven't been more good days in his presidency.

Presidencies can be like that, one crisis after another, irrespective of the president's strengths and weaknesses — which brings me to my reason for opening this post with a quote from the 18th Egyptian dynasty.

More than 1,000 years before the birth of Christ, the 18th dynasty ruled Egypt. It may be the most famous dynasty of all, having included King Tut as one of its pharaohs, but I don't think it was responsible for any great achievement — like the construction of the Egyptian pyramids — of which people continue to speak in hushed tones today.

The 18th dynasty appears to have had some fine intellects, though, one of whom (whose name is lost to antiquity) conceived the blessing that is reproduced at the start of this post.

Obama, too, possesses a fine intellect. And, when he began his quest for the presidency, I'm sure he envisioned something entirely different from what has transpired in his first 16 months as president.

But it's what it is.

Obama may find himself traveling in many dark places in the next couple of years. And, whether he leaves behind an achievement that people are still talking about 3,000 years from now or not, I hope that, as he travels to those dark places, God does, in the words of the Egyptian dynasty's blessing, stand between him and harm.

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The Things With Feathers

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"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops — at all

"And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm

"I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of Me."

Emily Dickinson

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I've had many thoughts as the enormity of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico has become apparent.

Some of my thoughts are relevant, and, I suppose, others are tangential.

• One thought I have been having pertains to religious conversations I had with an acquaintance in college.
  
  Now, when it comes to matters of faith, I suppose I'm like a lot of people. There are some things that I believe, and there are other things of which I'm not so sure. And that, I suppose, is what keeps bringing me back to my church, even if I have been away for awhile — a desire to sort them out.
  
  At this stage of my life, there are many things of which I am not certain. But when I was in college, I believed I knew most of the answers. I didn't, of course, but I thought I did.
  
  And this acquaintance was convinced that he, too, had all the answers — about God and the afterlife and the existence of hell and the certainty of the end times as described in the Book of Revelation. His answers weren't like mine, though, and he apparently decided it was his obligation to "save" me.
  
  Problem was, I didn't think I needed to be saved. The mean and vengeful God he kept describing sounded nothing like what my parents had always told me about God. So I defended my image of a loving and compassionate God. And he defended his image of fire and brimstone and eternal damnation. Neither of us budged an inch.
  
  Ultimately, I suppose, we decided to agree to disagree, and we went our separate ways. He probably thought I was a lost cause, doomed to hell, and maybe he was right.
  
  I know I'm not as convinced about some things now as I was then, but one thing that I still believe that I believed in my college days is that humans are obliged to be good stewards of this planet.
  
  We are so obliged because, of all the creatures on earth, we are the smart ones. Every other creature on this planet does things to satisfy its needs without giving any thought to the consequences to others. But only man's activities can completely alter an ecosystem.
  
  And man knows it.
  
  We aren't necessarily superior. But it is humans' ability to think and to reason that sets them apart from all the other creatures."[W]hy did God plague us with the power to think?" asked Henry Drummond in "Inherit the Wind." "What other merit have we? The elephant is larger, the horse is swifter and stronger, the butterfly is more beautiful, the mosquito is more prolific, even the simple sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?"
  
  Like Matthew Harrison Brady, I do not know if a sponge thinks. I doubt it. But, if it does, its reasoning cannot possibly be worse than the reasoning of those who found ways to cut corners — and allow man's lust for oil to jeopardize the Gulf of Mexico and all the wildlife who live in and around it.
  
  If there is a hell, surely there is a place in it that is being held for those who allowed this catastrophe to occur.


• I also have been thinking of times I spent on the Gulf coast. I was thinking of one year in particular — which year it was escapes me at the moment, but I'm guessing that I was about 14 or 15 at the time — when our family went to South Padre Island for Christmas, then drove north by northeast until we got to New Orleans and went to the Sugar Bowl.
  
  In those days, my family had one of those tent trailers, and we often slept in it when we went on trips, but, for some reason, as we made our way along the Louisiana coast, we stayed overnight in a very basic travel lodge. The rooms weren't very fancy, but they were roomy enough for a family of four, and they had their own stoves so we could cook our meals there.
  
  I can remember the seawater smell of the harbor that was a short walk from the place where we stayed, and I can remember tasting that smell in the fresh (and dirt cheap) shrimp we bought from the local fishermen. I always loved my mother's cooking — but what she was able to do with that fresh shrimp, some rice and some canned vegetables (plus a few well–chosen spices) simply defied belief.
  
  And I wonder what this oil spill is going to mean to fresh Gulf seafood.
  
  Will future generations be able to enjoy the pleasure of fresh Gulf shrimp?


• Several years later, I went on a trip with my mother to Biloxi, Miss. She loved to jump the waves in the ocean — no matter how old she got, she became almost childlike when she was near the sea — and for some reason the two of us decided to go to Biloxi one summer. I was living in Arkansas, and Mom was living in Texas. We saw each other so rarely that I guess we just decided to take a little trip together.
  
  So we got a motel room on the beach and spent a few days breathing the Gulf air and jumping the waves. At night, we dined on fresh seafood and gazed at the water. From time to time, we saw birds that had been perched on the roof take flight over the water.
  
  It was a memorable trip, a memory that I will always cherish. But I wonder how many such memories will be made in the coming years if the oil slick turns out to be only as bad as — and not worse than — the experts predict.


• Then, a couple of years later, when I was working on the copy desk for a daily newspaper, we began to get word of an oil tanker that had hit a reef in Alaska and spilled a quarter of a million barrels of crude oil into the water.
  
  I am speaking, of course, of the Exxon Valdez disaster. That happened more than 20 years ago. You don't hear much about it anymore, but they are still struggling to clean up the mess.
  
  Granted, it is pretty remote — and relatively confined — but it is not terribly comforting to know that it is far easier to access the Gulf of Mexico than Prince William Sound — nor is it reassuring to think of how vast is the Gulf's area by comparison.
  
  In fact, if the worst–case scenario that I have heard (so far) is correct, the spill in the Gulf exceeded the volume that was spilled into the waters of Prince William Sound sometime on the third day — and crude has been gushing into the Gulf for more than a month now with no indication that man has found a solution.

I know that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was panned — and deservedly so — for delivering an, at best, tepid and, at worst, vapid response to Barack Obama's address on the financial crisis in February 2009.

But I have to give the man credit for taking the lead for his state, which is still recovering from the damage left by Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago.

"We've been frustrated with the disjointed effort to date that has too often meant too little, too late for the oil hitting our coast," Jindal said.

Well, somebody has to stand up for Louisiana. And that's what citizens elect governors for, isn't it?

I guess it's also what presidents are elected to do. But, as Bob Herbert observes in the New York Times, "after more than a month of BP's demonstrated incompetence, the administration continues to dither."

I know there are budget problems out the hoo–ha today. But the oil spill in the Gulf calls for bold leadership now, not dithering. The cost should not be a factor. Nor should anything else other than stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf and devoting all available resources to cleaning up the oil that has been spilled there so far.

And whatever needs be done to rescue the wildlife of the region must be done. The creatures of the Gulf of Mexico are the innocent victims of human greed. No one would mistake me for an environmental activist, but BP must pay a heavy price for what it has done, and the federal government must shoulder the responsibility for repairing the damage.

Blame can be assigned later. The wildlife — and the livelihoods — of the Gulf need to be rescued now.

Sacrifice isn't the sort of thing politicians — especially politicians who belong to the party that is at risk in the upcoming election — want to talk about with their constituents.

But they must be candid with the American people — and they must be insistent about finding answers — whether or not this turns out to be an unusually active hurricane season.

To live up to the lofty promises of hope and change, Obama must be a true agent of change at a time when it is particularly challenging. Obama promised hope and change, but, with health care reform not kicking in for another four years and until unemployment starts making noticeable movement in the right direction, the average voter can look around and say things aren't noticeably better than they were the last time they went to the polls.

By law, a president is elected to a four–year term. But the actual "windows" for tangible achievements are two years and four years. The four–year window is for the president himself, but the two–year window — leading up to the aptly named midterms (because of the resemblance to mid–semester exams in college) — is an assessment time frame with which Obama has no experience, although it will produce the congressional lineup that will affect the president's next two years in office.

Bill Clinton understands it, though. Until the mid–1980s, Arkansas elected its governor every two years, and Clinton understood the psychology that is necessary to be successful in an office that was on the ballot every other year. It didn't help him prevent the tsunami of 1994, but I think he had regained his balance by 1998.

Anyway, I believe most House members (and any governors who live in states that still choose their governor every two years — if there are any) would tell you that the campaign never really ends. Neither do the expectations.

"Hope" made a nice campaign slogan in 2008.

Now, the folks who rode that slogan to victory need to realize that, in the words of Emily Dickinson, hope is the things with feathers.

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Back to the Future

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Today is the 42nd anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

When many people think of King, they think of his inspiring, uplifting messages — his "I Have a Dream" speech that he delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the August 1963 March on Washington or the speech he gave 42 years ago last night, the night before his assassination, when he told his followers he had been to the mountaintop.

In the 1950s and 1960s, King was reviled by segregationists, but he had the support of many who held positions of power in Washington and many who held positions of influence in the media. Among those groups, his work for racial equality was perceived as being on the right side of history.

But I have long believed that it was a speech he gave exactly one year before his assassination, at Riverside Church in New York, that changed his relationship with many who had supported and protected him. On that occasion, he spoke against American policy in Vietnam.

His allies would not stand with him on the subject of Vietnam. The war had nothing to do with racial injustice, they argued. Not so, said King, who believed that peace and prosperity went hand in hand. And he believed that to remain silent was betrayal.

(Or, as Edmund Burke put it, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.")

Because so many rejected his message in 1967, the tragedy of Vietnam went on, and thousands more Americans died needless deaths. In recent years, I have felt that we were repeating that mistake in the Middle East.

Apparently, Bob Herbert agrees with me, although the focus of his attention is mostly on Afghanistan, not Iraq — of the two, I have believed for many years that Iraq was the unjustifiable war.

King's message in that speech at Riverside Church in 1967 wasn't a radical departure from what he had been saying throughout his public life. But, as Herbert observes in the New York Times, it was controversial because he questioned what the government was doing in Vietnam.

Even the NAACP thought he was making a mistake in shifting his focus from civil rights to foreign policy. But King felt (and said so, in words that were far more eloquent than mine) that economic opportunity and peace were compatible, and economic opportunity was the key to equal rights. The war in Vietnam ran counter to the ultimate objective of the civil rights movement.

In 1967, to question the government's policy in Vietnam was seen as nothing short of heresy — and those who spoke out were often seen as advocating communism. Even entertainers (i.e., the Smothers Brothers) were censored when their comedy was believed to be contrary to national policy abroad.

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King was not a communist, and, eventually, a majority of Americans came to share his view of Vietnam. But his speech drove a wedge between him and many who had supported him in the past.

And things, Herbert argues, haven't changed all that much in four–plus decades. True, America has a black president now — something that even Dr. King may not have dared to imagine — but Herbert sees that president making the same mistake that Lyndon Johnson made in the 1960s — sending more troops (this time to Afghanistan) "in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support," to use King's own words.

"More than 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq and more than 1,000 in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration has chosen to escalate rather than to begin a careful withdrawal," writes Herbert. "Those two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have told us, will ultimately cost us more than $3 trillion.

"And yet the voices in search of peace, in search of an end to the 'madness,' in search of the nation–building so desperately needed here in the United States, are feeble indeed."

Until America learns from the mistakes of the past, it will continue to make them.

And the madness will go on.

During his life, King was an advocate of civil rights, as everyone knows, but he advocated civil rights for all, not just one group. That is why the words he spoke still speak to us today. He spoke of fairness, not unfair advantage. And he knew that economic opportunity was at the heart of the human struggle.

No doubt he agreed with Gandhi, who said, "Poverty is the worst kind of violence." He certainly made it clear what he thought of a government that would commit so much money and so many lives to waging war overseas instead of dedicating those resources to programs designed to improve things at home.

I wonder how he would feel about an administration that, faced with massive unemployment and under–employment and budget crises in nearly every state, chose to escalate a war?

Well, just as in Dr. King's day, the poor, the hungry, the unemployed will pay the price for it.

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The 'Bounce' From Health Care Reform

I know some people who are truly baffled.

Barack Obama's triumph in the health care reform battle is an historic achievement, they say. I've heard some people say that, in terms of domestic policy, it elevates him past Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights/voting rights legislation of LBJ's Great Society — and it may lift him above Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.

Well, when the chapters on this period in American history are written, perhaps Obama's position among the presidents will be secured. If that's all Obama wanted to do as president, then mission accomplished — probably.

But he's got nearly three years left in his term, and that reverence that the Democrats seem to think Obama deserves ain't showing up in the public opinion polls.

The USA Today/Gallup Poll, conducted March 26–28, reports that 47% approve of the job Obama is doing and 50% disapprove. What gives?

I think it's the ongoing problem of unemployment and the perception — if not the actual fact — that Obama and the Democrats have done little, if anything, to alleviate the suffering. And I still think that they're going to pay a price for it in November.

But it seems to me that the big mistake that Obama's supporters make is in seeing these disapproval numbers as proof that Americans aren't appropriately grateful for health care reform legislation. And, from that faulty conclusion, they jump to yet another faulty conclusion — that this is all the result of racism. I've heard it argued that if a white man had done what Obama did, he would have been praised endlessly. But Obama has been criticized because he is black.

That's an easy scapegoat. Too easy. Sure, there are probably some respondents to these polls who don't like Obama because he is black, but most of those negative responses are coming from people who question Obama's judgment, not his bloodlines. They think he is doing things in the wrong order.

And so, apparently, does Bob Herbert of the New York Times, who writes, "[I]t is time for the Obama administration to move quickly and powerfully to the monumental task of putting Americans back to work. ...

"[T]he United States is in real danger of sinking into a long–term economic funk. The recession is not over for the nearly 15 million people who are unemployed. Many of them have been out of work for longer than six months, a seeming eternity. Widespread joblessness and underemployment are threatening to become permanent features of the American landscape, corroding not just our standards of living but the very vibrancy of the American way of life."

Herbert does give the Democrats credit for proposing jobs bills, "but they are small–bore initiatives that will accomplish little." He observes, as I have, that what is needed is a commitment to rebuilding America's infrastructure, something the pending legislation doesn't address.

A good example of the administration's failure to connect the dots is Education Secretary Arne Duncan's assertion that "we have to educate our way to a better economy."

I agree that education is important. I agreed that health care was important, too. But I've been saying all along that joblessness was the most urgent issue facing the administration. And infrastructure is the key to long–lasting, high–paying jobs. Any other approach is like treating a broken arm with a band–aid.

Herbert suggests that Obama and the Democrats should follow FDR's lead and approach the current situation with "the emergency of a war."

Mark my words. It is a war that cannot be fought with slingshots.

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