Will Obama Shake Up His Economic Team After The Election?

wsj.com:

The strategy sessions aired a range of disagreements over how to help Democrats forestall an electoral drubbing at the polls--a defeat party strategists believe could have been minimized with a different White House playbook.

Among the complaints: Mr. Obama conveyed an incoherent message that didn't express what Democrats would do over the next two years if they retain power; he focused more on his own image than helping Democratic candidates; and the White House picked the wrong battle when it attacked Republicans for using "outside" money to pay for campaigns, an issue disconnected from voters' real-world anxieties.

Read the whole story: wsj.com

Comments

[dessertsfirst]

08:30 PM on 11/03/2010

The President said it today in his press conference: today he affirmed (in the words of Michael Douglas playing the president in "The American President" movie) that he was so busy trying to keep his job, he wasn't doing his job.

It truly has seemed that the President lost his way, and forgot what he was supposed to be doing.
Hopefully this electoral upset has helped him regain his focus, and that he will both listen to and actually hear the American people... that includes we the people, as well as the folks in DC who work w/ him.... senators and reps, and all the other people we depend upon.

He needs to be sure he surrounds himself w/ advisors who are in tuned to the right issues.

[hobo62]

08:24 PM on 11/03/2010

The President and his advisors are so out of touch with main street I don't think they can find their way back.

[joe kim]

08:44 AM on 11/03/2010

I think it is clear the "people" want change, but not just in word, but in action. We are sick of bailouts. We are currently debasing our currency in an effort to push asset prices up, while this may work (in causing inflation), who does it help? and who does it hurt? It helps borrowers, and hurts savers.
Our current system of bailing banks and people that make poor financial decision is creating huge moral hazard. Printing money is pushing people back into risky assets with the eventual popping of these newly created asset bubbles will create another bust. Isn't steady growth better than boom bust?
None of this is good for the economy in the long run. In the short run it only helps banks and those that have overextended themselves.
Yes we need change, and so far Mr. Obama and his economic team have not given us the change we need.
I don't think anyone disagrees with stimulus that helps to build new roads and new infrastructure that needs help, but just printing money to push up asset prices is not just a bad idea, but possibly the worst idea of all time.
I hope you pull your head out of the sand and actually think about what you are doing Mr. President.
Bernanke is a money printer hoping to debase our currency, creating bubbles, and moral hazard. We need some substance. This is just a madman hoping he can print his way into prosperity.

[LDMerriam]

08:32 AM on 11/03/2010

Brand Obama is in trouble. Here is some advice for a branding expert: http://bit.ly/9T3PFP

[kinogod]

02:46 AM on 11/03/2010

This 70's style centrist republicanism got him into trouble thanks to the centrists on his team - couple that with the worst communications team and you have a drubbing on your hands.

[castlerider]

01:44 AM on 11/03/2010

Shake 'em up? OMG, He friggin' better...

[JoeLeland]

11:54 PM on 11/02/2010

48 former Goldman Sachs employees in his administration !
Government Motors and 322,000 Impalas recalled. The dollar in a race to the bottom with the yuan.
Elan Kagan a former Goldman Sachs employee on the Supreme Court, this Wall St. fiasco has no end.

[Lake Saganaga]

10:50 PM on 11/02/2010

I would love to see Turbo tax Timmy fired , the announcement coming tomorrow in the press conference. Don't know what it takes to get rid of Bailout Ben Bernie. Obama, as much as he crows about teacher accountability, very much rewards incompetence in his economic & national security teams.

On the other hand, I doubt if his next picks will be any better , maybe worse given his liking towards incompetence.

[Intolerantcentrist]

08:58 PM on 11/02/2010

Sorry Mr. President; you’re about 18 months too late on that…

[ajgrenvik]

07:58 PM on 11/02/2010

I would really like to indicate that Obama came into this Presidency with a very tough agenda which was hard to create due to the problems that was built up by the previous President. Any President, regardless would have had the same problem to get the economy, etc., moving forward again. I applaud President Obama for his efforts and will continue to do so. Republicans will only destroy the next 2 years by playing double jeopardy with the current administration. I am a big fan of socialized medicine, etc. I am not in favor of the war, but that was unavoidable due to the balance of the two wars - Iraq and Afghanistan with the latter being the hardest to control due to its region. I will vote for Obama again to say the least.

[mickcastillo]

11:19 PM on 11/02/2010

F & F! Well said!

[Old Claudius]

07:29 PM on 11/02/2010

Barack Obama is politically done for.

It is too late for Obama to do anything to make himself electable in 2012. He has done too much to destroy his credibility and trustability in his his first two years. He has also done to little to demonstrate any presidential competence or any "democratic" interest in the voters of the United States.

Thus, no matter what the democrats do between now and 2012, unless they replace Obama in the primary, with a democrat with genuine credibility and a genuine record of service to the people, in 2013 the President of the United States will be a Republican.

[Lake Saganaga]

10:52 PM on 11/02/2010

I mostly agree with you. Though i have a tiny tiny bit of hope he will grow a spine, develop.... EMPATHY !!! towards main street and start fighting.

[leftLibertarian]

07:19 PM on 11/02/2010

Let's hope so since they are simply Wall Street tools.

[bllnsinchnge]

05:03 PM on 11/02/2010

It does not matter who is on the team if you don't have a gameplan.

[jdevans]

05:00 PM on 11/02/2010

Larry "heck of a job" Summers didn't clean up the disastrous economy any better than Michael "heck of a job" Brown cleaned up after Hurricane Katrina. When a president says you've done a "heck of a job", you know you've screwed up bigtime.

[CaptainVideo]

04:24 PM on 11/02/2010

The Democrats are losing badly because the unemployment rate is stalled at about 9 1/2 %. From day one of the Obama adminstration pushing policies to make the economy grow fast enough so that during the 6 months before the election the unemployment rate was coming down at a solid rate should have been its overriding objective. If the unemployment rate had been coming down like that, the Democrats would have had a very good November.

The Obama administration should have made a major effort to get a bigger stimulus. If it had been weighted more heavily toward investment in infrastructure, they may have succeeded. Even if not, they should have used reconciliation, which only required 51 votes, to pass a second stimulus as part of the budget process. They should have filled the 2 vacancies on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System with full employment hawks instead of leaving the posts vacants for a long period of time. They should have expended the political capital needed to get the Senate to pass the bankruptcy bill that the House passed, which would have permitted the principal owned on underwater homes to be reduced, thereby achieving a major reduction in foreclotures. And they should have foced China to stop undervaluing its currency with credible threats of using retaliatory tariffs. There are many things they could have done to make the economy grow faster in spite of Republican obstructionsism, but they failed to do so.

[CaptainVideo]

04:27 PM on 11/02/2010

Because of the Obama administration's failure to do so the Democrats are paying the price this November.

[CaptainVideo]

04:32 PM on 11/02/2010

The problem was compounded by the fact that the Democrats went into the election without offering a credible plan for bringing the unemployment rate down if they remained in power.

One credible plan they should have offered is to end the tax cut for the rich AND use the resulting revenue to pay for a suspension of the payroll tax for the next two years. By giving the tax cut to the people who would spend the money, instead of the people who would sit on it, this would have given the economy a significant job creating stimulus. Therefore it would have been good economics policity. And it would have been good politics because it would have made it clearer to the people which party is on the side of the working people and which is the Party of the Rich.