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December 8, 2009

'He sees the world politically and not economically'

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Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, on President Obama's jobs speech: "[It] sounded good but fell short on the content."

"You see Obama's impulse to be fiscally responsible -- the Romer-Summers impulse -- and you see the impulse for social equity -- his Bob Reich impulse," says Shlaes. "This kind of tension was also very typical of Franklin Roosevelt: you'd hear two conflicting things in the same speech. That's because he saw the world politically and not economically. The same is true for Obama."

"The language of the president's speech is encouraging because it references small business and growth. It's also initially encouraging to see him talk about his education program, Race to the Top, which sounds like the opposite of No Child Left Behind," says Shlaes. "But here is an example of how the content doesn't live up to its billing. Race to the Top sounds like we're rewarding competition and helping students with scholarships -- a sort of October Sky scenario where boys compete in missile-building contests. Instead the money really flows to institutions via the state to pay teachers or low performers, i.e. it's aimed to move the weak forward rather than incent the strong. That's nice, but it's a Bush repeat."

In other words, the speech was long on glitz and short on substance, just like Obama himself - an empty suit.

Posted by Richard at December 8, 2009 5:06 PM

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