Electoral Arithmetic

This is going to be a close election on Tuesday. While I have avoided social media campaigning, below are several thoughts I wanted to share before the polls open.

"It's the economy, stupid." While this slogan made James Carville famous (and Bill Clinton president) in 1992, no one would pay for this insight today. It's a given.

Perhaps too much emphasis is being placed on the domestic economy. Perhaps too little attention is being paid to the responsibility the winner of this election will have for leading the United States through increasingly complex foreign policy decisions.

But back to my bank statements...

The US economy advances at a glacial pace. It can falter or collapse much more quickly.

There are few things a president can do to support economic growth, and they take years to take effect...usually more than four. Remember that the "good years" under Clinton didn't kick in until his second term, and the current administration inherited a much larger mess than he did.

There are even fewer things a president can do to prevent massive economic failures, and he/she must do them quickly. While the opposition claims to value the natural selective forces of the free market, do they really think we would be better of today by having let GM fail? Does anyone remember that the US industrial machine (and GM in particular) has been a vital element of US success in times of war?

What's my point? The current administration has made multiple decisions in the past four years that helped lessen the impact of fiscal issues that had been compounding for the better part of the prior decade. It has made multiple decisions designed to begin to stabilize the economy and improve the future. The tone of much of the challenger's messaging seems to say "The economy hasn't recovered. They didn't deliver." I find it offensive that they think that voters will buy this.

There are many other differences between the current administration and the challenger...and probably more than a few similarities. I just hope those factor more heavily into voters' Tuesday decisions than the challenger's positioning of the current administration's economic record.
-HammerHead


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