Shoe-on-the-Other-Foot Syndrome

Over the past couple of years, all and sundry political commentators have pointed out that Barack Obama's re-election effort is in a bit of a tricky rhetorical position. The economy has basically felt sucky during those two years, and sucky economies are never good for incumbents. This means that Republicans get the extremely easy attack line, "The economy sucks and it's Obama's fault!" Obama, meanwhile, has nothing much to counter this attack with, except for the claim that yes, the economy sucks, but it would've sucked much worse were it not for his policies. This happens to be completely true, but it's also a very difficult political claim to make successfully. Obama might win anyway, but that would just be because people really do hate the Republicans so much on so many different levels; he would have a nearly impossible time convincing people he had actually been doing a good job.

That's all very well and good for Republicans, but there's one great big problem with this strategy. The economy is now getting somewhat better. And, more importantly from a political perspective, people are starting to perceive the economy as getting better! And this has now forced the Republicans into the same rhetorical corner Obama was in earlier. Witness Mitt Romney saying that the economy is "coming back," and then trying to claim that, because of Obama's policies, it came back slower and weaker than it should have. The way he puts it (“Almost everything [Obama]’s done has made it harder for this economy to recover.”) is false, but it's perfectly true that the Obama Administration has not pursued an optimal strategy to foster recovery, and that it has failed to do so from Day One, when it called for woefully inadequate stimulus and pretended that it was just the right amount.

But look at what's happened. Whereas Obama was saying, "sure, the economy is lousy but if it weren't for me it would be much worse," Romney is now saying, "sure, the economy is recovering but if it weren't for him it would be much better." If Obama had a tough sell then, Romney has an equally tough sell now. And since he was already fighting an uphill battle on all the other fronts, because people really do prefer Democratic policies to Republican ones right now and because he's so laughably less personally likeable than Obama, it's really hard to see how he wins if the economy keeps getting steadily better and he has no better way to spin the recovery than, well, it should be going stronger. I continue to think that, if the world doesn't get substantially worse on a macro level between now and November, it's going to be tricky for Obama to lose.