by Frank James
There's been some thinking since Election Day that President-elect Barack Obama would want to emulate President Franklin D. Roosevelt in terms of staying out of the way until he was officially in office.
Roosevelt famously rejected the entreaties of President Herbert Hoover to help deal with the Depression. FDR didn't want his policies to be tainted by an association with his increasingly unpopular predecessor.
But the world Obama must deal with is much different than the one Roosevelt faced. It's much more connected with information and money moving far faster because of technology than was possible in Roosevelt's time.
So, as I wrote yesterday, Obama has clearly decided to seize the bully pulpit aspect of the presidency since President Bush's influence has waned to such a degree that it seems like the current Oval Office occupant has already mentally packed up his presidency and is just waiting for the movers to show up.
Peter Wallsten of Tribune's Washington Bureau has a story that elaborates on this theme.
"There's no question that Bush is still president, but people are looking for signs to see what's going to happen going forward," said an Obama aide who, like others, requested anonymity when discussing deliberations inside the transition. "We're going to attempt to do that in this period."
Obama has moved with unusual speed to fill most of his top White House staff positions. And over the last week, he settled on a number of key Cabinet appointments designed to remove the uncertainty that has sparked turbulence in the financial markets and to replace it with a sense of confidence in the administration-in-waiting. He offered the all-important job of Treasury secretary to a pragmatic and experienced regulator, Timothy F. Geithner, and reached out to former campaign rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, an experienced figure known around the world, to be the country's top diplomat. After the Geithner selection was reported Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average soared nearly 500 points.
On Monday, the president-elect will emerge from two weeks of near-seclusion to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his economics team for a news conference that aides hope will help calm an anxious public.
Obama's aggressive posture marks an evolution inside his transition team since immediately after the Nov. 4 election, when he pledged to live by a mantra that the country is led by "one president at a time."
Obama and his aides have been discussing how hands-off he should be with circumstances changing so dramatically: stocks tumbling; negotiations stalling over an economic stimulus plan and a possible automobile industry bailout; and another financial giant, Citigroup Inc., at risk.
The quandary for Obama's team has been how to finesse a set of challenges not seen since 1932: a quickly deteriorating economy and a transition of power between two presidents with vastly different views on how to fix it.
"They recognize it's a careful balancing act, because you want to bring a whole new face to it when you're in office," said Leon Panetta, a White House chief of staff under President Clinton who has informally advised Obama's aides and has had recent conversations with them. "But at the same time, there's an underlying concern that things seem to be deteriorating rapidly" -- making the new president's job harder.
Panetta said the country is "caught between a president who doesn't have a lot of credibility even if he tries to do something and a new president who, if it looks like he's going to lay out things he's going to try to do, it looks like he's putting the cart before the horse. It's a tough place for the country to be in right now."
Aides are wary too of taking ownership of problems they do not yet have the formal power to address.
Still, with the financial markets and the public clearly looking for reassurance, Saturday's announcement -- and Monday's news conference -- signal that the transition has entered a phase in which the president-elect will become more visible and vocal.
Comments
Obama and his team are students of history and realize hat FDR's decision to stay out of economic policy during the transition ultimately hurt the country.
It's also clear that the Bush Administration is doing things very much different from what Obama wants/needs to accomplish soon after inauguration, and that most of these things are potentially irreversible.
http://www.political-buzz.com/
Posted by: matt | November 23, 2008 10:29 AM
What's clear is that FDR's "New Deal" policies actually delayed America's recovery from the Great Depression.
The U.S. was the only developed country to attempt a New Deal-style government takeover of the economy. It was also the last developed country to recover. A recent study by two UCLA economists has concluded that FDR's policies prolonged the Depression by 7 years. See http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx for the details.
Posted by: Obama rocks! | November 23, 2008 11:17 AM
As reported by Lexington in the 11-22 The Economist, comparisons between Obama and FDR are misguided:
"The New Deal was introduced into a world of giant organisations-of big businesses and big trade unions that were capable of striking deals with big government. But today's economy is much more fluid. America's most successful companies are entrepreneurial outfits like Apple and Google [and Nike], which thrive on flexibility [and aren't constrained by unions]; even giant companies such as General Electric are breaking themselves up into entrepreneurial divisions. MORE AMERICANS OWN THEIR OWN COMPANIES (15%) THAN BELONG TO TRADE UNIONS (12%) [7.5%of private-sector workers)."
Obama should adhere to the original focus of liberalism on individual liberty and reject collectivist calls for restricting workplace secret ballot election choice to union adherents. If the privacy of a secret ballot was good enough for the Senate Democratic Caucus in choosing whether to retain Joe Lieberman in leadership positions, it is good enough for American workers - whether they would vote for a particular union or against one.
Posted by: someone who knows FDR would not have supported the Employee-Free Choice Act. | November 23, 2008 12:04 PM
Comparisons to a previous era have to be made with a knowledge of differences as well as similarities. The peak decline in the market between 1929 and 1932 was in 1931. Hoover had been energetic in trying to revive the economy and failed.
We do not know when the peak in the market drop will occur but it is closer to the transition period than in 1933. Obama is not faced with a president who has responded aggressively to this crisis and could best be described as reactive. Bush is not handling the market. There is a crisis in confidence that someone will act. Obama is doing the things that will hopefully settle the markets.
What Obama is looking to avoid is a unemployment rate of 16% which was present in 1932. Clearly the market entered into new territory on the downside this week and hopefully Obama's assurances will delay or avoid a further collapse in market prices and further collapse of the economy.
Posted by: Ron M | November 23, 2008 2:50 PM