People of all political stripes along with the media are
dissecting the not-yet-dead carcass of the Obama Administration’s
behavior following the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy
SEALs.
A Washington Times article entitled
“Obama, aides struggle with
post-raid miscues” is a perfect example.
Replete with outside and self-criticism of the Administration about
its first reports on the raid, “should we or shouldn’t we” debates
about pictures of bin Laden, presumably with a bullet hole in his
head, the media frenzy is a tempest in a teapot.
Here’s my take on how the Administration is handling these
various posthumous details: Who cares?
Come election time, nobody will remember or care about
whether bin Laden’s wife tried to shield him or whether there was a
“firefight” or just a few gunshots. Already nobody except some
American Indian (i.e., Native American) activists with nothing
better to complain about care that the mission was called
“Geronimo.” (If you were a Native American, wouldn’t you be
extremely proud rather than irate at the choice, anyway, asks this
Washington Redskins fan?)
Come election time, few will care whether they’ve seen a
picture of the encephalectomized bin Laden. Heck, I can basically
picture it in my mind already, with no little satisfaction knowing
that the surgery was performed, without anesthesia, by
Americans.
All that will matter about bin Laden in November, 2012, is
that the villain is dead and that this president, with so
few-and-far-between good decisions, made this one.
But all that will matter about bin Laden is, unfortunately
for Barack Obama, not all that will matter in the
election.
Indeed, unless unemployment comes down well below 8% and
gas prices closer to $3 than to $4 (or $5 near where I am in
Maryland), the only electoral benefit President Obama will receive
is that Republican challengers will spend less time calling him a
spineless apologist for American foreign policy (which he remains).
Instead they’ll spend that time calling him a tool of the unions
with no understanding of entrepreneurship whose hatred for fossil
fuels has, in part, caused the equivalent of a massive (and
massively regressive) tax on all Americans who drive to work, heat
their homes with any petroleum product, or buy anything that
required transportation other than horse-and-buggy to get to the
store.
Prior to the killing of bin Laden, Barack Obama’s
re-election odds (as set by those, including
me, betting their own money on the question at Intrade.com) were
hovering around 59%. In the hours after the news was announced,
those odds briefly spiked up to nearly 70%. Less than a week later,
as people realized that bin Laden’s death, as welcome as it is, did
not suddenly decrease gas prices or the unemployment rate, Obama’s
re-election odds dropped back down to 60%.
On Friday, as I passed a gas station and noticed — I
really don’t know why I noticed — a gas pump from which someone
had recently put 3 gallons of gasoline into her car at a cost of
nearly $13, that reliable political maxim, attributed to former
Republican Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn popped into my head: “… the
universal truth about elections is that people vote their
pocketbook.”
On the same day, the Department of Labor reported that
while more jobs than expected had been created in April, the
unemployment rate jumped back up to 9%. It was precisely as I (and
others)
predicted had to happen because the decline
in the unemployment rate in recent months has been due less to job
creation than to would-be employees giving up their job searches;
the labor participation rate (the ratio of the labor force to the
working age population) is still hovering around its lowest level
since 1985.
Even if the employment situation improves, it will be a
hard sell for President Obama to take any credit. Whether you look
at the unemployment
rate or the labor
participation rate, the time when the bleeding
stopped — even if the patient hasn’t actually recovered — is
clear: following the massive Republican election victory in
November when it became impossible for Barack Obama to continue to
implement his anti-growth agenda (at least via legislation; he’s
still trying through regulation), and following Obama’s reluctant
agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts.
Although the ability of Americans to continue to believe
that negative economic conditions should be blamed on former
President George W. Bush remains a remarkable testament to the
flexibility of human cognition, this too shall end before the next
election except for among the far left base of the Democratic
Party.
In the meantime, independent voters, along with
Republicans, trust the GOP more than the Democrats to deal with the
economic issues which will motivate their votes unless something
extremely dramatic happens in the next 18 months — something very
unlikely given the continued assault on the economy by the Obama
Administration using the few but powerful tools they have left,
such as the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and lately and
perhaps most infamously, the
National Labor Relations Board.
Recent Gallup tracking polls of President Obama’s job
approval rating
show about a 6% jump, “fairly typical for a
rally event,” following the death of Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately
for Obama, all this does is tie him with Bill Clinton at the lowest
level of popularity of any of the last four presidents at this
point during their terms in office. (Ronald Reagan’s popularity was
actually lower but recovered, and Jimmy Carter’s much lower and
didn’t recover.)
Perhaps more important than this headline number is the
internal data in the poll: There was zero increase in job
approval among Democrats, nine points among independents, and 12
points among Republicans. The gain among Republicans will be
extremely short lived, as will much of the gain among independents
— who have been tracking very closely to Republicans on most
political poll topics in the past year. The job approval gain
Republicans will result in zero additional votes for President
Obama in next November’s election. The lack of gain among Democrats
will thus not translate into additional Obama volunteers or
campaign contributions. And the lasting political impact of bin
Laden’s death on independents will, by their nature, be somewhere
in between, which is to say also of very little benefit to
Obama.
Barack Obama and his supporters may be hoping that the
killing of Osama bin Laden will boost his slumping re-election
chances. That’s why they’re sweating the media’s and public’s
reaction to questions about whether bin Laden was or wasn’t
shielded by his wife, or whether they should release a picture of
bin Laden in which he would have an odd number of eyes (though
without seeing the image I can’t tell you whether it’s one or
three.)
At the end of the day, however, all that matters is high
unemployment and crushingly high gasoline prices and the
understanding by the public, which comes around sooner or later,
that Obama-ism is bad for our economic health. So even with Obama’s
re-election odds back down to 60%, I’m still selling.
