President Obama OutVoxes Them All

   Krugman talked recently about how much opprobrium the President's recent interview with Ezra Klein at Vox has garnered and believe it or not, I feel the President ought to channel Dan Quayle and declare I wear their scorn like a badge of honor. 

   http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-06-14/news/9202220786_1_indiana-national-guard-pit-puppy-elite

   They are hating on the Prez's interview because it was so good. As Krugman says, a lot of what outrages them is that the interview is actually about policy rather than personalities.

  "I’ve been behind the curve on the Vox interview with President Obama. But the reactions to that interview — not just from the right, but from centrists — are remarkable. Jack Schafer compares it to a Scientology recruitment film; Rich Lowry compares it to Leni Riefenstahl. Why?

First, read the transcript while ignoring the infographics. It’s a generally friendly, sympathetic interview — but that’s hardly unusual, and it’s nothing like the actually fawning interviews that were standard in the Bush years. So what sets these guys off? Well, it’s those charts and numbers, illustrating the points Obama is making."

    "So, is this propaganda? I don’t seem to remember a lot of charts and data in Triumph of the Will. It would be propaganda if the charts were misleading, or if they were empty visual flourishes. But they’re neither of those things. In part one, on domestic policy, they’re pretty much the standard charts anyone uses to illustrate the issues surrounding inequality and health care, and aren’t cooked at all. Nor are they just eye candy — I know all this stuff, but most readers don’t."

    "Yes, the charts are generally supportive of what Obama is saying, but only because the facts he alludes to are indeed facts."

    "But what seems to offend the critics is the very idea of covering a politician’s policies, and the facts relevant to those policies, rather than making it about personalities."

     "Back in 2004 I looked at policy coverage of the Bush-Kerry race and discovered that there wasn’t any, at least on TV — that you could watch all the network and major cable coverage for two months, and learn literally nothing about, say, the candidates’ health care plans. You might encounter some stories about how the plans were playing politically, but not a single thing about their content."

    
   http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/triumph-of-the-chart/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

   In reading the interview itself, I must admit, I'm very impressed. The President is able to really give us a meaningful narrative of where the economy has been, is, and where it might be going and where we want it to go and what we need to do to get it there. He makes the point that there are short term, medium term, and long term issues. 

   The short term issue has been trying to recover from the financial crisis and sharp recession. As he argues as we're finally coming out of that-and yes, we all, whether Keynesian or Market Monetarist agree that the recovery took too long due to suboptimal policy though we differ some on what the optimal policy was, though we all pretty much agree that John Taylor doesn't have the answer-

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/its-all-about-taylor-rule-and-zlb.html

    we're now able to start dealing with the medium term issues-like stagnating median wages which he rightly points out is something that started in the late 70s. 

   "In some ways we're now back to the position where we can focus on what is this longer-term trend, and that is a larger and larger share of wealth and income going to the very top, and the middle class or folks trying to get into the middle class feeling increasingly squeezed because their wages have stagnated."

   http://www.vox.com/a/barack-obama-interview-vox-conversation/obama-domestic-policy-transcript

   I find this next passage but him especially impressive as he really does a great job of teasing out exactly what's been happening during this long term stagnating trend. 
  
   "Now, there are a whole bunch of reasons for that. Some of it has to do with technology and entire job sectors being eliminated — travel agents, bank tellers, a lot of middle management — because of efficiencies with the internet and a paperless office. A lot of it has to do with globalization and the rest of the world catching up. Post-World War II, we just had some enormous structural advantages because our competitors had been devastated by war, and we had also made investments that put us ahead of the curve, whether in education or infrastructure or research and development."

     "And around the '70s and '80s and then accelerating beyond that, those advantages went away at the same time as, because of technology, companies are getting a lot more efficient. One last component of this is that workers increasingly had less leverage because of changes in labor laws and the ability for capital to move and labor not to move. 2 You combine all that stuff, and it's put workers in a tougher position. So our job now is to create additional tools that, number one, make sure that everybody's got a baseline of support to be able to succeed in a constantly moving economy. Whether it's health care that survives job loss. Whether it is making sure we have child care that allows a two-working-household family to prosper while still caring for their kids. Having a certain baseline in terms of wages, through the minimum wage. 3 So that's one set of issues."

     "A second set of issues then becomes: how do we make sure that everybody has the tools to succeed in an economy where they constantly have to adapt? And how do they move up the value chain, essentially because they can work in higher-wage, higher-skill professions, and were able to compete for those jobs internationally?"

    "Then the third thing is making sure that we have an economy that's productive. Now, if we do all those things, then what I'm confident about is that we can continue to lower the unemployment rate, increase the participation rate, and continue to grow and increase productivity. We're still going to have a broader, longer-term, global question, and that is: how do we make sure that the folks at the very top are doing enough of their fair share? The winner-take-all aspect of this modern economy means that you've got some people who just control enormous amounts of wealth. We don't really resent their success; on the other hand, just as a practical matter, if we're going to pay for schools, roads, et cetera, and you've got, you know, 50 people or 80 people having as much wealth as 3 billion, you know you're going to have problems making sure that we're investing enough in the common good to be able to move forward. 4 So that's a long-term question. But right now, there's some very specific things we can do that can make a difference and help middle-class families. And that's why I called it middle-class economics."

     I think he really very deftly bookends the different stages of short term, middle term, and long term. The question of 80 people having as much as $3 billion dollars is as he says a long term question. He rightly argues that we don't resent their success but they should pay their fair share. That's just the right tone to take because I would argue most Americans don't resent success-I know I don't. 

      The GOP hated this interview for the usual reasons-OBDS-but mostly because it was so good. Though my quotes of him here are extensive, they actually are only a few paragraphs of a long interview that I recommend you reading in its entirety if you haven't.