Alternate Realities

There is something strangely disorienting about the way Mitt Romney describes the economy and President Obama's economic policies. It is as though Romney lives in some alternate reality unaffected by and unrelated to the common experience of the vast majority of citizens.

For example, today it was reported that Romney said that in Obama's economy "There is nothing fair about a government that favors political connections over honest competition and takes away your right to earn your own success"; and "there is nothing morally right about trying to turn government dependence into a substitute for the dignity of work"; and Under Obama, the country was on the brink of a "government-led economy".

Let's take these one at a time.

Presumably, the comment about favoring "political connections over honest competition" refers to Solyndra. One does not have to believe that all elements of the Solyndra experience were uncontroversial to also believe that generally characterizing the Obama economic record as one that favors "political connections over honest competition" is absurd. The Solyndra loan was begun by the Bush administration. The loans in question had already been approved by non-political career employees at the Department of Energy before the administration seemed to rush final OMB approval. The Washington Post pointed out that "The Energy Department’s loan-guarantee program, enacted in 2005 with bipartisan support, has backed nearly $38 billion in loans for 40 projects around the country. Solyndra represents just 1.3 percent of that portfolio — and, as yet, it’s the only loan that has soured. " In fact, investigations have revealed no evidence that the decision to green-light Solyndra was payback to political supporters. In any case, the idea that $535 million worth of loan guarantees was payback for the $87,000 in contributions provided by Solyndra-related individuals is a little ridiculous. In a post Citizens United era that allows unlimited anonymous contributions to organizations committed to achieving partisan political outcomes, there are much easier ways to encourage contributions to political causes.

I have no idea what the part about taking "away your right to earn your own success"   refers to. Whose right to success has been denied? This is just a fantasy.

One can only imagine that turning "government dependence into a substitute for the dignity of work" refers to the large increase in unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other automatic stabilizers that have kicked in as a response to the financial crisis. What makes this statement so weird is that it implies 1) that there is a large backlog of people who have chosen not to work, preferring instead of live off of government benefits; and, 2) had Romney gotten his way, social safety net programs would not be allowed to cushion the effect of the most profound economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Does anyone--including Mitt Romney--seriously believe either of these propositions? Did unemployment explode from 4% to 10% between 2007 and 2010 because millions of Americans suddenly decided to become welfare queens? The plain fact is that there are more people looking for work than there are jobs available.

Finally, it is not clear what he means when warning about a "government-led economy". Again, this is strangely unconnected with reality. The private sector has recovered from the recession much more robustly than has the public sector, which has been hemorrhaging jobs as state and local governments layoff teachers, firefighters, and cops. Perhaps this statement refers to health care reform, but Obamacare maintains the private insurance system. In fact, many on the Left were disappointed that health care reform did NOT provide a single-payer government solution, and was instead modeled after Romney's own private insurance approach he developed while governor of Massachusetts.

Actually, there is an important point in all of this. As David Frum points out in an excellent column, Republicans are weirdly stuck in a kind of time warp in which every event is understood in the context of the problems the country faced in 1979. However, the problems we face in 2012 are very different, and indeed as Frum points out, in many ways they are exactly the opposite of the era that ushered in the Reagan administration. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to evoke the image of welfare queens and government dependency.

This sort of nostalgic cheerleading is obviously popular among the GOP base. It will be interesting to see if it has any traction among the independents that will determine the election.