Infatuated with the New Deal

President Obama is a master of the "narrative." That's the fancy new word in the political lexicon for a storyline that makes a politician look good. Last year, Obama was the candidate of hope and change who would cure Washington of its bad habits. Now he has a presidential narrative. It goes like this: He's done his part to revive the economy, and it's time for others to do theirs, particularly the business community.

Obama has been refining his narrative for several months. Last week's jobs summit at the White House was cleverly crafted as a day-long expression of his version of the economy's path in his 11-month presidency. And if that was lost on anyone, he was explicit in spelling it out.

"We implemented plans to stabilize the financial system and revive lending to families and business," Obama said at the opening session. "We passed the Recovery Act, which stopped our freefall and helped spur the growth that we've seen. Today our economy is growing again for the first time in a year and at the fastest pace that we've seen in two years. And productivity is surging. Companies are reporting profits. The stock market is up."

Wow! But there's a catch. "Despite the progress we've made, many businesses are skittish about hiring," the president said. "And so that's the question that we have to ask ourselves today: How do we get businesses to start hiring again?" It was to answer this question that the summit of 130 business, union, and academic types, plus a cluster of liberal policy advocates, was supposedly convened.

Obama acted as if he's downright puzzled by the lack of hiring. "I want to hear from CEOs about what's holding back our business investment and how we can increase confidence and spur hiring," he said. "And if there are things that we're doing here in Washington that are inhibiting you, then we want to know about it."

Could the president really not have a clue about his administration's role in putting a chill on hiring? I doubt it. He couldn't be that oblivious. It's not only Republicans, free market economists, and the editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal who have harped on Obama's anti-growth, anti-hiring policies. So have prominent columnists from Robert Samuelson to George Will. The list goes on and on.

One brave summit attendee, Fred Lampropoulos of Merit Medical Systems, suggested at the closing session that Obama might be to blame. "There's uncertainty that there's such an aggressive legislative agenda that businesspeople don't really know what they ought to do," he said. "One CEO [at the summit] said he thought he has to kind of wait and see and may have to restructure his business .  .  . and that uncertainty is really what's holding back the jobs."

The president said this is a "legitimate concern," then dismissed it as fainthearted. He insisted his entire agenda should not be delayed. "If we keep putting off tough decisions about health care, about energy, about education, we'll never get to the point where there's a lot of appetite for that," he said. "My belief was that we had to start tackling some of these fundamental problems if we were going to emerge stronger than we were before."

A more candid reply would have been that his initiatives are increasingly unpopular and must be passed now because the large Democratic majorities in Congress may be sharply reduced in the 2010 election. But candor wasn't much in evidence at the summit.

Obama, who's usually been willing to spend like a drunken sailor, claimed there aren't "enough public dollars to fill the hole of private dollars that was created as a consequence of the [economic] crisis." There's the growing deficit, that is, and it polls poorly.

The president got one economic fact right. "Ultimately true economic recovery is only going to come from the private sector," he said. But for now he's eager to embrace ideas for inexpensive government programs to create jobs. Obama is said to favor a "cash for caulkers" program to subsidize weatherproofing of homes and buildings, a copy of the "cash for clunkers" program of this past summer. The unexpected dip in the unemployment rate to 10 percent may cool his enthusiasm.

The president declared himself "open to every demonstrably good idea." He's not really. He regards the New Deal with awe. "I'm confident that the spirit of 'bold, persistent experimentation' that FDR talked about and that's gotten this country through some of our darkest hours remains alive and well," he said.