Obama’s new ad is out. The first thirty seconds are spent on how terrible the economic news was “before this president took the oath.”
(Of course, unemployment peaked in October of 2009 and we remain at 8.1 percent, less than two percentage points off the peak, and that’s with an “incredible shrinking labor force.” If the labor force size remained the same, the unemployment rate would be 11.1 percent.)
There’s mention of “our auto industry is back, firing on all cylanders.”
Of course, one of the reasons GM is in such good health is because the U.S. taxpayer bought oodles upon oodles of stock in GM. (If the federal government were to sell its stock today, taxpayers would lose $15.3 billion.) Amazing how easy it is to return to profitability when the federal government gives you $60 billion, with zero interest and no particular deadline on paying it back, and lets you write off up to $45 billion in old losses.
There’s the bin Laden kill. (Spike!)
There’s no mention of Obamacare, but I suppose they could be avoiding the need to re-do the ad if the Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional.
There are visuals about “foreclosures” in the ad, but no mention of an Obama policy effort to fix them. For good reason, I suppose:
Obama has rarely spoken publicly about his frustrations with the housing crisis, but in a private meeting with his advisers at the White House in December, his concerns boiled over. The president opened the meeting by saying how he had received letters from homeowners warning about problems with his housing programs. He pointed out that he had been assured by his advisers that banks would be able to step up, according to two people who attended.
But at the meeting, he said he was now frustrated to learn, by way of a conclusive new federal review, that banks were not providing required relief to many borrowers.
“He was clearly disappointed,” said one participant in the meeting, “to realize the problem was worse than he thought.”
The closing line is, “You don’t quit. And neither does he.” Which is… something of an ironic message at a time when more Americans have stopped looking for work than ever before.