The White House Is Serious, but Not in the GOP's Way
Regarding Kimberley Strassel's "This Unserious White House" (Potomac Watch, Nov. 30): A White House that is deadly serious about transforming America and a president who openly admits a willingness to sacrifice growth for fairness need not be too serious about averting a fiscal cliff. If primary objectives are to expand the welfare state and redistribute as much income as possible in the process, the fiscal cliff and a possible recession are not so alarming, particularly since the media are teed up to blame obstinate Republicans for an impasse. The Journal's same-day news headline "Obama's Cliff Offer Spurned" generally leads a skim-reader to sympathize with the one being spurned, not the one doing the spurning.</br></br>For historical perspective on the Obama era, the 1930s are most instructive. In the mid-1930s President Franklin Roosevelt's second term was dedicated to preserving New Deal entitlements and programs and building federal government power. Economic growth was an afterthought. Unemployment was about 15% when his second term began and about 15% when it ended (and higher in between). The stock market sank. Washington grew much faster than the private sector. FDR's legacy, had he not served a third term after 1940, would be: He saved capitalism from itself after Republicans and Wall Street mucked it up; he created massive new benefit plans and vastly increased the state's reach and resources; and he browbeat the rich into submission while redistributing income with a vengeance. He did not, however, engineer a sustained economic recovery. Instead, he transformed the nation in eight years and for that he most likely would be ranked as a top-10 president regardless of his poor economic results and without his World War II leadership.</br></br>The economy has its ups and downs, and President Obama has been immunized from responsibility for the downs -- as was FDR. Widespread tax increases, drastic cuts in defense spending, no substantive reform of entitlements and little White House accountability for economic pain may be a perfectly acceptable, if not desirable, outcome. It actually may be harder for President Obama to leapfrog FDR on the transformation (and top-five presidential ranking) scale if the economy is humming along and people need less help from Washington. The fiscal cliff is as rare an opportunity as was the Great Depression to permanently alter the balance of power between public and private sectors. What would FDR do?</br></br>Jim Moore</br></br>Falls Church, Va.