Comments on: President Barack Obama: There is Method to his Madness

By: Felipe Pait

Felipe Pait — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:36:00 +0000

I have just jotted down a few paragraphs commenting on the fact that the US is no longer a high-labor-cost country. (I believe it is a fact; would take a good statistician to do the comparisons correctly.) The point: it’s a way of looking at recent US events that ties together many perspectives. I am sure economists have noted it, but it gets drowned out in the public debate. I’m not an economist, a sociologist, or a political scientist. I can’t write a paper on the subject, so I wrote a blog post (in English). If you are interested, O blog do Pait: Rabbits in New England http://j.mp/nEmmnN

By: Felipe Pait

Felipe Pait — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:50:00 +0000

I like to think of Obama as a superb Go player. A simplistic metaphor compared to your analysis, but a convenient one, I think. He is playing with a handicap – a rabid opposition and an ineffectual support base in Congress. When you have a handicap, playing the correct moves leads to defeat. You can only win if the the other side makes an error. Faced with a very bad position, he is inviting the opponent to overextend, so as to attack their unconnected stones – the indefensible pieces of the conservative agenda.

From the economic point of view, Krugman’s criticism (shared by all competent and honest economists) is of course correct. But strategically, all that the conservatives would need to do it would be to defeat it in Congress, and let the president suffer the consequences. Perhaps last week’s speech was the deciding move that ties his game together: Republican opposition to anything that would help the economy may no longer be feasible. If something passes and the economy improves, Obama won. If Republicans continue their Leninist strategy of trying to provoke a depression, they lose.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:41:00 +0000

I am not sure that the speech reveals a method so much as proof that he is listening to the right people on what needs to be done, and, again, we are all hoping he continues to do so and to do so forcefully—- to keep on top of the economy and the politics of image (or perception). He has to be forceful and be seen as forceful— not because I personally think he is weak but because Americans tend to confuse graciousness with weakness and the refusal to engage with having nothing to say. I like that he refuses to be provoked, but it does not follow from that that he refuse to really take on the opposition and force them to speak about issues on his (our) terms. I like your point that he is a centrist (it is better than what I call him— a pragmatist)— and I like the idea that he is pulling the country to the left. I am not sure he is, or at least we do not know yet— but I do think he could pull harder so that when he gets any give from the other side he is standing far enough to the left for the resolution to land on the left side of the aisle. And, I really, really, really hope that he never stops pointing out the obstructionism. If he cannot be engaged on the level we operate on in our politics, at least let him continue to call a spade a spade until enough people see it— because only enough people seeing that he is constantly blocked is going to lead to an end, or at least a lessening, of the obstructionism.