Krauthammer’s Take
April 4, 2011 1:35 P.M.
By NRO Staff
From Friday night’s Fox News All-Stars:
On the March jobs and unemployment numbers:
It looks as if the numbers indicate a self-sustaining recovery. And if this continues — the downward slope in unemployment — you can project it to November of next year, where it would be way below 8 percent, and that would be a real positive for the administration.
The one real negative on the horizon is, in part, oil but also general inflation, commodity inflation. For two reasons:
It takes money out of everybody’s pocket, whether it’s a consumer or business [which] has high costs in transportation [that] it has to pass on. So that is a drag on the economy. Billions are going overseas.
But secondly, if inflation picks up you have to get a rise in interest rate. The European central bank is talking about raising its rates. Its inflation is higher. Once you have a rise of interest rates, and that is a second drag on the economy. If it happens, all of this could stall out [the economy] at the end of the year.
On the political effects of the current economy:
If you look at the polls — Is Obama doing a good job on the economy? — his numbers are low: 60 percent, I think, say No, to about 37 percent.
I think this is part unemployment but an element now is the gasoline prices. It has a major effect on people’s impression of how the administration is doing. If it [the price of gas] is high — [there is] no indication it will go lower — it will hurt the president. That is why he gave a worthless speech Wednesday on oil imports. He thought he had to do something. Even though there was nothing in it.
On criticisms of the Obama administration for a lack of transparency at a time when President Obama accepted a transparency award behind closed doors:
My motto in political life: If you never expect anything, you will never suffer disappointment. Having never expected Obama would be hope and change, a messianic transcender, or a guy who would redeem and heal the earth, I’m not surprised that he promised to be transparent and it turned out he isn’t exactly that.
On which is the most important Arab revolt now taking place:
I think the most important is Syria. It’s also the most surprising because it’s the most effectively repressive. But it’s the most important strategically because it’s Iran’s only strong ally in the Arab world. It’s an ally of Hezbollah. It funneled fighters against us in Iraq. If there were a change of regime in Syria, it would change the entire structure of the Middle East.
And the administration’s silence on this, reticence on this — even having the secretary of state saying openly that it looks as if Assad is a reformer at a time when he’s shooting reform demonstrators in the street — I think is disgraceful.
They ought to speak out about this strongly because this is really an opportunity. It’s like Iran in 2009 in which this administration withheld its criticism. It shouldn’t do that again. |
