You Mean It’s Not About the Economy?
12:31 PM, May 17, 2012 • By GEOFFREY NORMAN
Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts
That’s what Clive Crook thinks, anyway. In a measured appraisal of the election, he writes:
I don't really buy the view that the current state of the economy will be decisive … one way or the other. This was a very unusual recession and the tepid recovery is correspondingly strange. This time, the mechanical connection between growth and votes needs to be questioned, at least. The country knows that Obama inherited the recession. It also knows that his efforts to arrest it--for which, to be sure, he gets less credit than he deserves--had to contend with fierce GOP resistance. The economy is a negative for the incumbent, but I suspect less so than the raw numbers would lead you to think. Equally, if the pace of recovery improves, that will help Obama but again, I'm guessing, less than the historical correlations would suggest.
One can buy this. Or not. And probably find some polling data to help make a case. And, then, Mr. Crook doesn’t allow for the possibility that the “pace of the recovery,” may not improve and that, in fact, the economy may be sliding back into recession. Something for which there is troubling evidence.
But in discounting the importance of the economy in the coming election, Mr. Crook is not arguing that President Obama will, therefore, inevitably win. To the contrary:
“[I]f the election were tomorrow,” he writes, “and I was forced to put money on one of the candidates, I'd say Romney.”
Okay, you think, I’ll bite. If this economy isn’t enough to sour voters on the president, then what, pray tell, is?
|
