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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (62459)	2/20/2006 3:12:21 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 173976

cheneyplaysfolsom.cf.huffingtonpost.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (62459)	2/20/2006 3:12:55 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 173976

Delusion is in the eye of the beholder.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (62459)	2/20/2006 3:46:52 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 173976

The President is not responsible for the debt....the Congress is...they have the power of the purse.... J.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (62459)	2/21/2006 9:19:40 AM
From: tonto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Kenneth. let's have a peek at your Carter economy that you like so much. Carter blamed the economy for his re-election bid failure. Iran and the democratic party being splintered were the other two reasons. The third reason for defeat given by Carter is the condition of the economy at the time of the election. We come now to the economic issue and the focus of this book. Economic events of 1980 provided a major reason for Carter's defeat. There is compelling evidence that, in the end, people vote their pocketbooks.[7] The Iranian crisis and the split in the Democratic Party were contributing factors in the electoral outcome, but the inflation that dogged the administration from its first days in office, and which crested in 1980, was probably the decisive reason for the defeat. Inflation was combined with unemployment in the last year of the Carter term. The economy fell into recession in the second quarter, the sharpest one-quarter drop in national output on record. If eleven presidential four-year terms, starting with Truman and ending with Bill Clinton, are compared, only in the Carter administration was the total output of the economy declining in the fourth year in office, the year critical for reelection. Reagan was not elected in 1980 because he was viewed as strong by the public in terms of solving the Iranian crisis. When respondents were asked to choose the candidate "best able to handle the Iranian situation" in a poll two months before the election, only 33 percent selected Carter, an unsurprising result; on the other hand, only 39 percent selected Reagan.[8] But the challenger hit a sensitive nerve when he asked voters during a campaign debate whether they were better off than they were four years before. It was not Iran but inflation and unemployment that were the uppermost concerns in the minds of voters. Asked in the same survey two months before the election to identify the "most important problem facing the nation," 61 percent named "the high cost of living," while only 15 percent chose "international problems." The intensity of public feeling two months before the election is illustrated by the fact that 52 percent took the surprisingly strong position of backing the imposition of wage and price controls.[9] The diagnosis frequently repeated in the 1992 Clinton campaign, identifying the critical issue in the contest—James Carville's "it's the economy, stupid"—could also be applied to the 1980 election. Perhaps one cannot separate too sharply the effects of the Iran affair and the inflation on the campaign. Theodore White made the perceptive observation that in the Carter years, inflation and the hostage crisis were not unconnected in the minds of voters. The psychological effect on voters was similar; they both contributed to the same sense of helplessness. We couldn't free the hostages and we couldn't stop the inflation.[10] The Economy in 1980 Herbert Stein, chief economic adviser during the Nixon years, has written that when Reagan asked Americans in the 1980 campaign whether they were better off than they had been four years before, he could count on a negative response. But, Stein writes, "despite the inflation, and despite the slowdown in productivity growth, real per capita income after tax, probably the best simple measure of economic welfare, increased between 1976 and 1980. Indeed it increased just about as much in that period as in the four preceding years."[11] It could also be pointed out that the number of new civilian jobs created per year was greater during the Carter administration than for other presidents immediately before or after. But despite these positive outcomes, the Carter years were plagued with continuing economic crises, the worst of them concentrated in the final year in office. The word that comes to mind in describing economic events in 1980 is "bizarre." The inflation rate soared to the highest level since the early 1950s. Charles Schultze, Carter's chief economic adviser, reported to the president that the inflation rate in January and February was in the 18 to 20 percent range.[12] Unemployment rose, cresting at just under 8 percent in mid-summer and much higher in key industrial areas crucial in an election year. Of these two major ailments that afflict modern economies, inflation and unemployment, inflation is more subtle in its impact and more pervasive in terms of numbers affected.