During the panel discussion on Sunday's "Meet the Press," host David Gregory asked his guests, "Why shouldn't the Republicans, who certainly spent a long time spending a lot of government money and under whose watch the economy took the turn that it did, why shouldn't there be more patience from the Republican aisle?"
Shrum amazingly offered the following answer (readers are advised to prepare for an alternate reality):
Look, this--Reagan went through this. Reagan went through this in 1981 and, in fact, his approval rating, by the way, at this time was exactly the same as Obama's is today. And...And Republicans, Republicans stayed with him. They stayed despite the difficulties in the mid-term elections. They got to 1983, the recovery came; so did morning in America and so did the confirmation of the Reagan era. The real challenge here is for Democrats. Are they going to stick with the president? Are they going to get wobbly? Are they going to get afraid?
Wow. So, in one paragraph, the man who worked for the presidential campaigns of Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry not only agreed that Reagan's economic policies resulted in a recovery, but used it as an example of why folks should be patient in letting Obama's policies work.
Sadly, no one present noticed this odd turn of events, nor did they point out to Shrum that the crux of Reaganomics was lower taxes and relaxed regulations.
By contrast, Obamanomics to date has been a mixture of higher taxes and tighter regulations.
As such, those waiting for that to stimulate growth might be waiting a very, very long time.
On a related note, before Shrum got to answer, NBC's Andrea Mitchell made her pitch as to why Obamanomics has worked:
[U]nemployment is a lagging indicator. There has been a decline in the rate of unemployment. That's the, the immediate fix.
Yes, unemployment is a lagging indicator, but you think she used that to defend President Bush when he was in office and the press were regularly talking about a jobless recovery?
Remember the good old days when the Bush recovery was just beginning? The Labor Department would announce employers added 70,000 jobs to their payrolls, and folks like Mitchell would complain that this wasn't enough to keep up with the growth in the labor force.
Now, the economy loses 467,000 jobs in June, and Mitchell is not only talking about unemployment being a lagging indicator, but also claiming a slowing in the rate of unemployment is an economic fix.
Boy...what a difference an "O" makes.
