Why salesmanship counts

Let the piling on begin: The country is on the wrong track, Obama doesn't connect with working-class voters, Wall Street bankers have an inside track to the White House, the U.S. has become beholden to the Chinese, the health care plan was just a sneaky way for the Democrats to nationalize medical coverage. Mort Zuckerman considers the Obama administration to be a disaster because of how the economy has been handled, and he's not alone. But this is concocted reality, not reality based on what's truly going on.

What's going on is far from ideal, but it's nowhere approaching the apocalypse that the Republican PR machine would claim. The federal stimulus plan is working - despite shameless giveaways that helped secure its passage nearly a year ago. The economy is coming back - slowly and with frustratingly few new jobs, though given the damage that's been done, there was no way the early recovery was ever going to be robust. Banks are paying back their bailout money, and while taxpayers are still out tens of billions of dollars, that's far from the hundreds of billions that many had forecast. Two of the three U.S. car companies filed for bankruptcy and managed to stay in business, largely with the help of a Washington-led game plan (remember those so-called experts who said that a Chapter 11 filing would spell doom for the auto industry?)

As to Zuckerman's comments, Andrew Sullivan wonders, "What the fuck is he talking about?" Problem is that substance only takes you so far. We can shout and scream about how Obama helped avoid something truly terrible, but campaigning on an It-could-have-been-worse-ticket is not a great bet. Worse than what? It's been 80 years since the Great Depression, an event that very few of us were around for.

Which gets us back to salesmanship: For all the positives he accomplished, Obama could never figure out how to rebut the Republicans and their often outlandish - but simplified - attacks. Simple is their big trump card - explaining away an immensely complicated economy in a couple of choice sound bites is what the Republicans do best, going back to the Reagan days. Never mind whether they're accurate or fair or even make sense - all that counts is that they somehow include inept Washington bureaucrats, corrupt politicians and no additional taxes. What's stunning is how the Obama folks, almost from the start, could not derail that now-tired strategy.