John Avlon’s full throated praise of Obama economy
On tonight’s Real Time, Bill Maher brought up the article by Paul Krugman that unlike many ‘airtime’ Liberals, praised President Obama’s actual successes. One should note that Paul Krugman had been a vocal serial criticizer of the President. Cornel West who is still a serial criticizer of the President, unlike Paul Krugman, would not humble himself to objective economic data.
Mary Matalin continued the Right Wing Conservative modus operandi, lying about Obamacare. The frustration that John Avlon showed with the direction of the discourse was palpable. So much so that he exploded with the following.
“We are ten days out and there is a sense that President Obama’s poll numbers are down,” said John Avlan. “They are around forty percent. So everyone is running away from Obama. Right? So perspective is the thing we have the least of in our politics. But let’s keep a reality check here. One thing about being a centrist, we can use an equal standard. The standard of executive leadership is, are things better when someone leaves office than when they entered? And as of today the country is in objectively better shape than it was when President Obama took the oath of office. In terms of jobs. In terms of the deficit. In terms of issues like the environment even working with the Republican Congress. And issue like gay rights, a gay civil rights movement where the country is much more united than we were in the past on this issue. So look, is he perfect? No.”
Of course Bill Maher had to chime in. “Now you are going to bring facts into this debate,” said Bill Maher.
A few weeks ago the President said the following in a speech.
“I think it is useful for me to end by reminding folks that during my first term,” President Obama said. “If I had press conferences like this typically everybody wanted to ask about the economy. And how comes jobs weren’t being created. How comes the housing market is still bad. Why isn’t it working? Well you know what? ‘What we did worked. And the economy is better. When I say that we’ve just had six months of more than 200,000 jobs that hasn’t happened in 17 years that shows you the power of persistence. It shows you that if you stay at it, eventually you make some progress.”
With a few Conservatives and Liberals articulating objective reality, hopefully more in the media will stop misleading Americans. That will give the necessary latitude for further cooperation without fear. That will allow many more accomplishments not only by the President, bit by politicians effecting good policies.