Argument Breakdowns

Breakdown: Peggy Noonan | Obama Is Likely To Lose | April 14 2011

Peggy Noonan has an article in the WSJ this weekend that I think deserves a little closer examination. View the article here if you have a WSJ subscription, or on her blog here if you don't.

Her premise is that President Obama is likely to lose re-election. On that point I don't necessarily disagree; his numbers have been dropping, showing that he is vulnerable to events outside of his control, and I think forecasters are spending too much time thinking about the current crop of Republican contenders. Against a solid, middle-ground Republican like Huntsman, Daniels or maybe Romney the President's incumbency during a time of national distress can easily become a disadvantage. 

And, indeed, that is what Noonan is getting at. She is advocating for the GOP to pull it's collective head out of its arse and to nominate a grown up. Good for her, and I hope they listen. 

Nevertheless, Noonan's article is full of reasoning that doesn't stand up on it's own two feet. 

Noonan begins the article by commenting on where things are right now with the President:

"The president is immersed in another stressed and unsuccessful spring after a series of losing seasons. Internationally, he’s involved in a confused effort that involves bombing Libyan government troops and sometimes their rebel opponents, leaving the latter scattered and scurrying. Responsibility to protect is looking like tendency to deflect."

The view that Obama's handling Libya badly is a partisan view. Most people have reserved judgement on the matter to see how it turns out. It could go badly and the news has not been encouraging, but there does also appear to be a favorable, less bloody end in sight. It could turn out to be a mild triumph for a new, pragmatic approach to foreign policy, which is inherently a win for Obama.

The Republican response also matters here. There's not much evidence anyone would have done anything differently, except perhaps not let the French take the lead. Unless things turn out badly, there is no upside for Republicans on Libya.

"Domestically, the president’s opponents seized the high ground on the great issue of the day, spending and debt, and held it after the president’s speech this week. In last week’s budget duel, the president was outgunned by Republicans in the House and outclassed by Paul Ryan, who offered seriousness and substance as a unique approach to solving our fiscal problems."

I see very little evidence to support this analysis. First, the great issue of the day is the economy, not spending. Concerns about the deficit are rising but are 3rd in line behind the economy and jobs as American's top concerns.

Second, the phrasing "spending and debt" is deeply misleading. An American saying they are concerned about the deficit is not the same as saying they are concerned about spending. Equating the two is a Republican conceit not shared by the vast majority of Americans. Nor to American's generally lay blame for the deficit at Obama's feet, as is implied by the charge of "spending." Most Americans know that two unpaid-for wars and two rounds of tax cuts got us where we are, not a reckless spending spree brought on by a free-wheeling Obama, as Noonan implies here. 

Third, the idea that Republican's outgunned and outclassed the President last week doesn't seem to be shared by anyone outside of Washington. The Ryan plan has many, many holes in it, not the least of which is some funny math by the partisan Heritage Foundation. Offering a plan that proposes 2.8% unemployment is like offering a pony to every family. Not classy. And it is deeply unpopular, even among the Republican presidential candidates. 

The President, on the other hand, gave a speech that both rallied his base and spoke to a much broader spectrum of voters than the Ryan plan is aimed at. It was fairly clear that Obama's original 2012 budget proposal was a political ploy to force Republicans into offering their own plan, which would then be used as a foil to present his real proposal as reasonable and in keeping with American history and values. It worked out beautifully for him.

Noonan then cites a variety of polls that demonstrate Obama's approval numbers have dropped since his inauguration, and sums them up this way:

"We’re all so used to reporting the general trend of these polls that we fail to see their significance: The more that people experience his leadership, the less they like his leadership."

President's approval ratings fall after inauguration. Period. They always have and always will. The fact is his polling numbers have been pretty consistent for quite some time. He fluctuates between a low of about 41% approval to a high of about 50%. Despite Real Clear Politics' use of Rasmussen, it provides a pretty good moving average, and the entire history can be viewed there. 

I don't think much good comes from trying to read the tea leaves of polling this far out from the election, and I'm willing to dismiss the cherry picking of polling results as typical column-filling, but Noonan makes a curious assertion in discussing them. She explains Obama's high personal approval ratings, the usual talking point flung back at conservatives when they talk about his low job performance numbers, as follows:

"I suspect, and it’s only a suspicion, that there’s a degree to which people tell pollsters they like Mr. Obama to take the sting out of the fact that they just told the pollster they don’t approve of his leadership." 

I really have no way to prove or disprove this, but a good start would be to look at some polls and review the question order. If you spend about 5 minutes doing that, say from the Real Clear Politics website, it becomes clear that the hypothesis doesn't fare well. 

That's not really the point here, though. The larger point I think she's trying to make is that folks who voted for Obama are somewhat disappointed in him. That's certainly true. It is also true, however, that people can be disappointed in him while still thinking he is a good, honest person, and that they trust him. It seems a pretty cynical leap to think that Americans are lying to pollsters just to keep from looking stupid, rather than assuming that people can hold distinct views about an individuals' performance and his character. 

A large portion follows this discussing Obama's recent debt speech. She didn't care for it. She feels it was unserious, disrespectful, partisan and incoherent. These are all things that deserve their own article, but I do want to comment on the incoherence argument:

"His speech this week brought together all the strands of his flawed leadership. It was at moments clever, but merely clever, not up to the needs of the moment—and cleverness in a time of crisis comes as an affront. The speech seemed oblivious to recent history, as if the president had just discovered something no one knows about, a problem with spending, and has decided to alert us to the danger. He said other politicians attempt to cut by focusing on “waste and abuse,” but he knows the real secret: The problem is entitlement spending. But addressing entitlements is all anyone serious has been talking about for years; it’s what the Ryan plan is all about!

The speech was intellectually incoherent. An administration that spent two years saying, essentially, that high spending is good is suddenly insisting high spending is catastrophic."

Noonan's claim of intellectual incoherence is based on a straw-man argument, trying again to hang the millstone of spending around Obama's neck. This is a political strategist speaking. It again assumes that Americans are too stupid to understand what happened in the last two years. The Republican narrative of Obama is not shared by the majority of Americans. Noonan doesn't seem to understand this.

I am also very interested to see how the entitlements discussion plays out. Obama and the Democrats can make a very credible claim that they were indeed tackling entitlements in the first two years - via the Affordable Care Act - and making a dent in the deficit according to the CBO. It seems to me that with the Ryan plan the Republicans have now conceded that dramatic changes to the American health care system are required for the fiscal health of nation. 

But their proposal to addressing that problem is deeply unpopular. And the Affordable Care Act is widely misunderstood, which means there is plenty of room for situations to arise where Republicans say "We need X, Y and Z in our health care system" and Democrats can say "Yes, that's why we've already addressed that." The Republicans have the mantle of spending cuts, but they certainly don't have a vision of our country that most Americans share, and that is at least as big a problem for them as the polling averages are for Obama.

I think Ms. Noonan is failing to follow her own advice - get out of the weeds and see this from a larger view. Her article is filled with easy wisdom and cynical assessments of the average American, and her logic suffers for it.