O Needs to Own the Economy

Posted by LK on 3/09/09 • Categorized as Politics, The Economy and Markets, The Press

Every single time a member of Obama’s economic team makes a television or radio appearance, the first words any of them utter have to do with how they inherited the spiraling out of control economy.

Granted, none of the recklessness that’s led to our current precarious state occurred during the Obama administration. But it’s time to change the script.

Geithner, Summers, Romer, Barnes, and even Biden’s economic adviser Jared Bernstein have to stop the spin and dig in. “We own the economy” is what they’ve got to convey now, and if they don’t own it soon, they are going to own the responsibility of GM failing, unemployment continuing to rise at an unprecedented pace (another 13 Yankee Stadium’s worth this past Thursday), and, perhaps worst of all from a political perspective, the increasingly tense and tenuous American atmosphere is going to be laid at this administration’s doorstep.

In the first few weeks following the inauguration the blame game may have been acceptable while the transition took place. Right now, the guy with the busted refrigerator who’s storing his family’s perishables outside in the snow because he doesn’t have the cash to buy a new one, also doesn’t give a hoot about who broke his bank. He just wants it fixed, and since Obama sought out the position of fixer-in-chief, the weight’s on O to turn oratory into reality.

America’s got a short attention span and a shorter fuse right now. Bush is already a distant memory. To borrow a phrase from schoolyard basketball, Obama’s got next.

And next is now. Game on.