The latest bit of evidence that Clinton Democrats believe the economy, rather than sleaze and erased emails, could be the undoing of Hillary’s 2016 presidential ambitions is in. And it comes via a seemingly arcane defense developed by left-leaning economists trying to justify the reasons for the sluggish Obama economy.
The academic catch-phrase for this defense has been championed by a usual suspect: former Clinton Treasury secretary and Obama economic adviser Larry Summers.
It’s called “secular stagnation.” Strip away the economic mumbo-jumbo, and it comes down to a weak argument that there’s really nothing a policymaker can do to fix wage growth, fewer full-time jobs and overall lousy economic growth.
Which ignores the fact that during the Obama years, people like Summers actually did a lot of stuff — most of it bad — to create the mess we are in.
Reversing those policies should be Priority No. 1 if Republicans can win the presidency and retain Congress.
Underscoring those insanely dumb economic policies may also help Republicans explain to voters why a Democrat shouldn’t be given yet another chance to screw things up.
Summers is a brilliant economist, which also means he’s good at manipulating ideas.
That’s why he glosses over in most of his arguments how the Dodd-Frank financial reform law has left us with “too big to fail” banks that have so many regulatory hoops to jump through, they can’t lend to small businesses.
You also won’t hear Summers explain how small businesses — the usual engine of most recoveries — keep their workforces lean so they can avoid costs associated with ObamaCare.
And don’t expect him or his fellow travelers to talk about how Obama’s threatened (and eventually imposed) tax increases after the 2008 financial collapse caused allegedly rich families that earn $450,000 a year to seek ways to avoid the taxman and hoard their cash rather than spend it on things that poor and working-class people make.
He would rather argue an arcane theory that forces outside the control of the world’s smartest economic minds (he thinks he’s one of those), like slowing population growth, fewer investment opportunities and too much savings that scales back capital expenditures, is the real culprit of our economic malaise.
History warns us to be wary of this claptrap.
The woe-is-me defense of lousy economic growth may sound like something new when it’s dressed up in Summers’ pseudo-intellectual phrasing. It isn’t.
It’s the same line liberals used in the 1970s to rationalize the economic malaise of high unemployment coupled with high inflation — a k a stagflation — that did so much to destroy the American psyche.
Yes, the post-financial-crisis Obama years have been terrible for the middle class, but the economy during Jimmy Carter’s presidency was no joke. Not only were people not working; the prices of consumer goods were skyrocketing.
With a weak economy, our enemies sensed an opening. The old Soviet Union continued its repression and expansionist agenda — not all that much different than what Vladimir Putin is doing today.
Our embassy in Tehran was attacked and the Ayatollah held American hostages for more than a year as we were seemingly helpless to take on the terrorists.
Sound familiar?
Ronald Reagan took on pessimism and fought back. He showed policies like lower taxes and less regulation really do work.
To be sure, he had an assist from Paul Volcker, then the Fed chairman (and recently an Obama adviser), who ratcheted up interest rates to tame inflation.
But that only made Reagan’s success all the more amazing — in the face of high interest rates, his formula eventually worked as the economy expanded to levels not seen in years.
The media will undoubtedly eat up Summers’ explanation for the uneven and at times lousy Obama recovery as the 2016 election draws near, and Hillary will surely try to take the heat off her boss by blaming the malaise on George Bush.
(After all, she was around the White House as Obama’s secretary of state when the failed policies were formulated.)
But before buying this line of nonsense, Americans should ask not only if they’re better off today than they were a few years ago, but also how they got that way.
The answer to that question may well prevent another Obama term under the guise of Hillary Clinton.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.