“Sadly, I was wrong” about Obama, isn’t good enough
The country deserved better geniuses
More of the post-election mea culpas.
Sorry, my response remains the same, Disheartened Obamaphiles should just stop talking.
Add another to the list, Harvard Professor of Economics Greg Mankiw.
If in 2008 you thought Obama was a moderate, you’re not as smart as you think you are, Professor Mankiw. gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/12/an-unf…
— Randall Hoven (@RandallHoven) December 5, 2012
(emphasis mine)
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Back in 2008, when President Obama was running for his first term, he promised to be a post-partisan leader. While a Democrat, he said he would accept good ideas when they came from Republicans. At the time, I believed him, at least to some degree. And I wrote about it in this NY Times column.
Sadly, I was wrong. The short version of the story is this: As a candidate, President Obama campaigned on a platform of raising taxes on the rich. Yet he and his economic advisers also said they wanted to raise dividend taxes only slightly, from 15 to 20 percent. For reasons I explained in the Times article, keeping dividend taxes low was a position bolstered by good economics. Now, however, the president wants to raise dividend taxes to ordinary income tax rates (plus, for high-income taxpayers, the new tax of 3.8 percent that is part of the Obamacare legislation).
To be it another way, he campaigned as a moderate, willing to concede that the other party had some good ideas on tax policy. Once in office, he gave up on those ideas.
A similar thing happened with Bowles-Simpson. During his first term, he appointed a bipartisan panel, which concluded we could address our long-term fiscal problem with lower tax rates and a broader tax base. Now, the President goes around the country lambasting that approach.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether President Obama is a good or bad president. But the claim that he has tried to transcend partisanship and find a middle ground is just impossible to square with the facts.
Sadly, you were wrong about Obama, and we were right.
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Comments
“Reasonable people can disagree about whether President Obama is a good or bad president.”
Nope. Not really.
Mankiw still has some lines to write on the chalkboard…
Obama is an agitator, firebrand, fomenter, demagogue – which ever word your prefer (asshole). He cloaks his resentment of traditional Americans in lies and a low voice, it makes him seem less malevolent. He fooled many people, but Mankiw doesn’t have an excuse for being stupid.
Asshole works for me.
Prof. Mankiw: How do you spell “Schmuck?”
Maybe this professor finally learned something from his own Econ 100 class: “Past “performance” does not guarantee future results.”
[…] Economics Professor Greg Mankiw (via Legal Insurrection): An Unfortunate Broken […]
O’bammy had a long unimpressive record prior to being elected the first time and now the dumbed down public re-elected him based mostly on instant gratification with free stuff.
Incompetence, lying, obfuscation should alone have done him in but noooooooooo… He slithered in anyway.
Yep, the anointed one who is a textbook product of the liberal academia will cause us plenty of misery for another four years IF we are lucky. If not so lucky, a “new world order” may take place where we have little or nothing to say about it..
These too late mea culpas make me want to puke. They remind me of Robert Strange McNamara coming out in 1995 and admitting he was “wrong, terribly wrong” about the Vietnam war. Try telling that that to the widows and orphans of the 58,148 American soldiers who died in that war.
I didn’t go to one of those fancy-schmantzy ivy-covered colleges like Hahvahd. I went to schools covered with weeds and pigeon droppings. I can barely do math let alone economics. But I figured out that Obama was a phony-baloney piece of shit SCofaMF before he got elected the first time.
Why isn’t An Unfortunate Broken Promise appearing in the NY Times? And did the perspicacious Prof. Manciw vote a second time for Obama in 2012?
William F. Buckley was right on the money with regard to the esteemed faculty of Harvard.
… there is nothing ironic here .. it’s by design.
I was wrong, and I admit it
To the editor:
Back in 2008, right at the peak of the McCain/Palin, Obama/Biden presidential election, I wrote a scathing opinion to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman about Sarah Palin (titled “Caribou Barbie”), and five years later, I would like to recant my opinion and tell the people of the Mat-Su Valley just how wrong I was at the time.
The Frontiersman published the opinion and it drew a lot of comments, mostly negative, and here we are almost five years later, and I want to pass on what I have learned.
Read the whole thing, as they say:
http://www.frontiersman.com/opinions/letters_to_editor/i-was-wrong-and-i-admit-it/article_d6d99c54-3ab3-11e2-942c-001a4bcf887a.html
I am becoming quite fond of the non-apology apology. However, I thought it was restricted to the political class and wannabes.
Put aside all other actions, failures, controversy and animosity for just a second about Palin
Sarah Palin is certainly not perfect, but most of her failures are imagined or rather manufactured.
Yes that was a heap of sh8t. . He still thinks he is above her judging down from a high.
Alaskans were very fortunate to have had Palin . Alaska has gone from being massively corrupt to being in the top 10 best governed states.
As for Obama, he is opportunistic. The problems are comprehensive, and while he was a direct contributor before coming to office, his infamy is earned with exacerbating the dysfunction to advance his own political, economic, and social standing.
Now, now, Professor. This is the time to be gracious. To accept that human beings are imperfect. That some are more imperfect than others. This isn’t the first time that people have ignored the cumulative wisdom deduced from historical evidence, rejected traditional knowledge for the sake of ego, and it will certainly not be the last. Rebellion with cause and without a clue is typical of an immature being. To be fair, while fundamental (or progressive) corruption is the overwhelming concern, we cannot discount exceptional corruption, and that our trust may at times be misplaced or exploited.
Are you kidding?? — This pompous Harvard moron would vote for Obama all over again!
Gracious, my ass.
If someone makes a monumental error in judgement that harms only them because there wasn’t enough evidence against that action available to them, I can show pity.
When someone makes a monumental error in judgement in the face of overwhelming evidence because it makes them feeeel good about themselves, I have nothing but contempt. When they subject the rest of us to the results of their black-hole-stupidity, contempt turns to rage.
I thought my sarcastic tone came through clearly. Perhaps it did not. I will endeavor to express myself explicitly in the future.
While I did moderate my criticism, I did include several embedded insults for the good Professor Mankiw. For example: “rejected traditional knowledge for the sake of ego”.
Goodbye cruel world. Until we meet again tomorrow.
Professor Mankiw you deserve a better class of criminal, you and the majority voted for him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9it80XAYI
Mankiw’s mea culpa is far too bland, and self harmless to be treated with anything other than scorn.
It, like many others, is unsurprisingly days late and dollars short in terms of our recent elections. Almost as if it was planned all along.
Color me more than a bit skeptical. Until proven otherwise Mankiw is a tool.
Pffft. Maybe I hang around the wrong type of Democrat, but I can’t think of a single one who will care what Mankow wrote. I could list the same reversals Mankow did and they’d just stare right through me. Or they’d smile, with a gleam in their eye, and admit “at least he’s our son-of-a-bitch.
Obama got elected largely by people for whom these sorts of things don’t matter at all. He’s either a: black, or b: Democrat, and the rest is too confusing our troublesome to understand. Mankow is just trying to look learned among his peers.
the economic writing on the wall has been there since 1992. America has had a meltdown every 10 years 89 99 2008 .Each time stimulated Seemingly out of it or got lucky. But did they really?
The accounts are piling up & if a professor of economics at the nation’sleading academic institution cannot see that – then there is l,ittle hope .
most nations swing a bit right a bit a bit left a bit centre but SOME haves recognized the situation & public discourse is on a higher level. Some nations are actually trying to balance their budgets .
Does the Harvard Prof think USA is immune or too big to fail?
All I have to say is that if he had written this “mea culpa” in 2009, it would be understandable. There was quite the hype and hope back then. But to proclaim that he is just now seeing things, in the last month after the election, that have been completely obvious to ANYONE who pays the slightest bit of attention, makes me think he is oblivious. Seriously, when I first read it, I wanted to check the dateline.
NO ONE who voted for Obama in 2012, who is now expressing regret/buyer’s remorse, has a valid excuse. NO ONE! I don’t want to hear their sob story. The evidence was staring in straight in the face.
Not just that, but Mitt Romney would have made one heck of a president. Now I genuinely fear for my beloved country.
Chagrined Obama Worshipers: Oopsie. Our Bad. Oh well. We meant well. He’s black and all so we wanted to be hip and vote for him. Who knew?
Answer: we knew in 2007 and it’s not like we kept it a secret, MORONS.
Mankiw may or may not be a nice guy in person.
And, clearly he is accomplished, between his work for Romney and for George W. Bush and his academic work (more on that in a minute).
But, a jury might convict Mankiw of multiple counts of “criminal stupidity” for his New Keynesianism and he shockingly naive belief (especially given his exposure to politics and Washington DC) that Barack Obama would somehow be a post-partisan president. There was plenty of evidence to suggest that Barack Obama was a radical and did not have either the standing or the leadership skills to bridge a storm gutter, let alone the chasm that is partisanship.
At least you are big enough to own up to your mistakes, Professor Mankiw. Live and learn; live and learn.
Back in 2008, when President Obama was running for his first term, he promised to be a post-partisan leader. While a Democrat, he said he would accept good ideas when they came from Republicans. At the time, I believed that anyone who said they believed him was a moron or a liar.
Sadly, I was right.
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I don’t know what your problem is with Mankiw. He was a signer of the Economists for Romney statement (along with 8 other Harvard profs, btw).
[…] Mankiw discovers Barack Obama is no uniter: Back in 2008, when President Obama was running for his first term, he promised to be a […]