Wasting Warren Buffett
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 19, 2012
Watching this campaign unfold reaffirms how much it would have
benefitted from a serious, centrist third-party challenger. It would
have been so clarifying to have an independent voice calling out Mitt
Romney for running a campaign that consists of decrying the last three
and a half years of the Obama presidency, while offering to reinstate
the very same failed policies that made the eight years of George W.
Bush a disaster that President Obama has spent most of his time cleaning
up. And it would have been equally clarifying to have an independent
challenger calling out Obama for failing to put a credible, specific
economic plan on the table — at the scale of our problem — but relying
instead on a campaign that amounts to a series of discrete appeals to
each of the Democratic Party constituencies. It feels like a ground war
with no air cover.
Josh Haner/The New York Times
But there will be no third-party candidate, so the only hope is getting
Obama to raise his game. To do that, the president needs to recognize
just how badly he wasted Warren Buffett — using him for a two-week,
wedge-issue sugar high.
Obama got Buffett to endorse the “Buffett Rule” — a minimum tax rate of
30 percent for any individual who makes more than $1 million a year so
that all millionaires have to pay a higher tax rate than their
secretaries. The plan had no chance of passing, would have made only a
small dent in the deficit and was rightly decried by experts as a
gimmick that only diverted attention from what we really need:
comprehensive tax reform that can substantially raise revenue in a
fairer manner. The Buffett Rule has largely faded away.
What a waste of Warren Buffett’s credibility.
Buffett is a businessman out to make a profit. But he is respected by
many as a straight-talking nonpartisan — someone who can “call the
game.” What the president should have done is follow the advice of the
Princeton University economist and former Fed Vice Chairman Alan
Blinder, namely lay out a specific “three-step rehab program for our
nation’s fiscal policy.” Call it the Obama Plan; it should combine a
near-term stimulus on job-creating infrastructure, a phase-in, as the
economy improves, of “something that resembles the 10-year
Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan — which would pay for the stimulus
15-20 times over” and a specific plan to “bend the health care
cost-curve downward.” Obama has already offered the first; he still has
not risen to the second and the third would be an easy extension of his
own health care plan.
Obama needs a second look from independents who could determine this
election. To attract that second look will require a credible, detailed
recovery plan that gets voters to react in three ways: 1) “Now that
sounds like it will address the problem, and both parties are going to
feel the pain.” 2) “That plan seems fair: the rich pay more, but
everyone pays something.” 3) “Wow, Obama did something hard and risky.
He got out ahead of Congress and Romney. That’s leadership. I’m giving
him a second look.”
I’d bet anything that if the president staked out such an Obama Plan,
Buffett and a lot of other business leaders would endorse it. It would
give the G.O.P. a real problem. After all, what would help Obama more
right now: Repeating over and over the Buffett Rule gimmick or
campaigning from now to Election Day by starting every stump speech
saying: “Folks, I have an economic plan for America’s future that Warren
Buffett and other serious business leaders endorse — and Mitt Romney
doesn’t.”
Obama loyalists often say: “Those Republicans are so bad. They’ve tried
to block us at every turn.” Yes, the G.O.P. has tried to stymie Obama;
it’s been highly destructive. But the people who keep pointing that out
don’t have an answer for the simplest next question: Why have they
gotten away with it?
My view: It’s because too many Americans in the center-left/center-right
do not feel in their guts that Obama is leading — is offering an
economic plan at the scale of the problem that has a chance for
bipartisan support and that makes them want to get up out of their
chairs and do battle. Our situation is different from four years ago;
people want to know the president has a plan for getting out of this
mess.
When the Grand Bargain talks with John Boehner fell apart, Obama
retreated to his base when he should have rallied the center by laying
out — in detail — the Grand Bargain the country needs. That would have
forced Romney to speak in detail about his plan — the Paul Ryan plan —
and reveal it for what it is: a radical plan that few Americans would
embrace if they understood it.
Then people would see a real choice: a tough-minded-but-centrist plan
with real bipartisan support versus a radical plan to gut Medicare, give
more tax cuts to the already wealthy and drastically shrink
discretionary spending so eventually nothing is left for education,
veterans, roads, research, the F.B.I. or the poor.
And the morning after that happens — when Warren Buffett endorses the
Obama Plan, not just the Buffett Gimmick — the president will have his
mojo back.
But the fact is that the President has indeed put forward a comprehensive economic plan that includes all of these elements. Specifically, he has pushed for a jobs bill that is focused on near term infrastructure and alternative energy investments; he has signed into law a health care reform plan that includes several major cost savings components; and he has put right on the table a budget plan that would cut more than $4 trillion of government spending over the next ten years while at the same time reforming our tax code by increasing taxes on investment income and making the tax on earned income more progressive.
So why, in face of these facts, do you keep blaming the President for not doing what he manifestly has done?
Libertarian Gary Johnson was an extremely effective and hugely popular two-term Republican governer of New Mexico. The Green Party's Jill Stein ran for governor of Massachusetts against Mitt Romney, and in a debate with him was pronounced the winner by a major newspaper. The Constitution Party's Virgil Goode was in Congress for many years. These three deserve much more attention from the New York Times.
They also ought to be included in at least one of the fall presidential debates. That's unlikely, however, because the commission that sponsors the debates was created by the two major parties and is run in their interest. That fraud began in the 1980s, when the commission ousted the truly nonpartisan League of Women Voters. The commission says it will include a third party that gets 15 percent in opinion polls -- but that's nearly impossible when the mainstream media denies them coverage.
Please, Mr. Friedman, stop bemoaning the failure of your Americans Elect fantasy, and start serving the public interest in a more robust democracy.
In other words, President Obama is working to put us on a sustainable path which President Bush had been unable to do in two terms, in spite of inheriting an improved fiscal picture from Clinton.
President Obama doesn't really need Buffett, even if Buffett would actively campaign for him (he won't) -- Obama just needs to show how electing Romney is similar to electing G.W. Bush for a third term and then the voting public can decide which Kool-Aid they prefer.
This is all very amusing, but it has absolutely no chance of getting anywhere in congress.
Our political system stopped being about the center decades ago. It's a battle between the fringe elements of each wing. There's no chance anything like this plan would ever go anyplace, so why should Obama embarass himself or waste any time proposing it?
It was too bad the big banks fell so far so quickly, maybe some of the public investment could have been spared for community banks. Obviously, this didn't happen and small business, who became too dependent on loans while other sectors fell over the past thirty years because of advancing technology and continued inflation, became too dependent on their relationship with banks. Add the banks relatively new found love of gambling, the castle had to tumble as the financial basis disappeared.
If anything, the government may have moved to quickly to regulate the banks. They may have considered stepping the process more.
I support Mr. Friedman's assertion. If Mr. Romney gets into office, I'm too afraid his bill will come due from his big supporters which means the end of the New Deal. If we end our social bargain, then we may very well be looking at 1930s example as banks face the reality of too many lost customers.
Additionally, you mention that Obama should combine stimulus now with a phase in of reduced expenditures later. That is exactly what the entire aid to states program was about. The only problem was that it was too small, and faded too early.
In effect, your real issue with Obama is that he was too far-right, in that his stimulus was too small, and faded too early. Rather than bemoaning the lack of a third party, you should be bemoaning the lack of a strong left.
They gop has mounted a multi-front war through voter suppression, socially devisive legislation, propaganda talking points on right wing radio, FNC, and their total lopsided infiltration of Sunday morning 'news' shows.
Obama was naive thinking the gop would do anything that might benefit him, even if it helped the country. Undermining the best interests of the country is collateral damage the gop is happy to inflict, so long as they regain total power.
Obama needs to fight back as ruthlessly and as uncompromisingly as the gop does. Their reptilian mindset respects nothing but power. Compromise is viewed as weakness, unfortunately, and that is something to be exploited for party gain, above all. He is dealing with ruthless people, and Mitch McConnell is the poster boy.
No one paying attention really thought Obama was a progressive. He has been right of center. Nevertheless, regardless of which way he truly leans politically, despite the vicious and scathing portrait of 'socialist' that the gop tries to paint, Americans admire strong leaders who fight back and hard for their principles. Think FDR railing about bankers and welcoming their hate? Obama needs to read FDR's playbook.
In short, Obama, recalling Truman's campaign, run against the "do nothing Republican Congress." Obama could then recall the recommendations he offered that that the Republican Party rejected. This transforms what they rejected into a positive program Obama set out to cope with bad times. The Republican Party, with few exceptions in Congress, turned it down: A do nothing congress; a do nothing Party.
In the above, Romney becomes not a credible alternative, but instead an extension of the Do Nothing Party Until he addresses all the wholesale rejections, or argues against them one at a time, defending "do-nothingism," or offers a clearly spelled out do-something alternative, Romneny becomes the standard bearer for the Do Nothing Party. There are do-something Republicans, if not in Congress, then among the voters.