What could Obama have *realistically* done about the economy?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

For over a year there has been a stock defense of the Obama administration's handling of the economy that boils down to this:

Obama did everything that was politically possible. The votes did not exist for more effective measures. The critics are delusional and ignorant of the practical legislative environment.

The rhetorical question is asked, “What do you think he could have done?”

It is a fair question.

There's no use crying over spilled milk, but on the off chance we find ourselves in a similar circumstance someday it is useful to examine our mistakes, so let’s climb into the way-back machine and go to the distant past of January 2009. The US economy had just collapsed… like collapsed. Worst demand shock since at least the 1930s. People were frightened. It was a crisis.

The Obama administration decided to let congress figure it out and never proposed any comprehensive plan that could plausibly have done much to repair things. The incoming administration didn’t want to get its hands dirty and for God knows what reason believed dead-wrong administration projections of the economic situation.

But let’s pretend the administration had a valid concept of the economic situation. Even so, what could they possibly have done? Were there alternatives?

One alternative would have been to collect all the congressional Dems together and say, “Here is what we are going to do…”

2 trillion dollars, fed into the economy in whatever is the fastest and most directly stimulative method possible. (Insert any needed measure here, including banking, foreclosures, direct government job creation, etc.)

Some in the Dem caucus would have said, “That’s too much! My district won’t go for that!”

To which the President replies, “This is a national crisis. Our future is at stake and we need to get behind something that will work, not something that you think will get you re-elected. If I allow you to hamper this needed program then the economy will suffer and you will be running for re-election with 10%+ unemployment in your district and you will lose.”

“But more to the point, if you are worried about your re-election then I’ll give you something to worry about. Anyone in this caucus who is not 100% on board, I will call you out in a national address next week, by name, as an enemy of our economic recovery. And I will raise money for a primary challenger and I will campaign against you. And I will let every big donor know that if they give you a penny they are persona non grata in my White House.”

“And when the Republicans try to filibuster this in the Senate I will call them out and name names. These are the people who are your enemy. These are the people who want to feed your money to Wall Street while you lose your job and your house and your dreams of a college education. I will have a million people surrounding the capitol screaming to pass this thing and we will see how the Republican senators from blue states feel about their re-election chances.”

“Are we clear?”

That is one thing an immensely popular (for a few weeks or months at least) incoming President who just won an Electoral College landslide a few weeks earlier might have done in the midst of a terrifying crisis.

Since the question was asked…

[ixion]

1. There is a huge potential market in the conversion to 'green' energy alternatives

But since Big Oil and Big Energy were, by and large, major recipients of the 'stimulus', it didn't happen. Big shock there.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. Seems that nobody likes answers to questions they thought were rhetorical

Someone will need to show why the scenario in the OP could not have worked or else find a new "rhetorical" question.

[BeFree]

11. That your idea?

Cause that's one heck of a good idea.

And what always gets us out of depressions? Housing construction.
So put people to work building houses that use only American made materials, and in a year, we're all back to work, and everybody has a home. Win Win.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Problem is, no economists thought the stimulus was insufficient

Except Krugman and Stiglitz and those other losers who said it would lead to unemployment above 10%. But those guys aren't half the economist that Larry Summers is.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

4. Now that is a different question

When it is pointed out that the administration was wrong about the economic situation the stock repost is that the error was not relevant because even if they had known, what was needed it was politically impossible.

Should they have known the real economic situation? I think so, but one could argue.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. Oh, I agree strongly with your post

But the Administration's position is "nobody knew!". Which is BS.

"The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy," - Joe Biden

Experts read the economy just fine. But the WH chose to moon the experts.

[Greyhound]

10. That's after-the-fact spin, the economists that thought it was enough all worked

in the White House, Treasury, and for Congress. The calculations had been done and the $2T - $3T required known before Obama even moved in. Just like climate change deniers, they simply ignored the consensus and created there own bubble of justifications and press releases.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

12. Manny is being sarcastic

But you are right that his sarcastic statement is offered in all seriousness by others.

[Greyhound]

33. Oops, I though he was trying to be conciliatory and the fact that so many here

do spout this crap confused me.

My bad.:blush:

[MannyGoldstein]

34. sorry, i need to use the scarcasm smiley

I forget that surreal is sometimes meant seriously these days.

[Greyhound]

38. It has become a real problem here. The lunacy that is presented to us on a

daily basis would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, and it makes identifying sarcasm even more difficult.
:kick:

[amborin]

60. Summers was early advocate of Reaganomics....

wanted to ship toxic waste to low income nations....

[mmonk]

5. The question should be, why was it politically impossible?

After all, the elections that ushered in his administration gave Democrats control of everything.

[Greyhound]

7. Every damn time. This is the talking point comeback for the week and every time

they say it and an answer is provided they just run away. But then, that's been the problem with this administration since before taking office. They walked into an extraordinary crisis demanding extraordinary measures with nearly unprecedented popularity and chose to ignore all of it, pay off the bankster blackmail and preserve the criminal system they pushed through.

There were several options available to them, so why do we think that the only one considered and implemented was the one that screwed the entire population and the real economy while propping up the guilty and insulating them from the consequences of their actions?

Now we have had another, largely ignored $600B chunk of their gambling losses laundered and dumped onto our people and the real economy.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

8. Yup. Answer the supposedly decisive question and it's *cricket* time

But the bogus talking point will live forever as a hit-and-run tactic.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. He should have joined DU and asked for advice here!

[Johonny]

13. ther problem with the economic is it doesn't generally turn fast

Which is pretty much why several politicians elected in bad economies suddenly found themselves instant geniuses or instant idiots. Because the changes done 2-4 years before finally have observed effects in the economy. Economics is generally long term planning and American people just don't do long term anymore. If it wasn't on twitter today, it didn't/isn't happening. Obama did a lot of good economic measures the last two years. The last congress got voted out because it did get its hands dirty, it did talk and vote on issues that matter and people have strong opinions on. Had he done more it would have done what most liberal policies are meant to do. They are meant to help level the boom/bust cycles, not to eliminate bust cycles. We all know recessions will happen. But we also know without regulations bust cycles can be catastrophic in nature. We also know without regulations society can distribute wealth massively uneven during boom cycles and make it even more likely to get hurt during a recession.

Obama needs to convince Americans we needs real long term planning. I have no idea how he does it. I know Republicans are really good at convincing us we don't. But sometimes convincing people something they want to hear is easy so I don't get them a ton of credit nor do I think doing what they do would somehow work. Yet we need it.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

14. Yes and no

Systemic economic change is slow, but not all government action is slow. We saw the peak impact of the stimulus package on GDP growth almost a year ago.

The government can get money into the system fast when it choses to.

The process of that money eventually turning into new investment in jobs or whatever is slower, but had the system been flooded with *consumer* money then the decline wouldn't be so deep. Fewer projects would have been canceled, fewer people fired.

It takes a long time to re-create a lost job or re-start a canceled project. So it is cost-effective to minimize the damage as much and as fast as possible.

[underpants]

15. Largest tax cut ever (middle class) - save the auto industry - slow the credit card drain

-redo student loans
-infuse money into infrastructure (#1 stimulator)
-appease Wall Street (BTW - TARP is paid off with interest)
-infuse money into the system with unemployment benefits (#2 stimulator)
-infuse money into the system with food programs (#3 stimulator)

[BzaDem]

16. This relies on the false premise that "naming names" would have done anything to change the outcome.

Honestly, the "bully pulpit" does little to change even the opinion of the public. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/10/AR2010091002671.html for more info.) This is particularly true in this instance, where the idea of increasing our debt as helping the economy (while obviously true) is counter-intuitive and disputed by a vast majority of voters since FDR's time.

But EVEN if we were to assume that it could have changed the opinion of the public at the margins, it would be folly to assume that such a change of public opinion would change Republican legislator's views. The truth is, people hold the President accountable for the state of the economy. Republicans would have been much better off killing the stimulus altogether and having Obama swept out of office in 2012, than they would have been by succumbing to short term fluctuations in poll numbers.

Snowe and Collins did end up voting for the stimulus in the amount passed. But this was not because of political pressure. This was because they thought (at the time) that this amount of stimulus was the correct course of action. But this does not mean they would have agreed to a higher stimulus than they thought reasonable in response to political pressure. On the contrary -- if they were making their decision on the basis of politics, they would have almost certainly killed ANY stimulus.

"I will have a million people surrounding the capitol screaming to pass this thing"

Yeah. Good luck with that.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

20. It would have been easy for Obama to assemble mass protests at the time

He would have considered it partisan and distasteful and all that, but it would have been no trick in practical terms.

[BzaDem]

24. Perhaps such a position could have assembled mass protest AGAINST his policies

and made his approval rating fall even faster (by not passing anything).

But I highly, highly doubt that he could have gotten mass protest in favor of his policies. I think the former would have been much more likely than the latter (especially when the intuitive argument about debt crushing our children carries so much misplaced weight with the public). "Trillions of debt" sounds much more compelling to someone who knows nothing about economics than any kind of (true) Keynesian argument.

Furthermore, I doubt mass protest in favor of his policies (even if it were possible, which I doubt) would sway Republican legislators. Even if there were some constituency of millions of people who really supported an adequate stimulus, they would be much more likely to blame Obama for not getting it passed than to blame the people actually responsible for its failure. Most people don't even know who controls Congress (let alone the nuances of the filibuster in the Senate).

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

25. Well, we will never know, will we?

That's the thing about things never tried

[BzaDem]

28. Sometimes things aren't tried because they wouldn't work, and would cause much more damage if tried.

This is one of those cases. Trying to move the rationale for passing a stimulus from what Snowe/Collins thought was right, to feeble threats of political retribution, would have killed any stimulus and caused a much deeper recession.

When the choice is between something that almost certainly won't work but would almost certainly cause more damage, versus something that likely would make the best of the situation, the choice was clear.

I think this is true in this case from my own analysis, even independent of Obama's own analysis. But I'm surprised that people don't give greater deference to Obama's analysis of what's politically feasible. Obama, after all, probably has a greater sense of what can be passed given various hypotheticals than you or I. Yet people still think they are better judges of these things than the people whose job it is to judge these things. While that might be the case in certain circumstances, I have seen no persuasive evidence that it is the case in this circumstance.

[Greyhound]

35. And much more often, things are never considered because they conflict with a hidden agenda.

Your declaration that it wouldn't work doesn't establish that supposition as fact and American history has many examples of this very strategy working well.

But the obstacles are; you have to try, and you have to prioritize the citizens well being above that of the parasites. Two things Obama has resisted at every turn.

[BzaDem]

42. "and American history has many examples of this very strategy working well."

Oh, do tell. Please list the examples and how the circumstances are parallel to the circumstances today.

"Your declaration that it wouldn't work doesn't establish that supposition as fact,"

You are correct that my declaration alone doesn't establish anything as fact. Objective analysis and political science establishes it as fact (which I outlined in above posts).

"Two things Obama has resisted at every turn."

I get that there is this alternate reality going on here, where passing HCR was done only to enrich insurance companies, FinReg was passed only to enrich bankers, etc. It is very amusing. But even if we were to assume all of that were true (which it obviously is not), how could you POSSIBLY assert that Obama passed too small a stimulus because he wanted to put the interests of parasites ahead of the interests of citizens? I mean, how is that even a coherent argument? How is passing a smaller stimulus than what was feasible helping the interests of parasites (or anyone else), even in your extremely skewed worldview?

[Greyhound]

45. Washington, Adams, Lincoln, McKinley, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, and Kennedy.

And that's just the Presidents. Each used his position popularize an agenda unpopular among the parasite class to benefit the people.

The heart of the stimulus is more corporate welfare, the heart of financial "reform" is to prop up the Wall Street Ponzi scheme, and the heart of the Health Insurance Industry Profit Protection Act is to entrench insurance companies as the sole means of accessing whatever care they deem sufficient.

The saddest thing is that by the time you tip to what's happened, it will be too late. This election was a clear signal that you and yours intend to ignore to all of our detriment. When the fecal matter really starts to hit the fan all these people you so enthusiastically defend will be comfortable, well-fed, and safe. They will not be helping you then either.

[BzaDem]

46. Specific bills please.

As usual, your analysis of HCR/FinReg is completely bogus. But irrespective of your flawed analysis, it would be nice if you could provide specific major bills that a President "whipped" an otherwise unwilling Congress "into shape" to pass, and why you believe the circumstances are comparable to today.

[Greyhound]

48. Completely ignore the point and pretend to misunderstand what is said.

You guys got nothing and that's why you resort to obfuscation every time.

American History has a whole section of your local library to itself. You post here so I know you are at least somewhat capable of reading.
:rofl:

[BzaDem]

49. My point is that you are WRONG about your analysis of history. The fact that you can't produce

any actual example bills to back up your point is more evidence that you are wrong.

[Greyhound]

51. That is your sad attempt at diverting the topic. I'm not going to play your game.

But I do know that thousands of eyes read these threads without replying and every time we call your BS a few more people catch on and start to question the narrative you push.

You still have not addressed one point on this thread, you merely divert and hope no one notices, but that game is wearing thin and too many people saw through your illusion. You and the rest of the 'B' team you represent have already cost the citizens of this nation the best chance they've had to improve our position in 80 years and handed the Legislature back to the 'A' team. Now we can be assured that things will get worse even faster.

Congratulations.

[BzaDem]

54. Yeah, now asking you to back up your point is "diverting the topic." That makes a lot of sense.

:sarcasm:

The only thing thousands of eyes will see is that you can't back you your point with any evidence.

[Greyhound]

56. So the anti-oligarchy accomplishments of the aforementioned Presidents

requires an explanation for you? You know, perhaps I was wrong about assuming you can read. Ask the nearest grade school student to direct you to your local library, they have an entire section devoted to American History.

Most of us learned a bit about these men in school long ago, Washington wouldn't agree to be a new ruler, wouldn't run for a third term, etc. and so on...

Now getting back to the point, while you're at the library you can look up the thousands of documents and articles written over the last two years documenting the failure to fight for people over corporations and what the "accomplishments" you continually cut & paste are yielding (Que the "nobody could've predicted" meme). Record profits, salaries, and bonuses for an industry that creates nothing, is insolvent by any objective standard, but just coincidentally occupies an unusually large percentage of "deciders" in the White House and makes large "campaign contributions" to both teams.

Trying is still a requirement before failure can honestly be declared. But then I forgot, honesty is just another quaint notion that I'm sure has never really existed.

[BzaDem]

47. Double post

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

37. Give deference to Obama's analysis?

Why? He's a political fool of the first order. This is established fact, not supposition.

You are arguing "flat earth" stuff now so there really isn't anything to say.

If you find comfort in your beliefs then peace to you.

[BzaDem]

41. It's funny how if one is interested in economic truth, they would do well to look at your posts

yet if they are interested in the truth about political science, they would do well to look at your posts and believe the exact opposite. For basically every sentence.

"Why? He's a political fool of the first order. This is established fact, not supposition."

But of course, you are assuming that which needs to be proved (and thus coming to the exact wrong conclusion). You assume that Obama is misjudging what is possible, and therefore concluding that he is a political fool (which you then use to say that we shouldn't give him deference). However, if you were to substitute your analysis with the correct analysis (recognizing the limits of what is politically possible, the limits of the "bully pulput," the limits of the President's power over domestic policy legislation in general, etc), you would find that Obama is actually quite a good judge of what is possible, and that deference makes sense. The only way you get to your position is to make all the wrong assumptions.

"You are arguing "flat earth" stuff now so there really isn't anything to say."

If it isn't "flat earth stuff" to assume Obama could get millions of people surrounding Congress to sway Republicans, then what is?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

43. As you wish.

You're normally a good poster.

I think you are invested in a delusional ad hoc belief system refuted by all evidence. You seem to think the same of my view.

To me, Obama is one of the very worst national political thinkers I have ever seen. Richard Steele or Mark Penn level idiocy. You hold a contrary view. And that's just what it is.

"Good politician" is bound to have intangible and subjective elements. People will disagree without any hope of resolution.

However, something I didn't say about the "defer to Obama" thing that I ought to have...

Why would I defer to his analysis of what was politically possible when he made no such analysis?

We KNOW that Obama didn't have the first clue as to the economic situation. There is no evidence of any sort that Obama ever felt the slightest need for the level of action the OP discusses, so what is anyone's basis for believing that he discarded that course for political reasons? He didn't support that course. He didn't consider that course. He did not think it was necessary.

So you ask us to defer to his wisdom in making a judgment that he never made.

Whatever. Okay... Obama did everything right. The economy was doomed, no matter what. The Democratic Party was doomed, no matter what.

But if that was always the case then why were people not saying so here at the time?

[BzaDem]

44. Just because he made no analysis publicly doesn't mean he didn't make an analysis.

I would agree with you that someone like Larry Summers probably didn't have the first clue as to the scale of what was needed.

But I don't agree that Obama asked for an inadequate stimulus because of Larry Summers' views. There were other people in the administration (such as Christina Romer) who wanted a much bigger stimulus.

It seems obvious to me that if Obama asked for a 2 trillion dollar stimulus, the Republicans in the Senate would have unanimously opposed him out of ideology and he would have gotten nothing (and that this would be blamed on Obama, regardless of where the real fault lied). We disagree on this point.

But surely, that makes sense as the reason why Obama asked for what he asked. In other words, you might disagree with the idea that he couldn't have gotten a 2 trillion dollar stimulus through, but if Obama thought it was impossible and would cause nothing to pass, surely that is a coherent reason why he didn't ask for it.

To put it another way, if Obama thought that the chances of failure of ANY stimulus if he asked for 2 trillion were 90%, but the chances of passage if he asked for what he asked for were 75%, then under his assumptions, the course that would maximize the expected value of enacted stimulus dollars would be to ask what he asked for (even if Obama knew a 2 trillion dollar stimulus was necessary).

So while we may disagree with the probabilities in the above paragraph, I don't think that his failure to ask for what was necessary is evidence that he didn't get what was necessary. It is simply evidence that he disagrees with you about the probabilities in the above paragraph. Assuming he disagreed with you about the probabilities, of course he isn't going to admit that what he could get enacted isn't adequate -- not only would that kill the bill itself, but that would damage his economic credibility with the voters even more than it has been damaged already.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

58. There is a strong political argument for telling the people the truth in that instance

What made me, and some others, so very angry was not that the stimulus wasn't sufficient (as shorthand -- the overall economic plan), but that Obama either thought it was or else was pretending it was.

That is political malfeasance. To do something that ensures misery high unemployment going into 2010 because the Republicans force you to and then saying it's sufficient would be suicide... willfully taking ownership of what you know will be a bad economy.

I am kind in assuming that Obama honestly thought it was sufficient to the task. Otherwise his voluntarily owning the outcome would have been insane.

You sign what you can get and then say it's not enough and when the economy stays shitty it is the Republican's fault, and repeat that every day.

The only reason to not do that is if you think the thing might turn around just fine and you'll get the credit.

So I have no reason to speculate that Obama considered a vastly different scale of attack.

He was thinking about health-care. And I understand that. I am sympathetic to that. He was focused on maximizing the political chances of something important. Maybe it will turn out to be the right call. (Doubtful, but I am not a big HRC detractor... it wasn't a waste of time.)

[lame54]

17. Dump the Bush tax cuts first thing then get out of 2 wars

[treestar]

18. Had he been a dictator, he could have done what he personally

thought best.

Impossible to do what each individual living in the US thinks it best.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

21. Was LBJ a dictator?

The hypothetical speech in the OP is pretty much what LBJ would have said in a comparable crisis (with comparable political implications) except he wouldn't have had to spell it out, given his established reputation

[BzaDem]

26. LBJ had 66-68 seats in the Senate to work with, on top of some moderate Republicans

which happen to be extinct now.

IF LBJ gave a comparable speech in a comparable crisis to a hard-right filibustering minority, he would have been laughed out of town.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

27. ???

The man costs his party it's geographic base "for a generation."

He got us into Vietnam with both feet with only one dissenting vote.

But you just know that his caucus would have laughed him out of town for vigorous response to a terrifying emerging global crisis?

You and I will have to disagree here because we obviously have a fundamentally different view of basic aspects of reality as they pertain to the question.

That's cool. People don't always agree, even after defining their terms.

[BzaDem]

31. " But you just know that his caucus would have laughed him out of town for vigorous response"

Yes, I do. This is not a case where both sides generally agree of the direction of a response, and are just disagreeing over the size of the response.

This is a case where the natural ideological position of the other party is that "vigorous response" to a recession is tax cuts and spending cuts (where spending increases somehow deepen the recession). The deeper the recession, the larger tax cuts and spending cuts should be enacted.

"He got us into Vietnam with both feet with only one dissenting vote."

Since the President has so much unilateral power to wage war, the dynamics are of course totally different than with respect to enacting legislation affecting domestic policy (where the President has very little formal power).

"The man costs his party it's geographic base "for a generation."

Of course, that was an instance where he had the Senate votes to vote for policies that would cost its geographic base for a generation. An instance where over a third of his vote count came from the other party. That instance is a very different instance than this instance. In the case of the civil rights bill, LBJ couldn't get more than 44 members of his own party to vote for it.

[Better Believe It]

30. And 20 of them were right-wing segregationists southern Democrats!

But LBJ knew how to whip them into line.

Right-wing Democrats and conservative Republicans alike.

[BzaDem]

32. They were more than made up for by pro-civil-rights Republicans at the time. n/t

[treestar]

40. Just how did he "whip them into line?"

LJB is dead, so arguing constantly he'd be a better president TODAY is just stupidity.

And why do you want leaders "whipped" into line by the President? Sounds like you're supporting a cult of personality. If you could just have a leader strong and tough enough to force everybody to do what YOU want. Though of course it would be what "he" wanted and could be different from what you wanted.

[treestar]

39. If Obama were President in 1963-1969 with the same Congress

he could have done exactly what LBJ did.

also it's hindsight. If is supposedly worked. LBJ was not a dictator either, and could not do it the way each and every single critic/citizen wanted to either, before the results were known.

The trouble is that if you want to tell Obama what to do, you have to get onto his staff. Even then he doesn't have to listen to you.

[blindpig]

19. A massive government jobs program.

There is precedent, ya know.

[Better Today]

22. Yep, but instead of that, he and his WH and the DNC quashed the liberal primary

opponents and supported the BlueDogs that were screwing up his supposed agenda.

[xchrom]

23. recommend

going to bat for wal-mart to open stores in india -- not a good plan right after this last election.

[BootinUp]

29. I *never* got the impression

that the administration wasn't intimately involved in developing the stimulus package and in defending it.

[Dappleganger]

36. Fixed the NAFTA issues/trade imbalances

and push a big-ass jobs/infrastructure bill which would completely blow our minds. I mean so big that even we liberals would wonder where in the world he was going to find the money to do it. Because if he'd done that and we got half or a third of what he started out to get, we would be a lot more ahead of where we are right now.

[kentuck]

50. Realistically...?

He could have recognized the devastating economic conditions we were in and have looked for new and innovative ideas on how to get out of it. Those ideas would not include Larry Summer, Timothy Geithner, or Ben Bernanke.

He could have squeezed the Republicans, after their disastrous 8 years, to get on board to fix the banks and the economy and even, healthcare. Instead, he looked for compromise and the Repubs re-grouped and stuck it to him. Big time.

[dkofos]

52. He could have listened to REAL ECONOMISTS instead of the bankers.

[Naturyl]

53. What could FDR have *realistically* done about the economy?

[BzaDem]

55. Honestly, if FDR were faced with today's Senate, he would have gotten nothing done.

And if Obama were faced with FDR's Senate, he would have passed a 2 trillion stimulus and we would be on the road to recovery.

People love to partake in the cult of the Presidency, because it allows them to have a simple and naive explanation that requires no actual analysis of facts.

[BootinUp]

61. Not really, the crash in the 30's was far worse

There were conservatives on FDR's own team advising on policy. Some of todays moderate/conservative Senators would be the corollary to the ones that helped FDR. But since we we have a safety net today that moderated the crash it makes it harder to get consensus on policy.

[Greyhound]

57. See, there's nothing to be done now but to look forward... n/t

[jpgray]

59. Not re-hire Rubin's ideological wrecking crew, or mass numbers of Goldman alums

Geithner in particular failed at every major job he's had.