Focusing is not a policy - Steve Benen

[Mass]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026428.php

'FOCUSING' IS NOT A POLICY.... Way back in January, with Democrats' electoral standing faltering, political analyst Charlie Cook insisted Democrats "made a colossal miscalculation" by failing to focus all of their efforts on the economy. "Although no one can fairly accuse Obama and his party's leaders of ignoring the economy, they certainly haven't focused on it like a laser beam," Cook said.

Last night, Cook told Charlie Rose the same thing -- if only Dems had "focused" more on the economy, they wouldn't be in such a mess. I can only assume pundits will be repeating this line, over and over again, for the next several months.

Paul Krugman noted this morning how silly this is.

Yes, Democrats would be in better shape if the economy were in better shape. Duh.

So when you say Obama should have focused more, what policies are you talking about? A bigger stimulus? As far as I can tell, almost no pundits are saying that. So what other concrete policies do they have in mind? I have never gotten an answer.

The notion seems to be that if Obama had spent the past 20 months going around with furrowed brow, saying, "I'm focused on the economy", this would have (a) somehow created jobs (b) made people feel better about 9.6 percent unemployment.

The problem is, "focusing" is not a policy.

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For Cook and others, Obama and congressional Dems should have pivoted from focusing on the economy to ... focusing some more on the economy. With what? More focus, apparently.

What, specifically, were Democrats supposed to do? Wait for photographers to take pictures of the president and his team staring at charts, demonstrating their "focus"? Even if the White House had presented a series of additional stimulus measures, they would have been blocked by congressional Republicans anyway.

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