Interesting article….
ON HIS FIRST DAY back from summer vacation, President Obama appeared in a sweltering Rose Garden to talk about the economy. The latest numbers were disheartening—growth slow, consumer spending weak, housing sales down, unemployment near 10 percent. Obama reported that he’d just met with his economic team. He pointed out that his administration had already taken “a series of measures” to boost the economy, and that his aides were “hard at work” looking for more. He offered no specific proposals, and after five minutes he went back inside, taking no questions from the sweating reporters.
One natural query would have been: Mr. President, how did you lose control of the economic message? Only months earlier, the administration had announced a push to remind the public of the positive impact of the stimulus. But the “Recovery Summer” campaign—press releases, big road signs, presidential and vice-presidential events—barely registered, and the “ground zero mosque” controversy dominated the summer’s silly season instead.
And now, with the Democrats’ poll numbers falling in tandem with the economic indicators, the best Obama could offer were a few modest proposals. At a moment when his party was facing a possibly catastrophic drubbing, the president appeared on the defensive, his economic leadership anemic. How had Obama lost his groove?
Lost in the 21st Century 