Consensus is growing between supporters and critics of the Obama administration — the president and his team aren’t addressing the fundamental crisis in our economy because they have thus far failed to produce a fix for our ailing banking system.
Today Charles Krauthammer, in The Washington Post, put it most bluntly: “Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.”
On the same page Michael Gerson, also on the right, joined him: “[T]he markets have little confidence in the administration’s sketchy bank bailout plan. It has been the largest early mistake of the Obama presidency to focus on expensive reforms of health and energy before convincing markets that the financial sector will be fixed — the achievement on which all else depends.”
And Paul Krugman, on the left, agreed in The New York Times: “The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern.”
Conservatives argue healthcare and energy and education are not the reasons we find ourselves in our current financial crisis, and that reforming them won’t open the credit markets once again. Krugman may not agree with them on that point, but he agreed with President Obama when he declared in his speech a week ago that “the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade.”
This is the kind of bipartisan agreement Obama has been waiting for. Now that he has it, what will he do?
SHOULD DEMOCRATS INVESTIGATE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION? Ask A.B. returns Monday, March 9. Please join my weekly video Q&A by sending your questions and comments to askab@digital-stage.thehill.com. Thank you.