"Failed Policies" Examples: 2012

EXAMPLES AND ANALYSIS: 2012 "Failed Policies"

ROMNEY: I look at what’s happened in the last four years and say, this has been a disappointment. We can do better than this. We don’t have to settle for how many months, 43 months with unemployment above 8 percent, 23 million Americans struggling to find a good job right now. There are 3 1/2 million more women living in poverty today than when the president took office. We don’t have to live like this. We can get this economy going again.

-- Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), October 16, 2012, during the second presidential debate in Hempstead, NY, between Romney and President Barack Obama.

Comment: Romney is essentially making the "failed policies" accusation against Obama.

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OBAMA: He said when I took office, the price of gasoline was 1.80, 1.86 [dollars]. Why is that? Because the economy was on the verge of collapse; because we were about to go through the worst recession since the Great Depression as a consequence of some of the same policies that Governor Romney is now promoting. So it’s conceivable that Governor Romney could bring down gas prices, because with his policies we might be back in that same mess.

-- President Barack Obama, October 16, 2012, during the second presidential debate in Hempstead, NY, between Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA).

Comment: Again, Obama is making the "failed policies" accusation against Romney.

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OBAMA: That’s exactly the philosophy that we’ve seen in place for the last decade. That’s what’s been squeezing middle-class families. And we have fought back for four years to get out of that mess, and the last thing we need to do is to go back to the very same policies that got us there.

-- President Barack Obama, October 16, 2012, during the second presidential debate in Hempstead, NY, between Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA).

Comment: Obama is making the "failed policies" accusation against Romney. But he offers very little in the way of proof that Romney's policies are the policies "that got us" into the economic "mess" that we're in. He needs to provide detail to this argument, something more than just cum hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning.

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ROMNEY: "And we talk about evidence. Look at the evidence of the last four years. It’s absolutely extraordinary. We’ve got 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work in this country. It’s just -- we’ve got -- when the President took office, 32 million people on food stamps; 47 million on food stamps today; economic growth this year slower than last year; and last year slower than the year before. Going forward with the status quo is not going to cut it for the American people who are struggling today."

-- GOP presidential candidate former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), October 3, 2012, during the first presidential debate between Romney and President Barack Obama.

Comment: Romney is making the "failed policies" assertion against Obama. But he's using "false causation" reasoning -- the same sort of faulty, simplistic argument Obama is using to dismiss Romney's economic policies. Would a different set of policies have yielded better results than Obama's? Again, experimental data would resolve the issue, but that's the kind of data that's hard to get in economics.

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"I don't believe that firing teachers or kicking students off financial aid will grow the economy, or help us compete with the scientists and engineers coming out of China. After all that we've been through, I don't believe that rolling back regulations on Wall Street will help the small businesswoman expand, or the laid-off construction worker keep his home. We've been there, we've tried that, and we're not going back. We're moving forward."

-- President Barack Obama, September 6, 2012, addressing the Democratic National Convention.

Comment: This is a caricature of what Republicans believe. They believe that some spending on education is wasteful (for instance, that subsidizing college education helps drive up tuition), and they believe that some financial regulations do more harm than good. This is also "failed policies" rhetoric.

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"Because -- because in order to look like an acceptable, reasonable, moderate alternative to President Obama, they just didn’t say very much about the ideas they’ve offered over the last two years. They couldn’t, because they want to go back to the same, old policies that got us in trouble in the first place."

-- President Bill Clinton, September 5, 2012, during his address at the Democratic National Convention.

Comment: This is "failed policies" rhetoric.

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"Either way, their theory has been tested. It failed. Our economy failed. The middle class paid the price. Your family paid the price."

-- Mayor Julian Castro (D-San Antonio), September 4, 2012, during his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.

Comment: This is "failed policies" rhetoric.

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"In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before. Nearly one out of six Americans is living in poverty. … His policies have not helped create jobs, they have depressed them."

-- GOP presidential candidate former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), August 30, 2012, at the Republican Party National Convention.

Comment: This is "failed policies" rhetoric, and perhaps faulty reasoning of the "false causation" sort, as well. It's not enough to state that there are bad circumstances after Obama took office. You have to show that there's a causal link, that the bad economic data is because of Obama being president.

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"What did the taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt. That money wasn't just spent and wasted -- it was borrowed, spent, and wasted."

-- GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), August 29, 2012, during his acceptance speech at the GOP National Convention.

Comment: This is the "failed policies" assertion.

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"Now I know this simple truth, and I am not afraid to say it. Our ideas are right for America, and their ideas have failed America."

-- Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), August 28, 2012, giving the keynote address at the GOP National Convention.

Comment:  This is "failed policies" rhetoric.

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MEET THE PRESS HOST, DAVID GREGORY: How much do you get your back up when you hear this president [Barack Obama] blame a lot of our economic condition on your brother, on his predecessor?
FORMER GOV. JEB BUSH (R-FL): I think it’s time for him to move on. I mean, he -- look, the guy was dealt a difficult hand, no question about it. But he’s had three years. His policies have failed. And rather than blame others, which I know we were taught that that was kind of unbecoming, over time you just can’t keep doing that, maybe offer some fresh new solutions to the problems that we face.

-- NBC's Meet the Press, August 26, 2012.

Comment: Obama's predecessor was President George W. Bush, Jeb Bush's brother. Jeb Bush says it's unbecoming to blame others, yet he has no problem saying Obama's policies have failed.

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"His view of how we grow an economy is just contradicted by the facts. He has embraced an approach that we tried for almost a decade, and it didn't work. And he's now looking to double down on it."

-- President Barack Obama, August 23, 2012, during interview with the Associated Press published August 25, 2012.

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"[GOP presidential candidate Mitt] Romney and [GOP vice presidential candidate Paul] Ryan have put ideology ahead of what's right. … The embrace of an ideologue like Paul Ryan may appeal to the Republican Party's Tea Party base, but it will completely alienate independent voters, especially in battleground states. … Throughout this campaign, Mitt Romney has lacked a clear vision. Now he's embraced a radical ideologue with a dangerous one. This election is absolutely a choice between two visions for our country's future. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have solidified their roles as rubber stamps for the reckless and failed economic theories of the past."

-- Commentator and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, August 12, 2012.

Comment: There's a lot going on here. First, the "ideology" accusation. Then the claim that Romney and Ryan put ideology "ahead of what's right", as if they know what's right and best, and instead do something else. Rather, Romney and Ryan have a different idea of what policies are good for the country, different from Brazile and other Democrats. Then there's the accusation that Ryan is a radical. Finally, there is the "failed policies" accusation.

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"Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: back to the failed top-down policies that crashed our economy."

-- Ad from the reelection campaign of President Barack Obama (D-IL), August 11, 2012.

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"[W]hat’s holding us back right now is not the lack of big ideas. It’s what’s going on in Washington -- this uncompromising view that the only path forward is to go back to the same top-down economics that got us into this mess in the first place. My opponent’s entire plan, his whole plan for economic renewal, is more tax cuts for the wealthy. More regulation -- eliminating regulations for banks and corporations that we put in place after the crisis. Cutting more investments in things like education and research. And somehow this is supposed to create jobs and prosperity for everybody. That’s what Mitt Romney believes. That’s what his allies in Washington believe. But here’s the problem -- we tried that and it didn’t work. ... Just like we’ve tried their plan, we tried our plan -- and it worked. That’s the difference."

-- President Barack Obama (D-IL), July 24, 2012.

Comment: Were Obama and Romney's plans tried under identical circumstances? If not, then how can Obama be certain that it's the policies, the plans, that make the difference and not something else? Obama's remarks probably also qualify as a caricature of the policies of former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), since Romney we probably say, for instance, that he wants money to be better spent on education, rather than poorly invested.

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"The Joint Economic Committee (JEC), spearheaded by Texas congressman Kevin Brady, put out a report saying that the Obama recovery now ranks dead last in modern times. That’s a real milestone in the post-WWII era. It’s ten out of ten for both jobs and economic growth. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real GDP has expanded only 6.7 percent over the eleven-quarter recovery since the recession ended. The Reagan recovery at the same stage had increased by 17.6 percent. The Clinton recovery by 8.7 percent. As for jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of private-sector jobs has grown by only 4.1 percent since the cyclical low point. Reagan’s record was 10.7 percent. So much for Obamanomics. Didn’t work. Still isn’t working."

-- Commentator Larry Kudlow, July 6, 2012.

Comment: Would different policies, implemented in the same circumstances, have had better effects? Did Obama's policies prevent things from being worse?

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"You would think $1 trillion in spending stimulus and $2.5 trillion of Fed pump-priming would produce an economy a whole lot stronger than 1.9 percent gross domestic product, which was the revised first-quarter number. And you'd think all that government spending would deliver a whole lot more jobs than 69,000 in May. But it hasn't happened. The Keynesian government-spending model has proven a complete failure. It's the Obama model. And it has produced such an anemic recovery that, frankly, at 2 percent growth, we're back on the front end of a potential recession. If anything goes wrong -- like another blow-up in Europe -- there's no safety margin to stop a new recession."

-- Commentator Larry Kudlow, June 2, 2012.

Comment: Would different policies, implemented in the same circumstances, have had better effects? Did Obama's policies prevent things from being worse?

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"That is why the parallels between 1980 and today are so striking. Now, as then, we face not just a failed President, but a failed ideology. We face a pessimistic mood in the nation's capital, a belief that our best days are over and the only thing to do left is to manage the nation’s decline. But we have the same opportunity today, to reject this defeatist attitude and embrace a positive reform agenda capable of kick-starting a new era of prosperity, an American renewal, a comeback."

-- Rep. Paul Ryan, (R-WI), May 22, 2012, at the Perspectives on Leadership Forum held at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library.