By Carter Era standards it is not really that bad. Of course by Carter Era standards Carter wasn’t that bad either. Those who remember “double-digit” unemployment remember poorly. The nation has never clocked a year with unemployment over ten percent and those two years that were close to that were ’82 and ’83, the shank of the Reagan Revolution. Inflation did hit murderous levels under Carter but of course we are not experiencing anything like that today. Four percent inflation has been the norm for decades and we have had some recent deflation though that was brief. Now we are about two percent, a quite good number giving us a misery index in the elevens which historically is not miserable at all.

Yet news of national misery is all ablare in the headlines. Left/Right and the crucial, self-defined Independents are all cranky and apparently turning their ire, as is the custom, at the White House. This is polling news, not actual news and so can only be understood in relation to polling history, as opposed to History.

Carville, Shrum and the other Karl Roves of the Left look back to the eighties like Three Times a Lady to get a plausible framework to shop their recently mined numbers that otherwise would have little market value to their usual customers; incumbent Democrats. These are the subject of the above mentioned headlines. The polls are bad… bad I tells ya! for Team O. This is reported with a mixture of astonishment and remonstration but it is reported. One advantage polling news has on real news is that the media generate the product in-house so it really can’t be ignored. So there it is. On the gosh dern Washington Post of all places, so it must be true. So is it time to light our hair on fire and run around in circles, ask the Dems of their advisors?

Not so fast, say the Shrumvilles. None of this is unprecedented, not in the polling anyhow. There was a President who inherited a palette of nasty economic problems who, despite making nothing but moronic if not evil decisions, was able to ride the inevitable and cyclic recovery into history’s pages as something nearing a diety. Yes, this is the secret ingredient in the special sauce that the gunslingers serve with their optimisms: Obama as Reagan.

From a statisticians point of view this is not too great a leap and where it fails there are other supports. Reagan did not take an Obama-esque fall in the polls in his first term but Clinton did, or nearly did. This precipitated the Rep takeover of the House as now threatens Obama, but Clinton survived that, no? Barack is certainly no lesser light than Bill, right?

The gunslingers have a gunslinger’s point and it has served its purpose which was to calm the restive political herd. We have been here before (statistically) so ride it out. But there are several presumptions built in to this structure that have not been tested, yet are about to be. Foremost is the bedrock belief on the Left that Reagan was at best a dunce, sound familiar? and wedded to a destructive ideology. Of course every fiscal action of his (we leave aside the disasters of foreign policy) was detrimental to the economy, the government and the nation. But the cyclical nature of economic boom and bust were forceful enough to not only overcome the damage inflicted by Reaganism but to also deliver strong growth with manageable inflation.

So even if the “Liberal” economic policies today are somewhat costly (and sure, that’s possible, I guess) the rebound is an inevitable event, like summer. All we must do is survive politically until it happens. Anyone else getting deja vue? 

Okay, Obama has deficits. Reagan had deficits, and they were BAD so even if O has deficits, even larger deficits, they must be GOOD ones, right? And look at inflation! It practically doesn’t exist! Looking at the big numbers that sank Carter and elevated Reagan it seems things are not so dreadful for the current incumbent, statistically.

But that is IF the economy follows a similar trajectory that it did in ’83-’84. These were times of falling unemployment and simultaneously falling inflation. Inflation is docile right now. Do we have Obamonic policies to thank for that? Sure, why not? In which case that will continue. Good news. But does anyone think that employment is set for a stratospheric improvement? I cannot find that creature even among the paid Obies. And if employment merely stays static this will be near the all-time high, though statistics really start only after the Great Depression. Do the gunslingers factor these possibilities as well? Sure but they are not saying that O will have an eleven percent victory delivering nearly ALL Electoral College votes as Reagan did in his re-election, merely that he will win.

And if you are thinking that this is not possible you had better check the year.

 

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