Lessons learned for president Obama

Nate Silver, the man behind the surprise star of the blogshere during the 2008 elections, FiveThirtyEight.com, ran the numbers and provides some cogent lessons for president Obama:

Nº 1. Republicans will obstruct, because they have nothing to lose.

Nº 2. President Obama needs to be the face of his policy initiatives, and not outsource it to the Democratic Congress.

Nº 3. So-called bipartisanship is over-rated, and has been a drain on president Obama in the short term.

In more words, Nate Silver breaks down the lessons as:

Republicans have nothing to lose. Public perceptions of Congressional Republicans are also significantly down from their already-low levels since the stimulus debate began. But, the Republicans will gladly torpedo their own brand if it means taking Obama down with them. They are dangerous to him, in the way that a gang of rabid velociraptors is dangerous to a T-Rex.

Obama has to do the heavy lifting himself. Support for the stimulus dwindled when the Congressional Demorcats, who are not much more popular than their Republican colleagues, were charged with the job of selling it. The more Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the faces of the Democratic Party, the more Barack Obama’s approval ratings will come to resemble those of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

The benefits of “bipartisanship” are dubious. The public says they want bipartisanship, and a large majority of the public believes that Obama acted in a bipartisan fashion during the stimulus debate. And yet, his approval ratings fell significantly during this period.

GOP to America: FU

This is discouraging … Essentially president Obama, in the name of misguided bipartisanship, sacrificed the effectiveness of the much needed American recovery package, a.k.a, the stimulus bill:

[T]o appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts.

According to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic. So the original $800 billion plan was too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand. The plan should have been at least 50% larger.

So, while president Obama played the bipartisan Washington game and wooed republicans, the GOP (Grand Obstructionist Party) just gave the finger to the president and a big FU to the country.