A new financial crisis has gripped the U.S., Asia and Europe, but Barack Obama can only respond with catchphrases. The United States will remain a “triple-A country,” the U.S. president insisted Monday, as stock markets crashed. The most powerful man in the world seems strangely paralyzed.
America’s president, as the political scientist Richard Neustadt once noted, may be the most powerful man in the world, but he has only one real power: the power of persuasion.
That’s why U.S. presidents are so keen to get in front of the TV cameras and address the nation from what Americans refer to as the “presidential pulpit.” Barack Obama was back at the pulpit on Monday afternoon, as the world’s stock exchanges plummeted. “No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a triple-A country,” asserted the president. It had taken Obama three days to make a statement on Standard & Poor’s decision to strip the United States of its top credit rating.
But Obama convinced no one. Even while the president was speaking, the Dow fell below 11,000 for the first time in nine months. This is certainly a problem for Obama, but more than that, it is a problem for America.
Do Americans Still Trust Their President?
The debates about debt ceilings, trillion-dollar austerity packages and budgetary tricks are highly technical, and only financial experts really understand them. But in the end it all comes down to some very simple questions. Do Americans still trust their political system and their president? More importantly, do they still have confidence in America’s greatness?
The debt-ceiling compromise that Congress reached last week was intended to restore this confidence. But it didn’t really satisfy anyone, and its impact has faded quickly.
Now Obama wants to take another stab at the issue. On Monday, he announced that, following the shock downgrade, he wants to hold new negotiations on debt reduction, “as soon as Congress gets back.” The president said he intends to present his own proposals “over the coming weeks.”
But does he really have that much time, given the global shock waves on the markets? Shouldn’t Obama take action right away? And shouldn’t he seem a bit more decisive?
”The most powerful man in the world seems strangely powerless, and irresolute, as larger forces bring down the country and his presidency,” writes influential Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. Many American observers are asking what happened to Obama’s leadership, which was already lacking during negotiations in Congress on the U.S. debt ceiling. Those talks only achieved something when the leaders of both parties in Congress reached an agreement — not because Obama laid down the law.
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The fact that investors could pull out of money market funds fast enough after the debt ceiling decision seems to be proof that no matter what the president has to say investors and corporations are concerned about the effect that some of the recent government decisions have on the economy.