From the outbox of Meyer’s inbox:
The automobile industry bailout. We’ve certainly touched on this topic over in the Watercooler with many sides weighing. Now the numbers have shifted once again showing that GM has rebounded back in a big way becoming the number one automaker in the world. With the Michigan Republican primary coming up, the auto bailout is front and center. President Obama is touting the success. The folks in Michigan loved this deal The rest of the county, perhaps not so much. Do the ends justify the means here? What say you?
OBAMA CASHES IN ON AUTO-BAILOUT SUCCESS, BUT SKEPTICISM OF GOVERNMENT REMAINS
By Adam Sorenson, writing for TIME
On Thursday, Pew released some timely data on three major federal undertakings that defined the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first term: the bank bailout, passed under George W. Bush just before Obama took office; the stimulus plan, Obama’s flagship economic initiative; and the 2009 rescue package for the big three U.S. automakers, which the President is highlighting in ads this week. The numbers illustrate both why Obama has chosen the auto bailout to make his case for re-election, and why Mitt Romney continues to talk about his own vociferous opposition to the policy. If that sounds like a contradiction, that’s because it is. Such is the nature of the American public’s view of government.
The Pew survey found unwavering distaste for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which 52% of Americans see as “wrong,” almost exactly where it stood a year ago. Approval for the Recovery Act hasn’t moved either, though fewer Americans now have a negative impression of it, and the nation remains split on the merits of the stimulus plan, 37% in favor, 41% opposed. However, a 56% majority, including 44% of Republicans, now say the auto bailout was “mostly good for the economy,” up 19 percentage points since October 2009. And that’s the kind of good will Obama is trading off in Michigan.
But in polling, how a question is framed matters quite a bit. Gallup this week approached the auto rescue issue in a different way and found that 51% of Americans “disapproved” of the bailout. It may be counter-intuitive, but this figure does not refute Pew’s findings. People can simultaneously recognize a policy’s positive impact and frown upon its principles. Despite divided opinion on whether the stimulus plan was worthy of approval, 61% of Americans, including a third of Republicans, in the Pew survey said it was mostly good for the economy, an even better number than the auto bailout.
So what gives? Why do people disapprove of policies they may think are effective and how does Romney see his position as an asset? The answer in Pew’s data is that many Americans remain opposed in abstract to the very idea of government intervention. A full two-thirds of respondents said the federal government has a negative effect overall. By a 52% to 40% margin, they also said that government regulation of business “usually does more harm than good.”
It’s this philosophy that Romney can build his argument on. “The idea that the government continues to hold shares in General Motors and calls the shots there is not consistent with American free enterprise,” Romney told a Detroit radio station on Thursday. “We need to get the government out of these companies’ hair and let them go to work to become competitive—not only in the U.S. but globally.”
Romney may be having his cake and eating it too in this case—he backed TARP and said in Wednesday’s debate that “no way would we allow the auto industry in America to totally implode and disappear”—but Republicans have a strong case to make against regulation and intervention in the next election. That is, as long as they steer clear of most specifics.
Read the rest at TIME.
