# Obama wins, economy tanks. Is it worth it? (hypothetical) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 7, 2008, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847 "2008-10-07T15:08:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/21 "2008-10-07T16:46:05Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > Yes. If he gets to make three Supreme Court appointments and a slew of lower-court appointments, it will be worth it. Hell yeah on that one - how on Earth did Ruth Bader Ginsburg get to be 75 years old? I swear it was just yesterday that she was appointed! ---
**Author:** ![Sinaijon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Sinaijon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaijon)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/22 "2008-10-07T16:50:23Z")
> [@Eva\_Luna](#): > > Obama will be stuck spending his entire first term cleaning up crap and will have little, if any, financial or political capital left to implement any broad economic or social initiatives. Not necessarily. Political capital used with good results is returned with interest. If, for example, Obama executes a successful withdrawal from Iraq, he will have _more_ political capital than he started. If all hell breaks loose, only then will he have a harder time with other initiatives. Granted, the result will probably be somewhere in the middle, but he only looses political capital if the American people don’t like the results. And if they don’t like the results, then he really shouldn’t have the political capital anyway. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/23 "2008-10-07T16:59:00Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > (???) Who in the world assumes that? People who tend to be Ronald Regan Republicans. > [@Eva Luna](#): > > But I fear that even with the best of intentions, if elected, Obama will be stuck spending his entire first term cleaning up crap and will have little, if any, financial or political capital left to implement any broad economic or social initiatives. Actually, if he accomplished nothing else other than cleaning up Bush’s crap, I will consider that good enough. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/24 "2008-10-07T17:00:10Z")
The economy is not the only potential problem for the next president. Even if we manage to extract ourselves from Iraq, things could very easily fall apart in Afghanistan/Pakistan. I have a hard time seeing a good resolution to the situation there. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/25 "2008-10-07T17:03:52Z")
All I’m going to say is, I don’t think Republicans have these kinds of arguments with themselves. I’m not a Republican, so I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think it happens. Don’t worry about the blame thing so much. If you’ve got an agenda and you think Obama will execute it, yes, he’d be worth it regardless of the blame he gets for the economy. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/26 "2008-10-07T17:16:35Z")
An interesting piece by Jim Kramer regarding the probable economic trajectories under each prospective winner. [Obama is a recession. McCain is a depression.](http://nymag.com/news/businessfinance/bottomline/51007/) > [@](#): > > What will New York look like a year from now? The answer: bad and probably worse, and perhaps downright catastrophic. Three degrees of awful. The first step was passing the bank-bailout legislation. Now that it’s done—and if it didn’t get done we would have been looking at a guaranteed economic collapse—the critical issue will be presidential leadership. And while any president will be an improvement over the current one, there is a growing belief on Wall Street that Barack Obama has the capacity to lead us out of this wilderness while John McCain does not. I’ll go a step further: Obama is a recession. McCain is a depression. > > Wall Street usually favors Republicans when it comes to managing the economy, but this time around the financial community is skeptical. John McCain has done everything he can to avoid talking about the economy, lest he be tarred with the brush of George Bush’s ineptitude. And when McCain has attempted to step into the fray, he’s been far from reassuring. First, he insisted that the fundamentals of the economy were sound; then he turned around and told us it was the end of the economic world as we know it, and suspended his campaign to scramble back to Washington and save the day on the bailout bill—only to have little visible effect. For all his talk of being a maverick, McCain looks an awful lot like President Bush on the credit crisis: He doesn’t seem to understand Wall Street or Main Street, he is dogmatically anti-regulation, and his economic team is a joke. Carly Fiorina almost destroyed the onetime best technology company in America, Hewlett-Packard, and Meg Whitman took eBay, the best dot-com player, and turned it into a mediocre franchise that has no growth. Both are perceived by Wall Street to be also-rans who are on the team because they have nothing else to do. > > Obama is no messiah, of course, but there’s a reason the Street sees him as a more capable manager of the credit crisis. He seems to understand the complexity of the problem, and while he’s nobody’s populist, he’s at least perceived as less tone-deaf to everyday Americans’ problems than his opponent. Obama also has a better team, in the likes of Larry Summers, the renowned economist and former Harvard president who probably knows more about this crisis than anyone, and Warren Buffett, the smartest man in business, period. And Obama is a globalist, in an age where the world’s economies are increasingly interdependent. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/27 "2008-10-07T19:12:28Z")
> [@Eva\_Luna](#): > > As various polls show Obama pulling ahead of McCain while the U.S. (and possibly the world) economy tanks, I am left wondering: would it be worth having a President who actually stands for what I stand for, if it means that he has to spend most of his first term digging himself out of messes he didn’t create? Would McCain be better at digging the US out of the current mess? Like JFK and Reagan, Obama has the ability to inspire, and the US needs inspiration. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/28 "2008-10-08T02:53:27Z")
FDR faced a similar quandary: he inherited the US when it was at rock bottom, in March 1933. Heck, all first term Presidents (as individuals at least) inherit problems not of their own making. Of course it’s worth it. Also, social initiatives aside, reforming our financial infrastructure is a prerequisite for everything else. I’d rather have Buffet, Summers, Austan Goolsbee and Rubin on the job than Phil “Mental Recession” Gramm, Kevin “Dow 36,000” Hassett, Carly “Golden Parachute” Fiorina, [et al](http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/06/other-list-mccains-economists.html). ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/29 "2008-10-08T03:13:43Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Originally Posted by **Onomatopoeia** > > (???) Who in the world assumes that? > > People who tend to be Ronald Regan Republicans. They can all go puke pea soup, as far as I’m concerned. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/30 "2008-10-08T03:38:12Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > They can all go puke pea soup, as far as I’m concerned. Well, I’m not exactly sure what that means. I find it interesting though that Wall Street which typically votes Republican is in favor of Obama. ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/31 "2008-10-08T06:11:32Z")
How much actual control does the POTUS have over the economy? By actual, I mean executive rather than influence or incentives. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/32 "2008-10-08T06:21:10Z")
First of all, your candidate probably does not stand for what you think he (or she) stands for. These people are trying to get elected. They’ll say anything. Second, if the economy’s going to tank, it’s gonna tank no matter who’s prez. So you’ll have to live with tanking economy + prez you didn’t want. Does that sound good? Of course, if Obama wins, the economy could miraculously recover, and he will pass out loaves and fishes for everyone. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/33 "2008-10-08T07:16:58Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > First of all, your candidate probably does not stand for what you think he (or she) stands for. These people are trying to get elected. They’ll say anything. > > Second, if the economy’s going to tank, it’s gonna tank no matter who’s prez. So you’ll have to live with tanking economy + prez you didn’t want. Does that sound good? Sigh. Herbert Hoover had objectively worse economic policies than FDR, and the economy responded accordingly. (It wasn’t Hoover’s fault, the first macroeconomic model was only proposed in 1935). Policies matter. A stimulus plan based upon textbook economic principles will pull us out of recession faster than one springing from an ideological attachment to tax cuts on higher income groups. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/34 "2008-10-08T13:25:02Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > How do you know? Do you have a crystal ball no one else has? (bolding mine) Because he’s an empty suit. He’s helpless without his teleprompter. It’ll be Jimmy Carter redux. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/35 "2008-10-08T15:32:42Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > Because he’s an empty suit. He’s helpless without his teleprompter. It’ll be Jimmy Carter redux. cite? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/36 "2008-10-08T15:39:14Z")
Out of curiosity, how would you expect him to cite his opinion? -XT ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/37 "2008-10-08T17:03:10Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > cite? You’re kidding, right? ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/38 "2008-10-08T18:16:01Z")
> [@Eva\_Luna](#): > > … But I fear that even with the best of intentions, if elected, Obama will be stuck spending his entire first term cleaning up crap and will have little, if any, financial or political capital left to implement any broad economic or social initiatives. What are the chances that Obama would be able to clean up crap **by** implementing broad economic and social initiatives? Birds & stones, so to speak? ---
**Author:** ![UTejas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UTejas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UTejas)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/39 "2008-10-08T19:05:23Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > You’re kidding, right? Perhaps not a cite, but it is not an unreasonable request that you explain your opinion. I have heard this complaint about Obama before and honestly have no clue why people say these types of things. Nobody, regardless of ideology, thinks McCain is an empty suit; we differ based on ideologies but certainly respect his intellect and acknowledge he has actual proposals. Obama’s given countless speeches, written two books explaining his political philosophy, and has a webpage brimming with _specific_ policy plans. He has the support of Warren Buffet and, evidently, Jim Cramer. Do you _seriously_ believe Obama to be an empty suit? If so, then perhaps “cite?” might not be as good a follow up question as “is it difficult to be willfully ignorant?” There is a difference between disagreeing with an opponent’s ideology and proposals and accusing him of having none. So to repeat the previous request: cite? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847/40 "2008-10-09T01:23:38Z")
Put it another way. Obama beat McCain in the past 2 debates (and without teleprompters!) So **LonesomePolecat** was just expressing his emotions and feelings without substantiation. Not GD worthy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-wins-economy-tanks-is-it-worth-it-hypothetical/466847.md?page=1)