Recovery As Distraction

It has long seemed to me that President Obama has no interest in economic recovery, except for his recognition that double-digit unemployment poses a threat to his re-election. His interest is in transforming the country, not restoring it to what it was.

That perception has now been confirmed by no less an authority than Larry Summers, in an interview with Financial Times:

“The president made two things clear to us early on,” recalls Summers, who answers my questions in full, idea-packed paragraphs, rocking gently back and forth in his seat as he gets into the flow of an argument. “He would do what he had to to fix the banking system, to get the economy out of the rut in which he was inheriting it. But he had run for president to do long-run, fundamental things, like fixing healthcare, like having real energy policy, like reforming education. And we weren’t going to be distracted from those things.”

Note that revealing “but.” Sure, he’d do what’s necessary “to get the economy out of the rut,” but he’s determined not to let economic recovery distract him from his real goals.

UPDATE

In his Washington Post OpEd today (do presidents really need to write OpEds?), President Obama writes:

I am confident that the United States of America will weather this economic storm. But once we clear away the wreckage, the real question is what we will build in its place. Even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, I have insisted that we must rebuild it better than before. For if we do not seize this moment to confront the weaknesses that have plagued our economy for decades, we will consign ourselves and our children to future crises, sluggish growth, or both.

I think by now its clear that if the president had a choice between quick recovery and letting the storm continue for a while, letting the wreckage lie about for a while longer, if doing so would make it easier for him to engage in massive restructuring, he’d choose the latter. In fact, it’s clear that that is what he has done and is doing.

UPDATE II [13 July]

Ben Stein made the same point, better and more graphically. After noting that “we are still in a painful recession,” Stein writes:

What is President Obama doing about it? Perhaps too much. And, possibly, his efforts are too diffuse. When I think about the economy I think about a plump man who has just been hit by a truck while crossing a street and is in severely critical condition with internal bleeding. Instead of just stabilizing his hemorrhaging, the doctor decides that while the patient is unconscious, he might as well also do a face lift, some coronary bypasses and a stomach-stapling to keep him from gaining weight while he is recovering (if he does recover). After all, a crisis is not to be wasted.

I would add that in this case Doctor Democrat has been hectoring the Hapless Patient for a long time about his need for these extreme remedies, to no avail. But now that Hapless Patient is in no position to resist….