I would like to offer a rebuttal to a recent article in Newsweek (“I’m Mad As Hell…And I’m Going To Vote! The Psychology of an Angry Electorate,” October 11, 2010, p. 29).
The article reports that many voters are enraged and furious with the Obama administration for what they see as reckless spending by the federal government and insufficient assertion (and even absence of anger) in response both to the ailing economy and to the Gulf oil spill caused by BP Oil. These voters see President Obama as both too calm and cool in the face of disaster, and insensitive to the fact that they are still out of work, out of their homes, and fearful of the federal government in general. However, in my view, this anger is inappropriate, misplaced, incorrect, and highly unproductive in a variety of ways.
First, Barack Obama inherited an economy that was crippled by a former president who was elected by many of the very voters who are angry now. So, for starters, these angry voters should be angry with themselves, not at President Obama; one needs to accept lying in the bed of their own making. But some of the angry voters are ones who voted for President Obama but have their sights too short and are too impatient for the change they want and were expecting from him. He has already fulfilled many campaign promises of change, but some of the larger changes his initial supporters want, and that he is working toward, will take much more time to enact.
Second, Obama was hired for his intelligence, compassion, and general intellectual skill with problem solving which are the qualities we should demand in any leader, but particularly ones that are needed in a time of extreme crisis. We are undoubtedly still in an expreme crisis (no matter what any financial expert might say about the “end” of the recession…we are certainly not “out of the woods” yet), and what is needed is level-headedness not anger. Anger is a temporary loss of control. It is healthy to express anger but unhealthy to operate from it. Crises need calm control not loss of control, and Barack Obama is remarkable at calm control. To quote Anna Qunidlen, Obama is “unflappable,” a superb quality and skill in times of crises.
Third, rebuilding a damaged economy takes both time and money. It cannot be one quickly or for free. Since the current economic damage we now face was brought on for eight years under President George W. Bush, and since for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, it will both likely take an equal amount of time to undo that damage and it will take more money in the short term to make the necessary repairs to our economy; these even though the deficit had already been increased to astronomic proportions under President Bush. In other words, balancing the federal budget cannot be priority right now. The repairs have to happen first, which means the federal government will have to spend more money for the repairs for the time being (resulting in the increase of the national debt in the short term) until the economy stabilizes and regains its footing. Then the goal can shift back to rebalancing the federal budget. To react to the passage, signing, and enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as simply reckless spending by the federal government (and the current administration) is to be wholly ignorant of all this. It is necessary short-term federal spending in response to the unwise and reckless spending by Wall Street and the federal government during the Bush presidency. Holding the Obama administration responsible for reckless spending is completely and inappropriately shifting the blame and ignoring the reality of the situation.
The appropriate response to the current economic situation should be patience and appreciation. We have a president and an administration that have approached the job with intelligence, efficiency, and effectiveness. The economy did not collapse (that is evidence of success in this crisis alone) and many effective pieces of legislation have been passed and signed. In short, we now have an administration of adults in the White House. Adults do not exhibit anger carelessly. It was carelessness and recklessness that resulted in the economic situation in which we arrived in 2009. Let’s not make the mistake of reverting back to the behavior that got us into that state in the first place by operating prematurely with careless and reckless anger, particularly toward an administration that is making steady progress in correcting the problems. We need to operate with sober intelligence (patience) in addition to deep emotion (elation or anger). The Obama administration is doing just that and, though not at the pace many would prefer, is slowly righting the ship. You can’t sail a ship with even a small crew (much less a full one) if the ship still has substantial leaks. (The current unemployment state is a result of those substantial leaks and it that will take much longer to rectify. It is completely unrealistic to expect that the Obama administration would have managed to substantially reduce the unemployment rate by now, or even in four years. It will take longer.) But you also can’t repair the leaks with no money, even if the shipyard seems to be on the verge of bankruptcy. The first success of the Obama administration was to successfully prevent the bankruptcy and begin the repairs. That is no small feat.
So please turn down the anger and vote in these Mid-term elections to allow the current federal and state governments to continue the job they are successfully doing. (Also pay a visit to the White House website. One brief browse shows the success.)
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