Don't Blame the Doctor

Anyone who has had major surgery can understand the pain and frustration that follow the surgery itself. The pain is often greater than expected and the recovery may take longer than the doctor first indicated. Even if the surgery was successful and saved the patient’s life, that is sometimes small comfort to one who is still experiencing severe pain and sleepless nights.

That analogy occurred to me last evening as I was listening to neighbors at a civic association meeting complaining about the miserable state of the economy. When it is explained that things would have been far worse without the “surgery” — the patient could have died, for example — they don’t want to hear any of it. They are angry and have made up their minds that things are going down the tubes because of this wretched “doctor” and that’s that.

Ironically, the people complaining the most are usually not the ones who had to undergo the surgery. Many of them have good paying jobs or are retired and have the benefit of a good pension. But, if logic were to hold sway, they apparently want to go back to the pre-surgery days when the country’s financial condition was moribund. Or they want the doctor to stop the pain and make things better immediately. Not tomorrow, or next week, but now. That’s an interesting ironic twist in itself, considering that many of these complainers think government in general is absolutely useless.

For the sake of perspective, let’s take a look back and see where things stood when the “doctor,” a.k.a. President Obama, took office in early 2009. Robert Samuelson, a respected columnist who writes about financial and economic matters for the Washington Post and Newsweek, among others, says that when Obama took office, “the economy and financial markets were in virtual free-fall.”

Samuelson, who is anything but a shill for the White House — in fact, later in this same column he faults Obama for not wanting to extend the Bush cuts across the board — claims that “only a rabid partisan can think that Obama’s policies had nothing to do with the reversal.” And, he cites the much-maligned “stimulus,” the rescue of the automobile industry, and the “stress test” for large banks as critical moves helping to pull the country back from the brink.

Without government’s aggressive response, he writes, “gross domestic product (GDP) would have dropped 12 percent instead of 4 percent and 16.6 million jobs would have been lost instead of 8.4 million.” Those are not Samuelson’s own estimates — they are estimates of respected analysts Alan Blinder of Princeton and Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics. And, they are consistent with figures I have seen elsewhere.

Yet, during the Q&A portion of the civic association meeting last evening, when a local resident called the stimulus nothing but a pork barrel disaster and a waste of money and the local Congressman dared to disagree, using statistics to buttress his argument, the resident threw up his hands and walked out.

Health-care reform gets the same reaction. A government takeover of the “best health care system in the world,” claims House Minority John Boehner. Sure it’s good, if you’re a Congressman or a retired civil servant, as I am. It’s great. But what about the estimated 30-40 million Americans who don’t have health coverage because they can’t afford it or they have a pre-existing condition? And what about the fact the current system is unsustainable over time, claiming an estimated 40 percent of GDP by 2050 instead of the already high 17 percent today?

But, silly me, why introduce logic? Logic doesn’t matter in today’s “civil” discourse, any more than it does in sports, such as trying to convince Boston Red Sox fans that the Yankees are better, or vice versa. Team or party affiliation is essentially tribal, often having nothing to do with reason. As a former Nebraska Senator famously said during the Watergate scandal: Don’t bother me with the facts; I have made up my mind.

This is apparently the mood of a large segment of the population — as exemplified most dramatically in the Tea Party movement — and many politicians are working hard to stoke these fires to keep fear and anger alive. That leaves few options for those of us who believe that the economic recovery, however slow, is moving in the right direction and that we have the right doctor on duty. At a minimum, we should make sure we vote and encourage like-minded friends to do the same. Maybe even pick up a few independents in the process.

If we throw up our hands and do nothing, we’ll deserve what we get.