President should act boldly

Opinion: September 2, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

An opposition-controlled Congress was giving the president fits. His job approval had dropped into the 30s. His re-election prospects looked increasingly dubious.

So President Harry S. Truman summoned lawmakers back to act on measures they had previously failed to pass, setting the special session for “what we in Missouri call ‘Turnip Day,’ taken from the old Missouri saying, ‘On the twenty-fifth of July, sow your turnips, wet or dry.”’

Truman’s blatantly political ploy in his post-midnight 1948 convention acceptance speech delighted Democrats and provoked more Republican derision than action. But it also set up his successful campaign against a “Do Nothing” Republican Congress.

Faced today with similarly resistant Republicans who run the House and can hamstring him in the Senate — plus a clearly unhappy public — President Barack Obama resisted the temptation to bring lawmakers back from their August recess. His style is far more cerebral and a lot less blatantly political than Truman’s.

Economic proposals

But, like Truman, Obama will basically ask lawmakers next week to “sow your turnips, wet or dry” when he lays out his latest proposals to spur the lagging economy. The contrast between his proposals — and the likely Republican reaction — will help to define the choice Americans will face in November 2012.

Obama will be most effective if he resists an overly cautious approach tailored to what he believes Republicans might accept. Instead, he should lay out a broad agenda that includes a form of the long-term debt reduction plan he floated during the debt-ceiling talks and press his message in a clear and consistent way.

After all, a GOP convinced it is on the way to making Obama a one-term president seems unlikely to break out of the ideological constraints that have marked its approach since he took office. This week’s memo from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor indicates the Republicans’ approach will continue to reflect the questionable view that the best way to create jobs is to ease the restraints on the private sector through tax cuts and regulatory relief.

For example, Cantor cited a proposal to give small businesses a 20 percent tax deduction to enable them to hire more workers. Interestingly, news reports on measures Obama is considering say he would condition such tax relief on actual hiring, which would seem more prudent.

Those reports also indicate Obama is considering measures that would go well beyond the GOP’s plans in providing direct government support designed to create jobs for unemployed workers.

One is a proposal floated in June by former President Bill Clinton to put unemployed construction workers back to work at retrofitting buildings to make them energy efficient. Others would increase loans for job creating public-private partnerships and maintain current levels of funding for highway construction at a time GOP lawmakers are considering significant cuts.

In addition, the need to repair the damage from Hurricane Irene will offer an opportunity to create construction jobs to fix underlying infrastructure problems made worse by the storm.

Judging from the National Republican Congressional Committee’s news releases, the GOP will criticize almost any Obama proposal to spend more federal funds as akin to what it calls his “failed, job-destroying” 2009 stimulus plan.

Jobs created, saved

While that controversial measure did not reduce unemployment as much as Obama and top aides initially forecast, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s latest report said it created or saved 1.3 million jobs in 2009 and 4.8 million in 2010 and continues to help, though on a reduced scale. Without the stimulus, it said, the jobless rate might now be nearing 11 percent, rather than the current 9.1 percent, though that remains well above the Obama forecast of 6.3 percent.

Any doubts about its short-term effectiveness should have been ended when expiration of the funds earlier this year forced states and localities, including Texas, to lay off thousands of teachers and other state workers, a key factor in keeping the jobless rate high.

Obama’s speech almost certainly will provoke sharply partisan responses.

But it also gives him another opportunity to shape the debate that will determine his political future.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by MCT Information Services.