A PRESIDENCY OF EXCUSES / THE WALL STREET JOURNAL OP EDITORIAL ( HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

GLOBAL VIEW

June 11, 2012, 7:22 p.m. ET
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A Presidency of Excuses
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Why's growth at 1.9% and unemployment still firmly above 8%? Apparently the buck stops in Berlin.
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By BRET STEPHENS

                                      Chad Crowe

In 1997 Asia's economy imploded. Currencies collapsed, countries had their ratings downgraded to junk, millions of people lost their jobs, governments were replaced, regimes fell. In October a jittery Dow, fearing the effects of "Asian contagion," lost 7.2% of its value in a single day. Trading had to be halted twice.

And yet the American economy was unscathed. In 1997 GDP grew by 4.5%. In 1998 it grew again by 4.5%, this time despite the Russian ruble crisis. In 1999, annual growth reached 4.9%, a pace it hasn't exceeded since. Unemployment fell to 4.2%. The government ran a surplus.





Bear this not-so-ancient history in mind as the Excuse-Maker-in-Chief cites another imploding region to explain 1.9% growth and 8.2% unemployment. "Right now, one concern is Europe, which faces a threat of renewed recession," Mr. Obama said Friday, rehashing one of his preferred economic alibis. "Obviously this matters to us because Europe is our largest trading partner."

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So now you know: In the Age of Obama, the buck stops in Berlin. Still, it's worth taking a closer look at the Blame Europe school of economic analysis. Start with some basic facts: Europe is not our largest trading partner. Canada is. Followed by China. Followed by Mexico. Followed by Japan.



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"Europe" only counts as America's largest trading partner in an aggregate sense. An honest apples-to-apples comparison would find that U.S. trade with North America or East Asia dwarfs trade across the Atlantic.



Now take the question of how much trade matters to America. In 2009, foreign trade accounted for 24.3% of the U.S. economy. By contrast, the foreign-trade-to-GDP ratio was 51.9% for China, 71.1% for Canada and 89.2% for Germany. When it comes to foreign trade, the U.S. is the world's least dependent major economy.



That's not to say that trade isn't vital to U.S. prosperity. But that only makes it more noteworthy that the only free-trade agreements Mr. Obama has signed were those initiated by his predecessor (over stiff Democratic objections). A free-trade agreement between the U.S. and the EU could, according to a 2010 analysis by economists Fredrik Erixon and Mattias Bauer, add as much as $181 billion, or 1.3%, to U.S. GDP. Yet the administration has barely paid lip service to the idea.



The real kicker, however, is that even as Mr. Obama points the finger at Europe for America's economic woes, trans-Atlantic commerce is flourishing as never before. According to the Census Bureau, U.S. exports of goods to Europe have risen every year of Mr. Obama's administration. They are now on course to exceed the 2011 record of $328 billion. The overall volume of U.S.-EU trade jumped 14% from 2010 to 2011.



That's something for which Mr. Obama might take credit—like the credit he takes for other achievements of his era to which he was dragged kicking and screaming: the fracking revolution, for instance, or Iran sanctions. But why tout a small victory when it exposes the larger falsehood on which so much of the president's re-election strategy depends?

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Then there is another great Obama excuse: Republicans in Congress. Again, a little history is in order. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 passed the Senate 58-33 in an evenly split chamber. Bill Clinton managed to do business with a GOP that controlled both houses of Congress for six of his eight years in office. Ronald Reagan passed all of his economic agenda through a House that was under constant Democratic control.

Somehow it is only Barack Obama—whose party, in an inconvenient truth for his campaign, still runs the Senate—who seems incapable of working with any Congress not under full partisan control. (And even then he had trouble.)


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Americans expect their presidents to be able to assemble coalitions of the politically willing in order to achieve pragmatic and relatively popular results. The Obama administration method, by contrast, has been to shove what it can down the public throat, then act surprised when the public gags, or throws up.






Which brings us to the impending Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare.




This year alone the government has managed to lose three high-profile Supreme Court cases 9-0, meaning even Mr. Obama's own appointees voted against him. Yet an unchastened administration soldiers along, on the theory that losing cases like Citizens United energizes the base and provides a ready-made excuse for its political routs, most recently in Wisconsin.



Now it hopes an adverse ruling on ObamaCare will relieve it of the burden of defending the law while also creating another Emmanuel Goldstein in the person of the chief justice. How classy.



As president, Mr. Obama has attempted to make scapegoats of bankers, bondholders, private-equity firms, insurance companies, energy companies, ATMs, the Chamber of Commerce, the Catholic Church, opponents of illegal immigration, European politicians, Supreme Court justices and even Japanese tsunamis. Next, perhaps, it will be solar flares.



At least tsunamis, solar flares, ATMs and Europeans don't vote. The rest of the list might eventually amount to 270 electoral votes.



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