Obama & Shrodinger’s Cat

The Obama Administration is sinking like a BP oil rig. Pretty soon now we will have a national election, and that will change the picture. Politics is a little bit like quantum mechanics: the system is never really in one state or another until some physicist observes it. Google Shrödinger's cat.

If the life of a cat in a cage depends on whether a certain atom has decayed or not and, according to quantum physics, the atom has neither decayed or not until it is observed, is the cat alive or dead?

In politics, the only authentic act of observation is an election. If the Democrats do better than expected, that will be S¹. If they do as it looks like they will do, that will be S². Until the observation happens, the state of the cat (in this case, the Obama Administration) is neither alive nor dead.

While the system is still in an undetermined state, we can still ask how it got to be in that state. After the election it will be too late for that question. We will view it only in hindsight. So now is the time to ask that question.

CNN has measured the President's momentum in the way that pollsters do: in terms of probabilities and projections.

With little more than a month to go before the midterm elections, President Barack Obama's approval rating has hit an all-time low.

Only 42 percent of Americans now approve of how Obama's handling his job as president, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. Fifty-four percent disapprove of his performance.

That is down there in George W. Bush territory.

But of course, it is worse than that. On September 20^th, the President held a Town Hall Meeting. On that occasion, a person against whom no defense is possible, a "handsome, dignified, black, a person with presence", as Peggy Noonan puts it, said this to the President:

"I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm an American veteran, and I'm one of your middle-class Americans. And quite frankly I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are."

The President sat down, of his own accord, in the dunking chair, and Velma Hart hit the bull's eye. It gets worse still.

The President held a fundraiser in New York City. Here is Gail Sheehy at the Daily Beast:

Who would have thought that six weeks before a cliffhanger election, President Obama would have to reach down to the D list to fill a room to listen to him? Most of us low rollers arrived early to see President Obama up close and personal. Our tickets for the general reception at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York were only $100. Some thought the email invitation was a joke. Some bought tickets for $50 from their desperate Democratic committeeman. Some bought the same day.

There was room for 65o people. Only 450 bought tickets. The President of the United States couldn't get a sellout crowd.

What explains the lowly state to which the President has descended? The President's defenders will point to the economy, over which he has, allow us to admit it, minimal control. His critics, myself included, will point to the fact that he was persistently dishonest in selling the health care reform bill.

I don't think that either is the real cause of the President's dismay. The real cause is that the United States of America is going belly up financially. We can't balance our books. We are running deficits of trillions of dollars a year. While we are spending billions rescuing the financial industry and the auto unions, our major social programs like Social Security and Medicare, are going belly up. Neither the President nor the Congress is even talking about the larger problems.

That works to the Republican's advantage this year. Republicans are not-Obama and not-Pelosi. But the American people aren't stupid. Until someone or some party addresses the real problems, the people will remain disgruntled.

After the election, for awhile, we will be able to ignore this. But only for awhile. Maybe we should pay attention to it now.

Comments

[Donald Pay]

I think a big part of the problem is people who make statements like this: "The real cause is that the United States of America is going belly up financially. We can't balance our books. We are running deficits of trillions of dollars a year. While we are spending billions rescuing the financial industry and the auto unions, our major social programs like Social Security and Medicare, are going belly up. Neither the President nor the Congress is even talking about the larger problems."

Great prestidigitation here. We all know what the problem is, thank you. Yes, we've been running away from problems, but the problems you mentioned (SS and Medicare) have been used each election cycle by one side or the other to take focus off the real problems. America is going belly up financially, but it has been doing so for thirty years, and its not because of Social Security or Medicare.

We had to rescue the financial industry, much as we all hated to do it. By the way, that was a Bush Administration effort, something which you didn't mention. The fact is that with the right regulatory framework the financial manipulations that lead to the collapse would not have occurred, but that was something the corporatists (D & R) didn't want to do.

So, now we come to the auto industry bailout. We didn't have to do that. We could have let it die. It's been Republican policies, after all, to put to death lots of industries, mostly manufacturing, over thirty years. We've given tax incentives to corporations that ship jobs overseas. We've set up trade policies that encourage unfair trade. Maybe we can't balance our books partly because we give away money to people (the wealthy) who ship jobs overseas. The Republicans have their hands red with the blood of the manufacturing base they killed off through bad tax and trade policies. So all the money is now made overseas, not taxed, and neither is the meager income of the foreign wage slaves they employ. Meanwhile, the Republicans answer to those they forced into unemployment is to cut off their unemployment benefits.

Oh, here's a larger problem: climate change. Or energy. Or pollution. Or health care. These are problems the Republicans don't even think are problems, unless, that is, it leads to more tax giveaways to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries, the health insurance industry. Republicans now don't think "too big to fail" banks are a problem. They are getting lots of money from pretending we still don't have a problem in the financial industry.

So, yeah, pretend that the most pressing problems we face are Social Security and Medicare, and watch this country implode.

[KB]

Donald: the Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House. What they ignore matters more than what the Republicans ignore. The U.S. Government is on the road to insolvency. That is not what happens if Obama's plan fails. That's his plan. I happen to agree with you that the Republicans don't have any real alternatives. If they should happen to gain control of Congress, they will rapidly lose support.

But right now the people can see that their government isn't even beginning to address the fundamental problems. That was my point.

[Donald Pay]

Yeah, we let the Republicans take over in 2001 after a Supreme Court coup and we got the financial genius that brought us to a near depression. They certainly didn't ignore anything, did they? Put that crackpots party back in power and we will destroy America. The Republicans have been ignoring issues for thirty years, except for the issues the special interests and super rich tell them to do.

[Lynn]

I agree that Obama wants the economy and financial solvency of this country to completely tank so he can "fundamentally change America." Many of his close advisors and czars are on record stating exactly this, and he has done nothing to make us disbelieve this intention.

We just got back from France and were stuck with listening to BBC World News there (the only English speaking station which is a ridiculous news effort, but that is another subject). One of the only stories reported every night was how much the Millenium Development Goals which is the UN idea that rich nations should pay great amounts of money to developing nations so that we are all equal. The US UN representative quoted was saying the US doesn't pay it's share and it's a shame - ha! And Obama supports this and has promised much money we don't have to reach these goals. Another example of how he intends to lower our standard of living and economy.