Is the Economic Crisis Obama's 9/11?

[Pangloss]

It strikes me that the current economic crisis is, from a political perspective, similar in its effect to the political aftermath of 9/11.

 

1 - it's a huge surprise

2 - it's ruinously expensive

3 - it's a "game-changer"

 

Now again, I'm talking about the political perspective here. How this affects political actions and opinions.

 

With regard to #1, the surprise value is reflected in the way Democrats and Republicans seemed to stumble about on the way to respond to the issue, not having a basic ideological platform plank to fall back on.

 

With regard to #2, when it comes to major political happenings, cost is one of the way they determine how important a thing is.

 

With regard to #3, this has created a paradigm shift in the perception of what politicians talk about in terms of budget matters. In short we've added a couple of orders of magnitude to our basic concept of what constitutes "expensive" when it comes to the budget.

 

So I think the question becomes whether this event will essentially become Obama's defining catalyst, just as 9/11 was the defining catalyst of the Bush administration. It's early, of course, and in terms of history and politics it may seem rash -- it FEELS rash. But in general these sorts of things are actually pretty rare, and I think it's possible that Obama's defining catalyst just happened to come a bit early.

 

What do you all think?

[iNow]

It's certainly an interesting idea for discussion, but I'm not sure the comparison being made is a valid one.

 

Bush was already President, Commander-in-Chief, when 9/11 happened.

Obama was still only candidate for president when the economic crisis began rearing it's ugly head.

 

9/11 was an instantaneous event.

The economic downturn was a slowly building, multi-factor system of many events over many months.

 

In terms of defining moments, and game changers, yes. I think that no matter who was/is/becomes president, an event like this is going to serve as a pretty major anchor.

 

 

Finally, I can't see Obama doing any part of this:

 

[Pangloss]

Yah I kinda struggled a bit with how to express the first point. It certainly wasn't instantaneous, the point there was just that it took politicians by surprise. Whether it should have done so is another matter, but I think it's fair to say that there have been some surprises in this mess for everyone -- even those who warned about the problems.

 

But that's the main point there, that it's a game-changer in similar fashion to 9/11. It does seem that the first part of the Obama administration will be all but consumed by dealing with this issue. Just to give an example of that, it came out yesterday that the federal ban on embryonic stem cell research may be reversed right off the bat, and it just struck me as odd that I hadn't thought about that yet. Doing that won't take any significant time or attention away from the economic issue, but the surprise I felt just underscored for me how much focus the economy is getting right now.

[Sisyphus]

It does seem like it might be fairly analogous. After 9/11 it did seem like everything the government did or the President said related to the "new" war on terror, and there was an atmosphere that the old rules didn't matter because of this new, huge amazing thing. It's really too early to say if the economic crisis will go the same route, but the bailout does seem to point that way. Of course, iNow's points are important, too. The Obama administration might end up being defined by this, but it doesn't "belong" to him in the same way, since both the catastrophe and the drastic reaction to it have both happened before his watch even begins. In that sense even an analogy with Hoover, FDR, and the 1929 crash doesn't really fit.

[npts2020]

While I might quibble with the first point I believe the analysis from a political perspective to essentially correct. The crises have been and will be used to grant sweeping new powers to the executive branch especially DHS and Treasury. What is amazing to me is that Americans hate giving money to poor people but are sitting still while their government gives many times more to corporate interests. Why are those corporations, who have had access to and control of vast amounts of wealth for many years, any more deserving of my public money than the laziest, deadbeat living under a bridge? Whether Obama uses the situation in the same way as Bush, only time will tell. I am hopeful but skeptical.