And as officials frenetically tried to paper over differences among the Group of 20 members with a vaguely worded communiqué to be issued Friday, there was no way to avoid discussion of the fundamental differences of economic strategy. After five largely harmonious meetings in the past two years to deal with the most severe downturn since the Depression, major disputes broke out between Washington and China, Britain, Germany and Brazil.

Each rejected core elements of Mr. Obama’s strategy of stimulating growth before focusing on deficit reduction. Several major nations continued to accuse the Federal Reserve of deliberately devaluing the dollar last week in an effort to put the costs of America’s competitive troubles on trading partners, rather than taking politically tough measures to rein in spending at home.

The result was that Mr. Obama repeatedly found himself on the defensive.

He and the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, had vowed to complete the trade pact by the time they met here; while Mr. Obama insisted that it would be resolved “in a matter of weeks,” without the pressure of a summit meeting it was unclear how the hurdles on nontariff barriers to American cars and beef would be resolved.

Mr. Obama’s meeting with China’s president, Hu Jintao, appeared to do little to break down Chinese resistance to accepting even nonbinding numerical targets for limiting China’s trade surplus. While Lael Brainard, the under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs, said that the United States and China “have gotten to a good place” on rebalancing their trade, Chinese officials later archly reminded the Americans that as the issuers of the dollar, the main global reserve currency, they should consider the interests of the “global economy” as well as their own “national circumstances.”

The disputes were not limited to America’s foreign partners. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner got into a trans-Pacific argument with one of his former mentors, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, after Mr. Greenspan wrote that the United States was “pursuing a policy of currency weakening.” Mr. Geithner shot back on CNBC that while he had “enormous respect” for Mr. Greenspan, “that’s not an accurate description of either the Fed’s policies or our policies.” He added, “We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage or grow the economy.”

Much of the rest of the world seemed to share Mr. Greenspan’s assessment. Moreover, Mr. Obama seemed to be losing the broader debate over austerity. The president has insisted that at a moment of weak private demand, the best way to spur economic growth is to have the government prime the pump with cheap credit and government stimulus programs. He quickly found himself in an argument with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

Read the whole thing here.

The most breathtaking flight of fancy from Washington this past week was the full- court press by the President, Vice President, Chairperson of the White House Council of Economic Advisors and a whole host of Obama acolytes to proclaim that the Stimulus is working, that we’re “ahead of schedule” on job creation and that we’ve created  (or saved) millions of jobs.  The job saving claim is, in a strange way, irrefutable…sort of like a witch doctor saying if he hadn’t done his rain dance, the drought would have been worse.  As Democratic Senator Max Baucus complained to the White House “you created a situation where you cannot be wrong.  If 2,500,000 jobs are lost, you claim that without your stimulus program, 3,500,000 jobs would have been lost.  Taken to its logical conclusion, if everyone except one person were laid off, the Administration could claim that without its stimulus program, that person would have lost his job.”

There is, of course, a reason for this disciplined chorus of downright silly spin.  The Administration knew that data were about to be released from a variety of reliable sources revealing a further decline in manufacturing and retail activity, a further pull back in private sector hiring plans and industry investment plans, unemployment stubbornly stuck at just under ten percent and a further sinking of consumer confidence.  What’s a “fella” to do with elections coming and millions of jobs lost?  Dance the old dos-a-do and around you go, and claim the stimulus saved jobs.

This further sinking of consumer confidence is particularly significant and vexing to the Administration.  Consumer confidence is a consequence of the consumers’ sensitivity to what they see, hear and feel all around them.  It is reality. It can’t be manufactured, successfully manipulated (for very long), divined from the White House or spoon fed from a teleprompter.

The big problem the White House faces is its dogged determination to transform America into a left leaning, statist nation consistent with the President’s vision of what’s good for America, when Americans don’t want to be transformed into that vision.  Americans understand the difference between needed reforming and radical transforming.

Dos-a-Do and Around You Go has been like an anthem within this White House. Remember the Obama healthcare reform bill that wasn’t going to add “one dime to the deficit” and the president’s mantra that he wouldn’t sign a bill that added one dime to the deficit “ now or in the future.” We now know, because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has told us, and, as the president surely knew when he made that promise, that his healthcare reform bill would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit.

And when George Stephanopoulos suggested that the fine for not purchasing insurance under the Obama healthcare plan was clearly a tax on the middle class, the President replied that it wasn’t a tax at all. This rather astounding presidential response quickly had Stephanopoulos reaching for the nearest dictionary (which, conveniently, was resting at his elbow). After reading aloud the definition of a tax, which fit the fine or penalty in Obamacare like a glove, the President, with a straight face, lectured that the fact that Stephanopoulos had to use the dictionary proved he (the president) was right all along.  Dos-a-Do and Around You Go.

To add insult to injury, the Justice Department in responding to lawsuits brought by several state attorneys general who claim the Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority in the health care legislation by mandating fines on individuals who do not purchase health insurance, is now making the argument that the fine is really just . . . you guessed it . . . a tax which is, of course, within the power of Congress.  Quite amazing isn’t it?  It isn’t a tax, it’s a fine except when it’s a tax.  Mr. Obama has created a new dance step:  the double dos-a-do.  Then there was the White House assurance that the Administration’s spending (they call it investment) was going to decrease the deficit.  The CBO, ever so belatedly, blew the whistle on that outlandish claim with the warning that the mounting deficits were now deemed to be unsustainable.

Another refrain of Dos-a-Do and Around You Go was the Administration’s attempt to harmonize the American Latino community with the President’s promise of comprehensive immigration reform legislation during his first year in office.  Eighteen months later, and counting, and there hasn’t been a scintilla of effort to propose or advance such reform.  Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and the state’s legislature called the President’s hand on this one when they passed Senate bill 1070 which goes into effect this week unless derailed by an injunction asked for in the recent suit filed by the federal government against the state (that is, the people) of Arizona. SB 1070 does nothing more than require the state’s law enforcement officers to assist the federal government in enforcing its own laws. The President’s claim that SB 1070 would result in police “confronting a mom and her kids at an ice-cream parlor” with demands they show proof of citizenship was pure demagoguery.  It was Dos-a-Do and Around You Go writ large and sung off key.

And just this month, the president, employing his power to make recess appointments, named Donald Berwick to head the Office of Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Mr. Obama, citing Republican obstructionism, said speed was needed to fill a position that has been vacant for a number of years.  If that is so, why did it take him eighteen months to make the appointment?  Amazing isn’t it coming from a man who as a senator was outraged over President Bush’s recess appointment of John Bolton to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Then there was the effort from day one of this Administration to convince the American public that there was no such thing as a war on terror, that terrorism didn’t exist and we could change the reality of terror with a mere change in vocabulary.  Administration officials were forbidden to use the words Islamic and terror in the same sentence.  The Obama cabinet began dissembling with new ways to describe what every American recognizes as the paramount existential threat of the 21^st century. Suddenly, the President’s cabinet members were, with straight faces, trying to convince the people that “man caused disasters,” and not terrorism, caused the first and second World Trade Center attacks, and the attack on the USS Cole, and the bombing of the Embassies in Africa, and the London subway and bus bombings and the Christmas-day near mid-air disaster and the Fort Hood massacre and the Time’s Square attempted car bomb attack, and the carnage at Mumbai.  We are not fighting Islamic terrorism on a global scale they tell us.  We’re, instead, engaging in “overseas contingency operations.” This is well beyond the typical Dos a Do and Around You Go that routinely emanates from every misstep of this Administration. It is even beyond implausible. The President simply shouldn’t tolerate this sort of semantic gobbledygook, much less be responsible for it. This is our national security with which these political neophytes are toying.  It boggles the mind.

And to prove there was no war on terror the Attorney General of the United States declared that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks would be tried in civilian courts rather than by the military tribunal to which Khalid Sheik Mohammad had already announced his intention to plead guilty.  Almost comically, Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying at a recent Senate hearing, displayed breathtaking linguistic gymnastics by resisting every effort by the panel to coax him into acknowledging that there was even the remotest connection between Islamic extremism and attacks on innocent civilians.

Then, of course, there is also the new 2300-hundred-page financial reform law that calls for 243 new regulations to protect Main Street from Wall Street.  America got a lot of Dos-a-Do and Around You Go by the President about how the people were going to be protected with this new law even though there isn’t a word in the Act dealing with the malfeasances of those government sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were, perhaps, among the most responsible culprits in the entire financial meltdown.  So far, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are untouched, unmentioned and unregulated by Obama’s financial regulatory reform.  We doubt, however, that they will remain unscathed once the public begins to focus on the fact that Representative Barney Frank, Senator Chris Dodd and (former Senator) Barrack Obama were the largest recipients of Fannie Mae’s political slush fund.

We could go on, as the Presidential encores of Dos-a-Do and Around You Go seem endless.  But things do have a way of changing and, perhaps, the President will soon learn that, just like the original Virginia Reel, fewer and fewer people are dancing to this tune.

By Hal Gershowitz and Stephen Porter

According to Gallup polling of last week, the issues most on the minds of Americans are the economy and jobs followed by dissatisfaction with all aspects of government.

I didn’t notice racism on the list anywhere.

The NAACP says it was “snookered” by Fox News on the Shirley Sherrod story. I say we’ve all been snookered by the NAACP.

The NAACP has shown that those who have written this organization off as irrelevant are wrong.   It demonstrated this past week that if it so chooses it can dominate the national discussion with its racial agenda, regardless of what the real pressing issues of national concern may be.

The accusation about Tea Party racism is ridiculous.  But even if you don’t think it’s ridiculous, is this the discussion we need to be having when national unemployment hovers at ten percent, and when black unemployment is closer to 15%, double that of whites?

Now, of course, we should be talking about racism if this is what is driving black unemployment.  But is it?

I don’t think so.  Nor do most blacks.

In January of this year, well into our recession, and well into the emergence of the Tea Party movement, the Pew Research Center surveyed black attitudes.

In answer to the question, “When blacks don’t make progress, who or what is to blame?”, 52% of blacks responded that “blacks” themselves are “mostly responsible”, and 34% said “racism.”  This is the reverse of how blacks responded to this question just 15 years ago, when 56% said that racism was the impediment to black progress.

In the same survey, blacks responded almost identically as whites to the question of whether success in life is “determined by forces beyond one’s control” or whether “everyone has the power to succeed.”

Seventy seven percent of blacks and 82% of whites said that “everyone has the power to succeed” and 16% of blacks and 12% whites said success is “determined by forces beyond one’s control.”

And when blacks were asked in this same survey about the main problems facing black families, the response was overwhelmingly exactly the same as the general result of the Gallup poll of last week.  Jobs.

So, Americans of all colors today generally feel responsible for their own lives and the main concern of most is the sick state of our economy.

So let’s have that discussion.

Clearly, there are differences of opinion about how to light a fire under this economy and the role of government.  Some think government is the answer.  Some think it’s the problem. But this is a difference of opinion about how the world works. Why are we talking about racism?

Racism is about people being persecuted and endangered because of their color.  It’s about not be treated equally under the law or denied access to public facilities or work because of one’s color.

Fortunately, those ugly days are behind us.  And aside from the political and legal truths that verify this, black attitudes themselves, as the Pew data bears out, support it.  And, if we need further verification, sitting in the White House is a black man who is there with the help of 43% of the votes of white Americans.

Talk about racism may help employment for those in the race business.  But it has little relevance to getting the American economy working again, which is what we should be single mindedly focused on.

And allowing race to become the focus of public discourse shuts out the very message that blacks need to hear.  That they are disproportionately hurt by a recession being prolonged by excessive government growth and interference.

There is little doubt that Obama faced a divided electorate when he first took office and a difficult economic climate.  Rather than start with a limited agenda designed to build consensus, Obama did the opposite.  Obama chased too many rabbits at once and preferred ideological fights over practical solutions.  As a result, the Country is more divided than ever – not less.

The most recent manifestation of that divisive M.O. is the White House’s amazing decision to insist on a terror trial in New York.   Of course, it remains a jarring ideological decision to treat KSM as a “criminal” versus the warring “terrorist” that he is.  As I wrote, in my article Internment, CSI and Eric Holder’s Disarming of America, that decision will have profound negative consequences for decades to come.  To the point of this article, Obama is compounding his initial divisive decision (treating him as a criminal) by fighting with New York over the place of the trial.  It is a political fight which he cannot win regardless of the outcome of the trial.

In addition to that fight, Obama’s first year featured a huge and controversial agenda that has not served his Party or his Presidency well.  Keep in mind that successful Presidents achieve but two, maybe three, lasting achievements during their terms – many less than that; hence the need for a targeted and consensus building agenda – not a controversial far-reaching agenda.

Out of the gate, this President chose controversy over consensus.  His massive, $800 billion spending/stimulus bill divided Americans.  To be sure, there is not a majority in this country for uncontrolled deficit spending.  Indeed, the deficit is at the height of American worries and more Americans than not think the bill has not worked.

Next, Obama took on Cap and Trade.  While it is unsurprising that those on the Left – who  arrogantly think they can socially engineer the lives of free people also think they can engineer the climate of a 4.7 billion year old planet – there is little doubt that pushing that major agenda was not a consensus building maneuver.  Witness the fate of that bill and the cries of moderate Democrats if you think otherwise.

From there, Obama pushed a massive ideological takeover of 17% of the US economy in the form of the Health Care bill.  It has been anything but a consensus builder for the Democrats – ask Scott Brown if you are uncertain of that – not to mention the meteoric rise of the Tea Party.

As you can see, on the heels of a massive spending bill, Obama chased at least 3 major ideological rabbits, cap and trade, health care and redefining the war on terror– all within one year.  Obama failed to build a consensus on any of those three let alone passed legislation establishing one of them – leaving Obama without a signature achievement at the outset of his Presidency – the time in which most Presidents achieve their success if at all.

Of course, Obama blames the problems he inherited for his troubles.  Rather than looking to the economy he inherited, however, Obama should look at the divisive political climate he fostered for his failing polling numbers – much like Johnson did in 1966 and Clinton in 1994.

Although, after the first of the year,  Obama promised to focus on jobs, his ridiculous fight with New York over terror trials, and his promise to continue pushing his health care take and cap and trade, demonstrates he is not up to the job of bringing this country together.  It will be up to the Republicans to fill that leadership void in the 2010 elections.

Yet in economic terms, the president’s shift thus far has been more of the same: more government control and less individual freedom.

His attacks on banks—including a new tax that will invariably be passed on to consumers—caused stocks to plummet last week. He has targeted some banks for being “too big,” but without ending the costly policy of “too big to fail,” which removes the discipline of risk and reward. He crowed, “We want our money back,” but wants to use “our” money for his own spending programs, not for tax relief.

The central idea of the President’s new plan appears to be shaping up as a jobs program, in imitation of FDR’s public employment programs during the Great Depression, and funded by new taxes on Wall Street.

The plan is not about job creation—more jobs could be created by the private sector—nor is it about recouping the bailout. It is primarily about redistribution—and is based on old, bad ideas.

Look for two key words likely to appear in the President’s speech: “productive” and “unproductive.” These come from Democrat strategist Robert Creamer, who recently wrote a blog at the Huffington Post entitled: “Tax Bank Bonuses and Capital Gains of Wealthy to Pay for Jobs Program.” Creamer argued that the government should tax the “unproductive financial sector” and “incentivize productive work” instead.

Creamer is no obscure pundit. He is the likely architect of the Democrats’ political strategy on health care reform, outlining it in a book he wrote in federal prison in 2006. He has also been a guest at the Obama White House, together with his spouse, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). And his Huffington Post columns frequently coincide with the White House message of the week, both in substance and style.

The false distinction between so-called “unproductive” and “productive” work has a long and sordid history. It was a cornerstone of Marxist economic theory, and was also a staple of antisemitic rhetoric in Europe. Jews, barred by law from owning land and practicing certain trades, became prominent in finance—“unproductive” work, to their detractors—and were scapegoated during times of economic turmoil.

Last week, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League feuded with radio host Rush Limbaugh over whether the Obama administration’s attacks on banking had any antisemitic resonance. Regardless, the policy is wrong, motivated and by a tired and self-destructive Marxist idea: using the heavy hand of government to shift wealth from “unproductive” Wall Street to “productive” Main Street.

What this Congress and White House—and their political advisers—fail to understand is that Wall Street and Main Street depend on each other. The financial sector doesn’t simply create wealth for itself; it also creates markets for the products Main Street sells, and investment for the jobs Main Street needs. Conversely, if Main Street cannot produce earnings and create new jobs, Wall Street cannot profit or survive.

Americans understand this intuitively—which is why there has been little appetite for the war on “unproductive” work that Creamer and his associates are trying to incite. There has been relatively little antisemitism, either, despite the fears of some Jews that the appearance of Jewish names among Wall Street’s fraudsters and failures might provoke hatred. Americans are above and beyond all of that.

Not so, Creamer and other left-wing strategists—who insist that the Obama administration must not drop its radical policies, but repackage them in populist rhetoric. Americans are not likely to be fooled—not least because the political class fails to practice what it preaches. Perhaps if President Obama gave up golf, or returned his Wall Street campaign contributions, people might start to listen.

As the war on the economic recession grew bleak and the unemployed body count grew, Obama and the Democratic Congress were bogged down in the quagmires of health care reform and cap-and-trade – wars of choice but not of necessity.

Obama and Congressional leaders dithered on the economy to satisfy their liberal base and deliver on campaign promises of a government takeover of health care, a cap-and-trade system and a scheme to eliminate the secret ballot in union elections.

Fortunately for America, Obama and his Congressional allies have been unsuccessful so far.

In a recent interview with ABC News, the president said he lost touch with the American people because he was so focused on crafting policy.  And the result was the special election in Massachusetts that ended in disaster for Democrats.

So Obama has learned his lesson.  And what’s his answer to the problem?  Beef up his political staff.  But first, let’s flash back to shortly after the 2008 election:

“An Obama White House will be focused on meeting the next challenge, not winning the next election,” transition spokeswoman Jen Psaki wrote in an e-mail Friday evening [to Politico.] “That is what he promised in the campaign and that is how he will govern.”

So after the Democrats had their political head handed to them by Massachusetts voters, the president goes into campaign mode because apparently being in ‘policy mode’ wasn’t convincing American voters.  I’m sure that wasn’t a flip-flop, but rather a simple evolution.  And thus, he’s falling back into the traditional progressive talking points of attacking Wall Street, bankers and insurance companies.

And beyond simply spending more money and racking up more debt, the president and Congressional Democrats have done nothing to spur private-sector job growth.  But they don’t want voters to focus on that – they want the focus on what they see as the excesses of capitalism.

So it appears that’s the tack they will take in the coming months in order to court favor with disenchanted American voters.  But seeing that Democrats have had an iron grip on power for the last year, they’re doing their best to create the narrative that they’re fighting against something:

“Instead of fearing what may happen, let’s prove that we have more than just the brains to govern—that we have the guts to govern. Let’s fight like hell,” Mr. Plouffe wrote…

But fight whom?  Democrats have the votes and the power to do whatever they want.  Are they fighting against moderate Democrats?  Republicans?  The thick-headed American people?  Who?

Regardless, they’re going to come out swinging against anyone standing in their way, and we’re guessing they’re not going to discriminate about where the punches land.

From Pelosi’s statement:

Washington, D.C. — House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ announcement that 470,000 people abandoned their job searches in July and that 3.2 million private sector jobs have been lost since President Bush took office:

Of course, in December 2009, almost twice as many (929,000) had “abandoned their job searches” on Speaker Pelosi’s watch and with a Democrat in the White House.

“The fact is that President Bush’s misguided economic policies have failed to create jobs. Since President Bush took office, the country has lost 3.2 million jobs, the worst record since President Hoover. And today we learned that in July nearly half a million people gave up looking for a job.

Between January 2001 (132.469 million) and July 2003 (129.864 million), the U.S. actually lost 2.6 million payroll jobs. However, that pales in comparison with the 3.4 million jobs lost since Barack Obama became President (134.333 million in January 2009 versus 130.910 million in December 2009), giving President Obama the “worst record since President Hoover.”

“Job losses are taking a real toll on the financial security of American families. While Democrats are fighting for opportunity, jobs, and economic security for working families, Republicans continue to focus on helping those who need help the least.

“According to today’s survey, while the national unemployment rate dropped slightly, it still stands at a near record high.

Despite the Pelosi’s claim, the 6.2% unemployment rate in July 2003 was nowhere close to a “record high”.  In fact, the 6.2% July 2003 unemployment rate wasn’t uncommon at all.  Between January 1948 (when official data began) and July 2003, a full 208 out of 667 months (31%) saw an unemployment rate of 6.2% or higher.  Unfortunately for today’s workers, the 10% unemployment rate in December 2009 reflects much greater and more exceptional pain – a level reached in only 10 months before this recession (or in 1.4% of all months between 1948 and 2008).

In addition, the unemployment rate for African Americans was still over 11 percent in July, and the unemployment rate for Hispanics was 8.2 percent in July.

The current African American (16.2%) and Hispanic (12.9%) unemployment rates are far higher than the levels in July 2003.

It is time for President Bush and the Republicans to get to work for all Americans, not just the elite few.”

So, exactly whom have President Obama and the Democrats been working for? If President Bush and the Republicans actually were working for ‘just the elite few’ as Pelosi contends, it seems like it might not have been a bad strategy. At the very least, the prospects of finding a job were certainly much brighter.