Obama's use of fear card may backfire

collegemom16 · 03-09-2009, 01:58 AM

Change you can believe in?

Quote:

Obama's use of fear card may backfire
Thu Feb 12, 2009 1:41am EST

By Tabassum Zakaria - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama may think words like "catastrophe," "crisis" and "disaster" help sell his economic rescue plans, but U.S. history has shown that scare tactics can backfire.

Having campaigned on a promise of hope and run against what he called President George W. Bush's "politics of fear," Obama may be taking a big political risk -- for himself and his policies -- by resorting to the same tactic.

In pressing Congress and the public to back expensive proposals, Obama has used the well-worn political rhetoric of fear to paint dire scenarios, hoping to persuade skeptics of the need for quick action. It may work, and it may not.

"That end-of-the-world type of rhetoric is not good for business confidence," said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute.

Critics accused Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of scaring the public to push through programs that trod on civil liberties in the name of national security.

Fear of another September 11, 2001, attack was used by Bush and his administration to justify the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban, the Iraq war over weapons of mass destruction, and the creation of the Guantanamo Bay prison to hold hundreds of terrorism suspects without trial.

Obama took office on January 20 facing a different crisis: an economic meltdown that sank venerable financial firms, slashed hundreds of thousands of jobs a month and prompted banks to clamp down on lending, a key engine for economic growth.

To lift the economy out of crisis, Obama introduced an economic stimulus package and crafted a new bank rescue plan.

"TURN A CRISIS INTO A CATASTROPHE"

"Doing a little or nothing at all will result in even greater deficits, even greater job loss, even greater loss of income, and even greater loss of confidence," Obama said this week. "Those are deficits that could turn a crisis into a catastrophe."

Last week he wrote in The Washington Post: "Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."

Using language to play on public fears could scare people into supporting Obama. It could also push them in the opposite direction.

"It cuts both ways. It's a way of putting pressure on Congress to act, but if people are really fearful, they're not going to spend money and that lengthens the recession," Darrell West, director of governance studies at The Brookings Institution said. "It's a double-edged sword."

Obama told ABC's "Nightline" he was aware of the tightrope. "I'm constantly trying to thread the needle between sounding alarmist, but also letting the American people know the circumstances that we're in," he said...

The pessimistic economic news battering the United States has created widespread anxiety but -- even if Obama is riding high on a wave of popularity -- not everyone believes that the new president has come up with the right response.

The stock market found little comfort in Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's financial plan on Tuesday, posting steep declines despite his warning of "a dangerous dynamic" that must be stopped.

"Our national leaders are promoting fear rather than more confidence that we will work our way through this eventually, no matter how tough the challenges are, and that fear can actually sometimes make things worse," Republican Senator Jeff Sessions said.

Playing with fear is "high stakes poker" because while the public is very concerned about the economy, only about 20 percent are certain the economic stimulus proposals will work, said Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute.

"Right now people really are nervous and very scared, but they are also not very confident about federal government capability," she said.

Obama's use of fear card may backfire | Reuters

mkm56 · 03-09-2009, 09:06 AM

Quote:

"Right now people really are nervous and very scared, but they are also not very confident about federal government capability," she said.

That sums up my feelings perfectly.

blankmind · 03-09-2009, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Using language to play on public fears could scare people into supporting Obama. It could also push them in the opposite direction.

This is how I feel. I'll admit that I bought into the first panic in Oct, but I'm becoming more and more concerned about of all these huge decisions being made in panic mode.

I find that the more Obama threatens the end of the world as we know it, the more time I want to be able to read the fine print.

marite · 03-09-2009, 10:07 AM

Fear-mongering? Read Bloomberg:

Quote:

Depression Dynamic Ensues as Markets Revisit 1930s (Update1)
The U.S. economy’s vital signs may not confirm a diagnosis of depression. The symptoms increasingly point to one.

As in the Great Depression, world trade is collapsing, wealth is evaporating and the banking system is broken. Deflation is a growing threat as companies slash production, pay and prices. And leaders worldwide are having difficulty making headway in halting the self-perpetuating decline.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...eQQ&refer=home

garland · 03-09-2009, 10:14 AM

I don't see Obama's approach as fear-mongering. I see it as promulgating a grown up view:

This is the reality. Now let's roll up our sleeves and deal with it.

We had a long period of denial that we were in a recession last year, which allowed destructive practices to continue, and no effort to fix things to begin. For me, looking at the reality means treating the citizenry as adults who don't need sugar coating or fairy tales. I find it refreshing.

crescent22 · 03-09-2009, 08:35 PM

If he can't be blamed for it, it's a catastrophe.
If he might be responsible in the future, he's optimistic.

It's up to Americans not to be stupid and not to buy this rhetorical BS. Hold Obama up to the standards you elected him to - Don't let him say "We have to do this now" with the stimulus bill while he dawdles and waits 6 weeks in a crisis to nominate 3 of Geithner's lieutenants at Treasury.

NJres · 03-09-2009, 11:11 PM

Geithner has a new plan which will assign color coded alerts to the financial markets. We are currently in code red which means imminent danger of a total financial meltdown.

I will tell you when to get really worried - when they use the modifier "ever" instead of "since the Great Depression" every time they say "The gravest financial crisis"

What ever happened to, "We have nothing to fear.......... except fear itself"

??

collegemom16 · 03-09-2009, 11:19 PM

Here is what happened,
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." Rahm Emanuel