They’re worried that the nation expects him to heal the economy right away but they don’t see an economic upturn in the near future. What about his economic plan? Wasn’t that supposed to fix the economy? He made the promises and now he’ll have to deliver. Too bad he packaged himself as a new kind of politician because people actually believed that he would do what he promised he’d do. Suckers!
President-elect Barack Obama and his inner circle fear that some voters expect him to turn around the economy, wind down the war in Iraq and, perhaps, cure cancer — all by the Fourth of July.
They know they must manage and lower those expectations, CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports.
A top economic advisor to Obama had a glum warning for the rest of us Thursday morning: Neither the job market nor the stock market will be turning around any time soon.
“This might be a long haul,” said Robert Reich, who was President Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor. “2009 is going to be a very hard year. Some economists say we won’t be out of this for two years, others are saying it may be three, or four, maybe five years.”
BTW, the Obama team sees the economic downturn as an “opportunity” to try things that they normally couldn’t do. So for them this is the time to experiment. Maybe it’s a good thing for them to lower expectation if they plan to tank the economy with their experiments.
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