Paul Krugman: It’s the Economy Stupor

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, August 17, 2008

By rights, John McCain should be getting hammered on economics.

After all, Mr. McCain proposes continuing the policies of a president who’s had a truly dismal economic record — job growth under the current administration has been the slowest in 60 years, even slower than job growth under the first President Bush. And the public blames the White House, giving Mr. Bush spectacularly low ratings on his handling of the economy.

Meanwhile, The Times reports that, according to associates, Mr. McCain still “dials up” Phil Gramm, the former senator who resigned as co-chairman of the campaign after calling America a “nation of whiners” and dismissing the country’s economic woes as nothing more than a “mental recession.” And Mr. Gramm is still considered a top pick for Treasury secretary.

So Mr. McCain would seem to offer a target a mile wide: a die-hard supporter of failed economic policies who takes his advice from people completely out of touch with the lives of working Americans.

But while polls continue to show that the public, by a large margin, trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy, recent polling shows that Barack Obama has at best a small edge over Mr. McCain on the issue — four points in a recent Time magazine poll, and he is one point behind according to Rasmussen Reports, which does automated polling. And Mr. Obama’s failure to achieve a decisive edge on economic policy is central to his failure to open up a big lead in overall polling.

Why isn’t the Obama campaign getting more traction on economic issues?

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