Obama the Evil Genius?

In Unequal Democracy, Larry Bartels noted two interesting phenomena that, he says, partially account for Republican electoral success: first, voters are myopic in their assessment of economic performance, and tend to solely focus on how the economy fares during elections years, ignoring the performance in other years; and second, Republicans tend to preside over strong growth in election years, while Democrats preside over strong growth in off-years. Now, the flaws in Bartels’ study are pretty notable. First, and most obviously, it’s hard to discount the possibility of pure randomness when you can only consider 14 data sets (the number of elections Bartels surveys). Second, he provides no good explanation for how it might be that Democrats and Republicans systematically differ in the timing of economic growth. Bartels refers obliquely to the possibility that policy differences might explain it, but doesn’t even specify which policies he is thinking of.

I am reminded of all this by the conservative refrain (see, e.g., Robert Samuelson’s column) about how the stimulus package wasn’t really stimulating, but rather was a sop to liberal special interests. Many other commentators, not all of whom were hostile to the very notion of a stimulus, were concerned that the $787 billion would not be spent quickly enough.

What strikes me is that Obama and the Democrats, if they had read their Bartels, might have designed it this way. A stimulus that kicks in just in time for the midterms might well be preferable to one that kicks in during summer 2009, when nobody votes and which nobody remembers when it comes time to vote. And a recovery that begins next year will be at its strongest in 2012.

I don’t think Obama is an evil genius or that he values power for its own sake, so, no, I don’t think he planned it this way. And I think that the sooner the recovery starts, the better for his presidency. But the larger point is that the economy should be just as powerful a wind behind Obama’s back in 2012 as it was in 2008, which upsets Bartels’ theory and which no doubt upsets Mitt Romney.