The Politics Of Getting Credit

by Stuart Shapiro

The economy is recovering.  While the recovery is fragile (and weak) enough that a shock like a European meltdown or a trip off of the fiscal cliff could derail it, economic conditions are likely to improve over the next year.  Whether this is because of Obama Administration policies or the natural business cycle, whoever wins on Tuesday is going to get a fair amount of credit as the economy improves in 2013.  David Leonhardt explains the consequences:

Every presidential election affects the country’s future, and it’s silly to claim that this election is more significant than any other. Yet the prospect that the president who takes office in January will have the economic winds at his back — that he can claim his party is the solution and the opposition was the problem — is one of three main factors heightening the importance of the 2012 election.

And that will have implications for all of the other policies advocated by the winner of the election.  It is much easier to get what you want when you can claim that you fixed the economy.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.