Looking at Bush and Obama as Pitchers

When a relief pitcher comes into a ballgame, his team behind 4-2, with runners on second and third, those two extra runs the opponents have, plus those two runners, if they score, belong to the starting pitcher.   If the team doesn't catch up and go ahead, the loss goes to the starting pitcher.  He can't get a win out of this game.

BUT, if the team catches up and goes ahead, his record isn't affected by the game.  The win or (if the lead changes again) the loss goes to the relief pitcher.  [That's the overview, you can get all the details at How Baseball Works.]

There are obvious differences between pitchers and presidents.  While there are two main political parties, there is only one team and we don't start a new game every election.  And baseball uses statistics - numbers based on the facts of what actually happened - while politics uses spin - whatever each party can get the voters to believe based on imagination and creativity, with facts appearing occasionally and usually out of context, and ability to use media to get the message out.

What if politics were captured with stats more like baseball?

Instead of runs, we could take national debt.  Since the national debt is so high, it is almost impossible for presidents to eliminate it.  And given that fiscal policy is used as a tool to impact the economy in different ways, eliminating might not even be a good idea.  Even in economic crisis like today, economists like Paul Krugman, who makes a lot of sense to me, believe that right now the government needs to spend to increase jobs MORE THAN it needs to reduce the national deficit.

So, instead of marking when the national debt becomes a surplus before a president gets a win, let's simply count whether a president gets the surplus down lower than it was when he took office.  But in doing that, we also have to remember the baserunner rule.  Whatever baserunners the last pitcher left get counted to that previous pitcher.

Using real numbers shows  the all Democratic presidents since Truman left office as winners and the Republican presidents all left office as losers.

Here's a Congressional Budgeting Office Chart of the National Debt Statistics I found on Wikipedia:

U.S. president	Party	Term years	Start debt/GDP	End debt/GDP	Increase debt ($T)	Increase debt/GDP (in percentage points)	House Control (with # if split during term)	Senate Control (with # if split during term)
Roosevelt/Truman	D	1945–1949	117.5%	93.1%	-0.01	-24.4%	79th D, 80th R	79th D, 80th R
Harry Truman	D	1949–1953	93.1%	71.4%	0.01	-21.7%	D	D
Dwight Eisenhower	R	1953–1957	71.4%	60.4%	0.01	-11.0%	83rd R, 84th D	83rd R, 84th D
Dwight Eisenhower	R	1957–1961	60.4%	55.2%	0.02	-5.2%	D	D
Kennedy/Johnson	D	1961–1965	55.2%	46.9%	0.03	-8.3%	D	D
Lyndon Johnson	D	1965–1969	46.9%	38.6%	0.04	-8.3%	D	D
Richard Nixon	R	1969–1973	38.6%	35.6%	0.10	-3.0%	D	D
Nixon/Ford	R	1973–1977	35.6%	35.8%	0.24	+0.2%	D	D
Jimmy Carter	D	1977–1981	35.8%	32.5%	0.29	-3.3%	D	D
Ronald Reagan	R	1981–1985	32.5%	43.8%	0.82	+11.3%	D	R
Ronald Reagan	R	1985–1989	43.8%	53.1%	1.05	+9.3%	D	99th R, 100th D
George H. W. Bush	R	1989–1993	53.1%	66.1%	1.48	+13.0%	D	D
Bill Clinton	D	1993–1997	66.1%	65.4%	1.02	-0.7%	103rd D, 104th R	103rd D, 104th R
Bill Clinton	D	1997–2001	65.4%	56.4%	0.40	-9.0%	R	R
George W. Bush	R	2001–2005	56.4%	63.5%	2.14	+7.1%	R	107th Split, 108 R
George W. Bush	R	2005–2009	63.5%	84.2%	3.97	+20.7%	109th R, 110th D	109th R, 110th D
Barack Obama	D	2009–	84.2%	93.2% (2010)	1.65 (2010)	+9.0% (2010)	111th D, 112th R	D

(Source: CBO Historical Budget Page and Whitehouse FY 2012 Budget - Table 7.1 Federal Debt at the End of Year PDF, Excel,Senate.gov)

The only Democrat on the list who increased the national debt is Obama.  But he's only been in office 2 years and 6 months, and more important, we have to count all the runners that Bush left on base - particularly the costs Obama needed to spend to deal with two wars,  the financial crisis, and tax cuts.

So, when the Republicans say things like,  "Stop Blaming Bush"  the Democrats need to stand firm and tell their story better.  "Bush left these guys on base, they go to him, not me,  that's where all this deficit comes from."  And in this case, it appears they don't have to even work too hard.  The voters are already there according to a July poll.

 A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 54% of Likely Voters say the nation’s current economic problems are due to the recession that began under the Bush administration.  Thirty-nine percent (39%) blame the policies of President Obama. (To see survey question wording, click here .)

OK Dems.  The facts are on your side.  The voters are even on your side on this one.  But the Republicans are telling and selling their stories a whole lot better than you are.  It's time to stop being nice guys.  While I believe that it's possible to turn an individual bully around under the right conditions, I don't think it's possible to turn a mob.

So, dammit, stop treating the brown-shirt* Republicans as though you can reason with them.  There is no reasoning with those Republicans with simplistic ideological beliefs about how the world works.  They're going to keep throwing punches (and grenades) until the Democrats fight back and it hurts the thugs* more to continue than to stop.

And with the voters, the Democrats need to take the facts, use them to tell the compelling stories of how  Obama has made health care possible for millions more people;  how Obama has done what Bush only talked about -  found and killed Bin Laden.   These are two huge home runs (pitchers get to bat too).  And that the main reason he can't fix the economy is the legislative violence of the Tea Party Republicans in the House.

I've only taken one metric - the one the Republicans are making the most noise about - but we can get them on a whole host of issues where the Democrats have made the world a better place for the average person and the Republicans have only made the world better for the rich.

When a new pitcher comes into a baseball game with bases loaded and ten runs behind, those ten runs and three baserunners are credited to the starting pitcher.  Unless the team gets enough runs to overcome the deficit, the loss goes to the starting pitcher.  The relief pitcher can’t ‘lose’ the game unless the team catches up and then goes behind again. 

GW Bush was president for eight innings/years, leaving relief president Obama many runs behind (a huge deficit), and with the bases loaded (Iraq, Afghanistan, the mortgage crisis, tax cuts.)  Although Obama has only been on the mound for two and a half innings, and most, if not all the runs he’s let in were the result of the baserunners he inherited, Republicans are insisting that whatever trouble the economy is in, should now be blamed on Obama.   Because in politics they use spin, not stats.

The Democrats have a compelling story.  It uses the language coach potato American males understand -sports.  It's way past time for the Dems to tell it like it really is.  No apologies, no prisoners, until the Republicans are ready to act like civilized people once more.

*I've used the words 'brown-shirts' and 'thugs' to label the more extreme Republicans in the House and their supporters.  I try not to call people names in this blog and I don't mean those terms as epithets.  I think they are accurate descriptions of people working from a black/white ideology which pushes either/or solutions and does not recognize any grey, any ambiguity, any subtlety.  They demand what they want and are not concerned about collateral damage.  We can just look at the damage they've cause with the FAA now.  In the name of cutting the deficit, they're costing the government tens of millions per day (possibly a billion by September if this continues). More than the programs they want to cut from FAA. Thugs are people who use physical or structural violence to get what they want without regard to the damage they cause.  [It turns out they have found a way around this and the partial FAA shut down is over as I post this.]

The German brownshirts came to power just this way.  Manipulating the German democracy and taking advantage of the traditional politicians who were trying to be reasonable with an unreasonable opposition.  We're moving closer to that every day.