If there is one thing on which almost all Americans agree it is that the performance of their economy has been disappointing: growth is too slow and joblessness is too high. A large proportion of the electorate is prone to blame the president for its disappointment. It is a wonder that, in these circumstances, Barack Obama still has a chance of winning. Nor is this state of affairs surprising. Early in February 2009, I opened a column by asking: “Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed?” My argument was that “doing too little is now far riskier than doing too much”. The president did indeed act, but not decisively enough.
如果有一件事幾乎所有美國人都沒有異議，那就是，美國經濟的表現令人失望。成長太慢，失業率太高。很大一部分選民傾向於認爲，現任總統應該爲此負責。令人驚奇的是，在這種情況下，巴拉克•歐巴馬(Barack Obama)仍有希望勝出。不過，這種狀況並不令人意外。早在2009年2月，我就寫過一篇專欄文章，開篇問了這樣一個問題：「作爲總統，巴拉克•歐巴馬是否已經搞砸了？」我當時的觀點是，「如今作爲太少比作爲太多冒險多了」。歐巴馬確實做了一些事，但不夠果斷。