Fever Dreaming.

A Moment of Clarity.



Words.

"We don’t need the president to start talking about jobs again. We need him to start doing something about jobs — something that will capture the attention of the American people and the media, something that will change the debate in a city that has lost its way.

There is no question that our circumstances qualify as extraordinary and demand a laserlike focus by the president on job creation. At the pace of job growth we’ve seen over the past three months, we will never, not ever, reach normal levels of employment in America again. We know now that only 58 percent of American adults are employed, the lowest number in nearly three decades. We know that, as of last month, 6.2 million Americans have been out of work for more than six months. Forty-six million Americans are on food stamps, a national record.

...Rather than merely acknowledging that the American people are with him, he must mobilize them; he must fight alongside them. And rather than demand that Congress write a jobs bill, a process certain to be bogged down by obstruction and lobbyists and corporate money, he should write his own — one that would actually, genuinely, do something big and meaningful for the economy.

...Consistent, tenacious persuasion is an extraordinarily powerful tool. The Republican Party understands this. Over the past several months, it has relentlessly repeated its false mantra that spending cuts create jobs. And the public, in response, increasingly believes this to be true. What then, is to stop the president, powered by a movement of dedicated and mobilized Americans, from making his own case for the economy? What is to stop him from convincing the American people that the things the economy requires are the things we ought to be fighting for? What is required other than will? Great leaders, when confronted by crisis, act.

Compromise is not a solution. Nor is it an effective counter-narrative. For the past two years, as psychology professor Drew Westen said in an opinion piece for the New York Times, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Those who elected him cannot afford his doing so any longer."

THE WASHINGTON POST: We need a jobs bill, Mr. President