Today on MSNBC's Morning Joe Show they had a guest from CNBC, the NBC Financial Network. It seems the CNBC team is always more upbeat about the economy and recovery than MSNBC who find political nonsense and entertainment trivia more news worthy.
This morning Jim Cramer, the Host of Mad Money on CNBC and certainly one of the more entertaining financial analysts you will ever hear was a fill in guest commentator on MSNBC. It was during an interview with Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm, an Obama admirer and apologist for the Administration on the Obama Stimulus program that Cramer got my attention.
You see Obama was scheduled to speak at the groundbreaking for a new plant in Michigan that is alleged to be a result of the Stimulus and the Governor was hosting him. To hear the Governor talk about Obama you would think she is a cheerleader for him like the Governor of Pennsylvania, Edward G. Rendell. I guess neither read the polls and know that only 40% of the people have a favorable view and over 60% say the Stimulus did nothing for them and want no more Stimulus if what we have got is the result.
But then neither is running for reelection and while Rendell also has a fading favorable rating, Granholm cannot run again and she will be history unless Obama hires her. After all, Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, has lost over 1.3 million jobs recently, and has over 1.8 million people receiving food assistance from the government. The GM and Chrysler bailouts by Obama have not been too good for the local economy.
At any rate while Granholm was droning on about the value of the Stimulus Cramer suddenly interrupted her and asked why she never talked about the successful companies in the US instead of just those who received money from Obama. It caught her cold. Cramer then got excited as only he can do and said the problem with the economy in America is that it is a political football and it should not be a political issue but an economic issue.
He asked her why she never talked about one of the greatest success stories in the world, the Ford Motor Company story, and the phenomenal job being done by the CEO Alan Mulally. Cramer said no one in the Obama Administration ever talks about successful companies unless they received government money and Ford survived without the government auto bailout and is now one of the strongest automakers in the world. Since they are headquartered in Michigan, he thought it was odd the Governor was talking about a company that would employ 400 people sometime in the future and never mentioned Ford who was now employing thousands of workers.
The Governor was speechless and tried to answer without mentioning Ford, a rather formidable task. It was clear Ford was not in the talking points the White House wanted mentioned but Cramer's point was clear. If politicians would talk about the successful American companies, especially the ones like Ford who are making it without a federal bailout, maybe people would have more confidence in the future. Right now Obama only talks about those receiving Stimulus money and since people do not believe the stimulus is working it only reinforces that the government doesn't know what to do about the economy.
If our politicians want to lead they can start by giving us a positive message, not the negative nitpicking we now get. We need to stop blaming people for what is wrong and start talking about those people who are doing things right. Hope is earned in America and the politicians in America seem to have forgotten the need for hope.
Let us all hope the politicians get the message and start giving us a reason to believe in the future, not look back in disgust. The people, not the politicians, have the knowledge, creativity and drive to get us out of the recession and economic downturn if the politicians would just shut up. If only political ads would be banned from TV there might be a way out of the morass we find ourselves in.
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