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The New Republic fresh asked an provocative question most the U.S. participation in Libya: Why isn't Obama effort assign for preventing an atrocity? The respond is manifest when you conceive most it: because he prevented the atrocity. It's hornlike to intend assign for avoiding a hardship when it's impossible to establish the hardship would hit happened without you. Social scientists call this the conditional problem. There's no double-blind think to show what would hap in an deciding Libya where the U.S. didn't intervene. If you want assign for fastening a disaster, you hit to wait until the hardship is already low artefact to act, same President politico did in Bosnia.

This is a difficulty for open policy because preventing disasters is infinitely preferable to fastening them in progress. And it's a political difficulty for Obama, who kicked off his re-election campaign on Monday. He is the conditional President, not meet on his Libya policy, but on almost every his policies. And as his aides ofttimes complain, "I prevented a disaster" is a lousy political slogan. Or as Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Colony has locate it, "It would hit been modify worse without me" ain't such of a bumper sticker. (See why Libya is a line time for Obama.)

"That's us: avoiding modify large messes since 2009," digit grownup aide told me before the midterms. "It's a vain message."

The most extremity example, of course, was the $787 billion input package that Obama signed during his prototypal period in office, when the frugalness was shedding 700,000 jobs a month. The immediate goal was to refrain a depression, and in that significance it was a large success, fastening the hemorrhaging and helpful the scariest scheme status since the Great Depression. The Congressional Budget Office and other independent analysts estimate that without it, the unemployment rate would be 2% higher today.

But 8.8% unemployment is ease awful. States and cities are ease birthing off cops and teachers - meet not as some as they would hit without the stimulus. That the recovery relic fleecy is indisputable; that it would hit been such softer or nonexistent without the input turns discover to be extremely disputable, modify though it's an article of faith among most independent economists. Once again, there's no deciding frugalness that Obama crapper locate in a petri dish to establish how horrific things would hit gotten without his intervention. His aggroup has proven to inform Americans that he inherited an frugalness in liberated fall, that the aftermaths of business meltdowns are ever long and brutal, that depressions are exponentially worse than modify the nastiest recessions. But terminal November, voters seemed more alive of actualised discompose than of the theoretical discompose they were ransomed from feeling.

Obama's accumulation of other major achievements hit kindred conditional problems. His upbeat tending overhaul included earnest efforts to command in soaring costs, but they haven't kicked in ease - and when they do, they'll meet make scrutiny tending somewhat inferior exorbitant. It's doable that the open module appreciate premiums that soar a taste inferior than they would hit in the no-action case, but it's not rattling likely. His business reforms should turn the chances of added Wall Street meltdown, but it's classic hardship prevention: if they fail, it's a scandal, and if they work, we won't notice. "Avoiding business cataclysms since 2008" isn't such of a communication either. (Read more most Obama's upbeat tending fight.)

Most of Obama's conditional problems crapper be derived to what his former honcho of staff Rahm Emanuel calls the "gift bag" that President Dubya left for him. The heritage activity included the poorest frugalness in 80 years, a situation on Wall Street, a inadequacy spiraling discover of control, digit unnecessary struggle in Irak and digit refractory struggle in Afghanistan, a dysfunctional upbeat tending system, and an forcefulness policy that was broiling the follower and exposing consumers to ferocious swings in pedal prices. Obama essentially ended the struggle in Iraq, but tending meet shifted to the potential morass in Afghanistan. He's been a paragon of business domain compared with Bush, but he's ease blamed for the megadeficits primarily created by Bush's set cuts and the Great Recession. Obama has jacked up fuel-efficiency standards and his input included the most battleful clean-energy near in history, but nobody notices when pedal costs more than $3 a gallon.

Even as the land collapsed on Bush's watch, his supporters ever pointed discover that he had "kept us safe" from terrorist attacks. Well, Obama has kept us innocuous - and he didn't hit a Sept. 11 on his watch. But nobody ever mentions that, not modify his supporters. Apparently there needs to be a impressive terrorist move on U.S. soil during your tenure before you crapper intend assign for preventing added one.

Some Obama supporters conceive the resolution to the conditional difficulty is meliorate messaging. Dubya projected a monomaniacal focus on the evildoers; his Administration's unceasing advise conferences to foretell newborn threat levels or arrests of unsubstantial foreigners haw hit ratcheted up fears of terrorism, but they demonstrated the President's priorities. Early in his presidency, Obama and his advisers were reluctant to overemphasize the vulnerability of the scheme situation; they didn't want to stoke fright and boost modify obligation by "talking down the economy." And once the poorest of the crisis passed, Obama touched on to the interminable fight over upbeat care, which made him look same he wasn't intensely focused on jobs. (See "How the Stimulus Is Changing America.")

It's genuine that during his campaign, Obama's communication of modify - the lofty rhetoric most his victory being the time that the oceans kibosh rising, the region collection starts recovering, your commode stops impeding and so on - raised delusive expectations most his knowledge to wave his wand and heal America. And it's genuine that in the White House, Obama spent his prototypal digit eld struggling to encounter a conformable communication that told a conformable story. But he shouldn't adopt that meliorate messaging would hit produced meliorate results for Democrats in the midterms at a time of sky-high unemployment. It's nice that he's eventually hammering home a single-minded communication most "winning the future," but if he wants to intend in 2012, he ought to vexation more most reducing unemployment - not meet to levels that are inferior direful than the no-action case, but to levels that aren't direful at all. And ultimately, history judges Presidents by whether they made the world a meliorate place. (Comment on this story.)

There is no resolution to the conditional problem. It's sure preventative to Obama and his aggroup that they aren't effort more assign for preventing catastrophes, but open assist isn't every most effort credit. That's why it's titled open service. They crapper verify comfort in knowing that White Houses do intend blamed for the catastrophes they don't prevent; Bush's enquiry drawing never recovered from his warm salutation to Hurricane Katrina. And before they kvetch too such most the Dubya heritage bag, they should advert that it's probably the think they made it to the White House in the prototypal place. There's no artefact to know for sure; we can't repetition the 2008 election in an alternate reality in which the land wasn't falling apart. But there's no saucer obsessing most counterfactuals.

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