Obama’s Afraid to Use the S-Word

The joke's on you, America

No, not the four letter variety. The other s-word – stimulus! But then again, it may as well be a four letter word.

William McGurn noticed that Barack Obama hasn’t held a press conference since July. The man who used to love the cameras is now afraid to face the press. Is he afraid someone will bring up the dreaded s-word?

The House approved its $154 billion second stimulus package in its last vote of 2009, little more than a week after a policy address Mr. Obama delivered at the Brookings Institution. In that Dec. 8 speech, he reviewed the progress of the earlier stimulus—the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009—and used the occasion to call for additional congressional spending. The headlines rightly described what he was proposing as a “second stimulus.”

Yet perhaps the most intriguing part of that speech is what the president did not say.

Not once did he use the word “stimulus.” If you search under “speeches and remarks” on the White House Web site, it will tell you that the last time the president used the word “stimulus” in public remarks was in an offhand reference in a speech about clean energy in October. A month before that he used the term once in a speech that was about the stimulus.

The president’s increasing shyness about the S-word does not appear to be a coincidence. Here’s a snippet from a December exchange between White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and one reporter:

Reporter: “[W]hy are we talking about a second stimulus now?”

Mr. Gibbs: “Well, again, you haven’t heard the President talk about a second stimulus. You heard the President discuss targeted ideas that he believes and the economic team believe will have a positive impact on private sector hiring, and creating an environment that will allow the private sector to make those hiring decisions positively.”

Reporter: “So it’s not a stimulus?”

Mr. Gibbs: “The President hasn’t called it that and I don’t believe it is.”

Of course, Gibbs changed the terminology, and went on to describe the spending as “targeted ideas.” Shortly thereafter, Christina Romer did the same. It’s like they received a memo saying “Never say the s-word again, or you’ll find yourself under my bus!”

Perhaps the reluctance to call the new package a second stimulus has something to do with the extravagant promises Mr. Obama made to sell the first. Less than a month into Mr. Obama’s presidency, the first stimulus was pushed through partly on the promise that doing so would keep unemployment south of 8%. With Friday’s jobs numbers, the same people who sold us that one now have to explain why keeping unemployment at 10% is progress.

Is it any wonder Obama’s leery of using the s-word? He’s afraid the American people might catch on to what he’s up to. Unfortunately for him, it appears they already have.