One of the many wonderful things they teach you in a Master’s program such as MSST is policy analysis. Part of that analysis is looking at a politics versus policy matrix. Whether a certain course of action is good policy versus good politics is largely orthogonal, so you really have four different boxes that an idea can fall into: good policy and good politics, good policy but bad politics, bad policy but good politics, and the box where you never want to end up, both bad policy and bad politics.
Of course, although you always want to end up in the good/good box, not everything is going to be that easy. A lot of times things are going to be both good and bad. I’d say, for example, that raising the federal gas tax is good policy (more money for road maintenance, better for the environment, less use of foreign oil) but bad politics (taxes!). The Cash for Clunkers and home buyers credit programs were bad policy (merely shifting existing demand instead of creating new demand, at a significant monetary cost) but good politics (free money!). It’s the give and take of policymaking.
What is pretty clear, however, is that you should never knowingly put yourself in that bad/bad box. And that is what the Obama administration has found itself doing lately. The deficit deal was bad policy (putting a drag on growth) and bad politics (record low approval ratings). It’s unforced errors like these that are putting his re-election chances in doubt. At the same time, the administration is fighting against good/good actions, such as going after fraud on Wall Street. Putting away criminals who helped create the household debt crisis would not only be good policy, as it would deter people from making the same mistakes in the future, but it’s also good politics: people usually like seeing criminals get frog-marched into jail. Stopping bad banks from illegally foreclosing on people would also be one of those good things. But so far, Obama is content to nibble around the edges.
I’m not entirely sure why. Yes, Obama doesn’t quite have the innate political instincts and skill that Bill Clinton has, but then again, this is a no-brainer. Obama may be relying on Wall Street to fund his re-election, but money in his campaign coffers isn’t going to buy a good economy.