Many claim that the 2012 presidential election will be the most important election in a generation, but doesn't everyone always say that about every election? Yes, but this time around it might actually be true.
The simple fact about politics not just in America, but in most countries is that the electorate gives the president and comparable executive figures far too much credit and blame for the current state of the economy. In most developed countries, central banks (the institutions that control much of the monetary policy that impacts the economy) are politically independent and legislatures have power of the purse thus, there is usually very little that a president can do to influence the economy.
Nonetheless, voters believe otherwise, and that has two very important consequences. First, voters' mistaken economic beliefs affect electoral outcomes. One of the best predictors of whether the incumbent president's party will lose the White House is whether voters perceive the economy to be improving or declining. Second, voters judge public policies partly by the state of the economy. If the economy is going downhill, voters will often blame the the incumbent president's policies, even if they have little effect upon the current economic situation.
For example, consider the ramifications of the Great Depression. Most Americans, then and now, credit FDR and the New Deal for the recovery from the Depression. This belief allowed the Democrats to dominate federal politics for decades and to implement policies that future Republicans have found very difficult to reverse.
In reality, most New Deal policies had little to do with the economy's recovery from the Depression. Yes, a few New Deal policies some of the financial reforms, the end of the gold standard promoted recovery, but most of these policies had little to do with short-term macroeconomic trends, and some policies primarily regarding labor unions, minimum wages and agriculture probably retarded the recovery. As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wrote, "It might be argued that the federally directed financial rehabilitation was the only major New Deal program that successfully promoted economic recovery." Nonetheless, voters came to believe that the New Deal was responsible for the recovery, and the Democrats profited as a result.
And it wasn't just the United States. In many developed countries, when the Depression struck, voters blamed the incumbent party for the downturn, booted the incumbents from office and credited the new government for the economic recovery. In Australia, voters replaced a Labor government with a right-of-center government. In Canada and Sweden, voters replaced right-of-center governments with left-of-center governments. In all of these countries, the party that was elected just before the economy recovered from the Depression dominated their country's politics for at least a decade, and the party that was in power at the start of the Depression saw its policies at least partly discredited in the eyes of voters.
While our current economic doldrums aren't nearly as severe as those of the Great Depression, this situations are politically analogous. Here in the United States, the recent health care and financial regulation laws are not the primary cause of today's high unemployment, and the economy will probably start to improve over the next five years regardless of who lives in the White House or what that person does while in office. But, if the Republicans win next year's federal elections and then go about repealing much of the Democrat's recent legislation, voters may well end up blaming the Democrats' policies for the high unemployment and crediting the Republicans for the recovery.
This possibility has important consequences for the GOP primaries. If the Republicans are actually able to pull off the trick, they could reap large benefits for at least a decade. But to do so, they actually have to win the presidency. Thus, the Republicans need to nominate the candidate who is most likely to win the general election, not the person who is most ideologically appealing to Republican primary voters. Given the candidates' respective performances in the previous debates, I would say that former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., is the person best suited to the task.
Last August, Raza Rasheed '12 recommended that the Republicans should nominate Romney on the grounds that he has the best chances in the general election ("Nominate Him Already!," May 27). Liberals like Rasheed may come to regret this very wise advice.
