Scorecard

After two years of this administration, the scorecard isn't all that good.  Not everything is bad but enough things are that we see the polls reflect the below average performance.

Of course there are two things to consider.

If you disagree with the goals in a specific area you are unlikely to view results favorably.  There are however certain goals which are generally agreed to by all.

One of these is to have a healthy economy and to some extent it is.  Of course it isn't the best economy ever, its just not bad.  Unemployment is low but the quality of jobs and income growth suffers from what is our new economic reality which is eliminating high paying low skill work. This is significant because many of the people who were unhappy two years ago about their job prospects are in the exact same situation and without some new industrial undertaking it is unlikely to change.  Those with skills are in demand and so we see effectively a continuation of the situation since the last recession.  The danger is that if we have another recession, our fallback safety nets are weaker now because of our deficits.

It should be noted that the last two years saw an increase in the deficit as tax breaks lost revenue which was not made up by increased economic activity.  The administration has adopted supply side theories which try to increase demand by reducing the supply cost (simplistically).  However, while this works academically, it requires that demand have no ceiling.  It also requires that reductions in the cost of production get passed along.  We know that much of the tax break money was simply passed along to stockholders with very little of it being used to improve production.  The reason for this is simple, capital has been very inexpensive since the financial crisis so worthwhile projects were already funded.

Reduced Government has probably been one of the more successful initiatives of the Administration as a fair number of regulations have been removed.  You may not agree with the aim, but it was something they were able to do fairly successfully.  It impacts other areas Americans care about but it was something they achieved to a large extent.

Similarly they have been able to appoint some conservative justices to both the Supreme Court and lower courts.  You may not agree with this aim or the nominees but they did manage to appoint them.
 What impact they will have will play out over the next few decades no matter how the next election goes.

(to be continued)