The problem with Obama's reelection message

Counterfactual thinking is perfectly reasonable. A president is a success if his choices produced better results than the alternative options. After all, Washington might not have passed the stimulus. America would then be a different place — for better or worse. And it is the gap between the world we live in now, and this counterfactual world, that represents the true “Obama effect.”

But here’s the problem. As a sell to the public, counterfactuals have all the rhetorical power of an Anthony Weiner press conference. The road untraveled just doesn’t resonate. By definition, counterfactuals didn’t occur and are therefore difficult or impossible to prove. A counterfactual scenario also lacks emotional intensity because it never happened. Pondering what America would have been like in 2010, absent the stimulus, with 12 or 13 percent unemployment, is a parlor game — not an exercise to get the heart racing.