TPM Reader PP is feeling a little curmudgeonly today (and that’s not a bad thing):
Is Romney taking credit for the auto recovery really anyone takes seriously? Besides getting tied up in irritation about what his position really was, the frank facts of history are that it doesn’t matter what his positions were/are/might have been, anymore that it mattered what I or you or most people thought at the time.
Obama was the only one of the two people running for president that was in a position to, and did make a decision regarding policy that affected the future of that industry. It turned out to work. He gets the credit, just like he would have taken the fall. Everyone else’s thoughts on this were just parlor talk, and meaningless, which means no credit is assigned.
I don’t get to take credit for the success of apple’s iPhone even though I thought it would be a good idea to have a phone like that. Its ridiculous and part of what makes this whole exercise of presidential campaigns annoying to watch, since Romney seems to be able to offer up that form of comment, and then were stuck arguing whether he deserves or doesn’t deserve credit. It’s not even an option in his case. He was an out of work rich guy. He didn’t do anything. It’s weird.
At best Romney’s comment should be understood as, I agreed with what President Obama did, but somehow we’re stuck in this bizarre story of who gets to take credit. Only one of the two actors in this was in a position to do anything, and it wasn’t the vacationing rich guy.
This is going to be a really long 5-6 months, isn’t it?
