Sam Stein: Obama Hasn’t Been Great at ‘Taking Credit and Selling the Stuff that He Does’

STEIN: "It's a weird parallel that Indiana is being a stop for both these people. But what was interesting to me is that when you talk to people in Elkhart, Indiana about what the stimulus did, the funny thing is very few people actually know they were helped out by the stimulus. I went through the ledger of grants and loans and I would call the percipients and I would ask them, 'What did you do with the $50,000 or $100,000 that you got?' and they would say 'That wasn’t through the stimulus. That was through this company or that.' I think what it points to is that you can go and you can help companies whether it’s through negotiating deals with Carrier, passing legislation, but if you don’t sell it on the back end, you don’t reap the political benefits from it. I think what Trump is very good at and what Obama was not and has not been so great at is taking credit and selling the stuff that he does. Those people in Carrier will forever remember that Donald Trump went to their factory and saved about half of the jobs. You could quibble with details, but they will remember this. I don’t think people who got stimulus money have or will remember that they got that stimulus."