Tim Miller

You were in the White House as the kind of recovery, as political director, as the kind of recovery

From the recession, the Great Recession was was starting, but maybe going a little slower than people wanted.

How did you guys think about that?

It seems like their decision last night was like this normal presidential political decision.

People are upset about the economy.

What are we going to do?

We're going to announce this dividend and complain by their answer.

I don't think that worked.

How do those conversations work inside the White House?

Not only did it not work, but he actually has the lessons of the Biden administration when they were telling folks that inflation was a transitory thing, wouldn't have long-term impact.

In a way, he was looking at voters and, again, doing that thing that you're not supposed to do.

I've never been one of those people who believe that the customer is always right, but I do believe that the customer needs to be heard, right?

In the first Obama term, we're coming off of the collapse of the banks, the collapse of the housing market, the need to bail out the auto industry, which was not politically popular at all at the time.

We're looking at all that.

And then you have this exceedingly slow recovery.

And by the time we get into President Obama's reelect against Mitt Romney in 2011, 2012,

we have unemployment that's near double digits, which is an astounding thing to have to face in a re-election, a historic thing that usually does not go the way of the incumbent.

During that entire cycle, President Obama was disciplined enough to understand that he had to sit in the economic pain that people were experiencing, that he had to be seen to hear it, to feel it, and to be proximate to their experiences and then to reflect it back to them.

I know that we have this challenge.

I understand what's happening downstream.