EDITORIAL: Make prosperity common goal, not a competition

The legendary coach once said, “It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.”

Wooden’s observation got trampled last week in his home state. President Obama visited Elkhart on Wednesday, seven years after his first visit to that northern Indiana city of 53,348 residents. In 2009, the jobless rate in Elkhart was nearly 20 percent, one of the highest in the U.S. at the peak of the nastiest recession since the 1930s. The recreational vehicle industry, that region’s economic bread and butter, was decimated.

Today, Elkhart’s unemployment rate is a scant 3.5 percent. Shipments of RVs manufactured in America are expected to top 381,000 this year, industry officials told the Indianapolis Star. By contract, RV sales in the U.S. plummeted from 390,500 in 2006 to 165,700 in 2009. Thus, builders in Elkhart are so busy, they can’t find enough workers.

The president returned to Elkhart last week to celebrate that recovery, praising the efforts of Elkhart County officials and residents. In his speech there, Obama cited steps taken by the federal government to revive hard-hit local economies, such as Elkhart’s, while also offering assistance to displaced workers and their families. Those actions included an $80-billion bailout of the automotive industry and aid to help families refinance homes.

Economists generally agreed that those measures by the Obama administration and Congress played a role in Elkhart’s recovery. However, they also pointed out that the comeback remains fragile because the federal stimulus efforts failed to better diversify Elkhart’s economy. In 2009, 70 percent of that town’s jobs were linked to the mercurial RV industry. Today, the RV trade accounts for 60 percent of Elkhart jobs, only a slight improvement. Another economic downturn could flatten sales of RVs, a luxury item, and hammer the town again.

The impact of the president’s policies on Elkhart is somewhat positive, yet mixed.

Not surprisingly, Gov. Mike Pence greeted Obama’s arrival in Elkhart with a statement denying the president any praise for that community’s comeback. Instead, the governor insisted Elkhart recovered “in spite of” Obama’s responses and the “higher taxes, mandates and increasing regulations from Washington, D.C.” Pence then enumerated tax cuts and a $2 billion budget surplus, Indiana’s high school graduation rate, business-friendly climate, and an early childhood education program.

While credit is being claimed, it should be noted that the bulk of tax cuts and surplus building began with Pence’s predecessor, former Gov. Mitch Daniels. Also, the early childhood education program is a small pilot effort that could have been expanded, had Pence not nixed Indiana’s quest for an $80-million funding grant.

The reality is that Elkhart has regained prosperity thanks to the efforts of its local leaders and workers, along with the federal economic stimulus funds to save the auto industry and assist affected families, and, yes, Indiana’s favorable business climate. As an ideologically strident Republican, Pence does not praise Obama, especially in the midst of the governor’s re-election campaign. Likewise, the president was clearly stating the case for office-seeking Democrats in his visit to Elkhart, a Republican-leaning town.

Elkhart and other American cities might experience far greater prosperity if the lockstep opposition to the rival political party gave way to open dialogue and compromise, and nobody claimed credit. The results, in Wooden’s words, could be “amazing.”