Kristen Soltis: Make Sure Obama’s New Housing Plan is Not a Bailout

If there’s one thing that American voters are uninterested in, it is more bailouts. Unfortunately for President Obama, there’s a serious chance that’s how many voters will view the Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP.

President Obama is making a wise move focusing in on pocketbook issues and on choosing an initiative he can say is aimed at the middle class, particularly one that has an impact on so many key swing states.

Despite this upside, there are two critical risks HARP presents. The first is in expanding President Obama’s “credibility gap.”

When Obama claims to have the answer to a problem, voters are increasingly skeptical that he does. The disconnect began around the stimulus and TARP. Two-thirds of voters told Pew in 2010 that the stimulus did not help the jobs situation, and 49 percent said that loans to troubled banks also did not help.

If HARP costs large sums of taxpayer money and fails to turn the housing market around quickly, voters may feel that yet again Obama overpromised, overspent and underdelivered.

Voters will judge this policy — and President Obama — far more on the results than on the rhetoric. But in the meantime, his biggest challenge will be convincing people HARP shouldn’t be in the same category as TARP.

(Cross-posted, with permission of the author — from The New York Times)