On Friday, MSNBC replaced Countdown and The Rachel Maddow Show with a 2-hour special on Obama's encounter with the GOP House caucus at their Baltimore retreat, with Kieth and Rachel being joined by Chris Matthews as well. The consensus of all three was that Obama mopped the floor with the House Republicans. But as I watched I had more than a nagging feeling that they were somewhat missing the point--even as Rachel kept reminding folks that Obama might well be missing the point. Although not addressing them specifically, Paul Krugman brought things down to Earth when he wrote:
Look, Obama is a terrific speaker and a very smart guy. He really showed up the Republicans in the now-famous give-and-take. But we knew that. What's now in question isn't his ability to talk, it's his ability to lead.
The problem is not just "leadership skills"--though those are problematic enough. It's having even the vaguest notion of what our goals and direction need to be. In the same blog post, Krugman points out:
It's all very well to say "we're going to focus on job creation". But what does that mean? At this point, no major economic programs have any chance of getting passed. Think of it this way: a year ago the question was whether the stimulus would be $700 billion or $1.2 trillion, now we're talking about $30 billion jobs tax credits.
As conservative economics collapses disastrously under the weight of its many, many lies, it is only natural that the liars fall-back position is to take aim at the hope of actually cleaning up their mess. And hence the sudden rise of New Deal denialism. It's not as if this comes out of nowhere. It comes out of the same sorts of folks who denied the New Deal as it was succeeding right before their very eyes. And it comes out of the right-wing think tank complex. And it gets spouted by George Will on ABC This Week. And it's a load of bull. Video of Will on the flip. Pride of place to this simple diagram (click to enlarge), which shows the truth: the New Deal was working just fine, until FDR, with a premature sense of relief, and a lingering belief in the old economics, decided it was time to go back to balanced budgets, thus precipitating the recession of 1937/38. It was, in effect, a text-book science experiment: turn the New Deal stimulus policies on, economic goes up, turn them off, economy goes down. But Will--and many others--are trying to pretend the exact opposite, that FDR's policies remained constant, and proved disasterous in 1938:
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