Don Draper may have decided against a quickie last night, astounding the Mad Men voyeurs, but here is a little post for a Monday morning. It is based on this and a similar entry on the New Republic site which I cannot access in full and don't care to given its editor's comments of the past week.
But keep this in mind: the "Franklin Roosevelt" who we correctly honor was dragged into the New Deal by his "brain trust" and wise heads in Congress (Glass and Steagall for instance). As Krugman has pointed out, he had this budget balancing thing still in him until after 1938, when he made a big mess trying to do just that.
A presidency is full of fits and starts. The current one said they would make mistakes on their way to getting it right. That he has done so hardly justifies the hand wringing we are seeing.
3 comments:
That is correct Barth, fits and starts.
I still am amazed at the legislation that has been passed over the last 20 months.
It is like there have been a hundred 'victories' and these victories evaporate from MSM as if they never happened.
As watered down as some of the legislation has been, the achievements have been impressive.
One of the newest right-wing talking points has been that the President is simply checking off boxes on his list - as if actually trying to get act on one's to-do list was a bad thing.
But the irony is that the Neo-conned vacillate from Obama did NOTHING to he's done TOO MUCH. They can't even make up their minds on how to hate on the guy.
Good points both. I will concede an excessive use of the word "hate" on supposedly progressive, liberal sites, as applied to the prior president (though you will find no such expressions from me and, indeed, I have never referred to him on the web as anything other than President Bush (or, until 2005), "President' Bush.
The hatred for the current president; racially tinged to be sure (though the hated President Clinton, too) and the disrespect he has been shown, is shocking and, of course, I will wait in vain to hear a George Will or his ilk condemn the people who talk that way about the President of the United States.
The again, as our greatest president put it:
"They are unanimous in their hate for me蟻nd I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master."
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/us/fdr1936.html.
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