Taste the Lefty's Lash: Krugman v. Obama
By Brian Lambert
What can you say about the carping that Obama has been on TV "too much?" 60 Minutes, Jay Leno, ESPN, a prime-time press conference, Bob Schieffer, an online town hall, and his Afghanistan policy all in one week. A guest spot on The Simpsons can't be far off.
But to complain, amid a global economic catastrophe that could--with civil unrest and the fall of a few strategically sensitive governments--actually be worse than The Great Depression, that we're seeing too much of the guy whom the entire planet is looking to to get us out of this mess is some kind of fatally arrested development. Real juvenile ADHD in pundit mufti stuff.
As has been pointed out ever since CNN (now third in cable news) went 24/7 almost thirty years ago, it is a bitch feeding the beast round the clock. You gotta have something to hold the eyeballs, and if you aren't lucky enough to have OJ or Elian Gonzalez or Monica Lewinsky fall into your lap, you have to stoke the firebox with . . . with . . . complaining about too much TV time for The Communicator in Chief.
Really, there are moments when I think we don't deserve to survive, that maybe it'd be good for us to get slapped back into some kind of state of feudal agrarian Romania. You know, just so we'd grow up.
Anyway, I want to get in on one damned good scrap getting heavy play. This is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman versus Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, at minimum, but really Barack Obama, whom he is bombarding for being much too deferential to the accepted wisdom of Wall Street than is prudent in the current situation.
As a guy who really should carry a "50-percent-off conversion chart, $10 now $5" like the one I once saw in a shoe store at Southdale (swear to God), I'm not selling you the idea that I really know who is right in this scuffle. But I do very much appreciate that it is a scuffle worth having publicly. The inveterate liberal in me says that the economic pendulum of the USA has swung much too far toward "financialization" of the economy (the financial sector--i.e. gambling and trading--accounted for 41percent of the total corporate domestic profits last year, triple what it was twenty-five years ago) and needs the kind of transparency, purging, and restructuring that Krugman is talking about.
On the other hand, Obama and Geithner (of Goldman Sachs) have no choice but to play a more patient political game, partly out of fear of what damage pissed-off international financiers and an intensely nervous market can do if they see their way of life sliced like so much kobe beef.
Hell, if nothing else, the contrast with what we have just escaped should be reassuring. Every time George W. Bush showed up on TV, my jaw slackened and my chin dropped to my chest. It was a reaction to the combination of a picture of such visible, shameless ignorance and near complete lack of logic. What do you argue when almost nothing makes sense? I was always happier when Bush was not on TV. The sight (and inevitable sound) of him frightened me almost as much as it depressed me. "This guy is going to be the death of all of us," I'd think. I just never thought he'd make such an epic botch of everything he'd torch even his own Skull and Bones buddies.
Likewise, with Bush prattling on like some unprepared C- student reading his cue cards upside down, there was never any fear that some actual thinker over on the right wing would ever become a serious policy counterweight. I mean, who would that have been? Sean Hannity? This, after all, is the party that introduced its alternative budget last week--amid all that all-Obama-all-the-time stuff. Do you remember the Republican budget? The one with no numbers? Larry, Curly, Moe, Boehner, and Cantor aren't exactly Nobel candidates.
With Krugman, though, Obama--who is hardly defenseless in the intellect department--has no choice but to stay on top of his game. Lefties love Krugman. The guy's got crede for being right about the big stuff for a long time. He's bona fide. We like that. So cannon blasts from someone like Krugman will inevitably shine constant light on every step of this "recovery" gambit Geithner is playing. Every one of his columns and blog posts stirs precisely the kind of informed, progressive debate every president should not only face but be forced to respond to. (Krugman, of course, will start feeling a backlash of his own very soon from those who think he's doing Obama disservice . . . which is exactly the opposite of what he's doing.)
Other economists and economic thinkers should be added to the mix. Among them would be Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, whose piece, "The Quiet Coup," in the latest (May) Atlantic is a very compelling read.
Basically, Johnson asserts that every economic meltdown the IMF has ever dealt with has archetypal storylines, and ours here in the United States isn't really all that different than Argentina or Indonesia or '90s Russia with its oligarchs . . . with the exception that since the dollar is the world currency, we can "pay" our bills by printing our own money.
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It took me a while to get beyond whining that Krugman is not part of Obama's economic team. But finally, finally, I understood (and now better understand after reading this piece) that Krugman is exactly where he needs to be. An outsider with enormous visibility and credibility. He is the economy's Eye of Sauron, writ large, sans evil.
Saturday (in his blog), Krugman said this:
Clearly he understands he may be an endangered specie. Until then, you go, Paul!
LAMBERT: I'd like to see Obama consent to a live interview with Krugman.
Posted by: barbara on March 30, 2009 at 10:51 AM
Brian, you were promoting a similar viewpoint a couple of weeks ago and I wrote that he already has a lasting legacy: the SCHIP and increased stem cell research. Things I certainly care about. I had written a two paragraph summary of Elizabeth Drew's article on Obama called the First 30 Days where point by point she defends almost every move Obama has taken. It got lost, (I am certainly no master of the computer age).
So having to read again The New York Review of Books she first writes "On January 22...he issued four executive orders criticizing torture and lengthy detention without trial, initiated closing Guantanamo and other secret prisons, ened the policy of extraordinary rendition." On January 23 he promoted new diplomacy at the State Department especially noted envoys like George Mitchell, and Richard Holbrooke.
On January 26 he initiated new policies on global warming, rearmed the EPA, and promoted science.And that is just the beginning.
In summary she states he is not here to entertain us and this is a judgment call but even more governance and less talk was the best option.
LAMBERT: I'm down with where he going. What I'm saying is that good, thoughtful watch-dogging from someone like Krugman keeps a sharp guy sharper.
Posted by: dan buechler on March 30, 2009 at 4:30 PM
It's kind of funny: Krugman's been around for a decade criticizing a president's economic policies without being noticed by Newsweek, etc. except when they dismissed him as shrill for saying that Bush's economics were nuts. Suddenly, now that he's criticizing a Democratic president, he's being taken seriously. Still, that's okay as Obama is sometimes wrong and somebody needs to say so. I hope you're right that this will create a more sophisticated economic debate, but I'm not holding my breath. The Republicans are completely hopeless as they only have two economic ideas--cut taxes/give money to the rich and don't regulate them--both of which have been discredited. They'll still show up all over network t.v., but they won't say anything worth hearing. And a better debate would require a media competent and willing to discuss economic ideas like grownups. ABC sent a reporter out to do a story on income tax who didn't know what marginal rates are, and that's probably a fair gauge of minds working in the field. Some, Charlie Gibson e.g., are willing to spend time on the problems of those making more than $250,000 a year; i.e., them and their friends, but that's about it.
LAMBERT: Garden variety Republicans should be put on some kind of probationary leave from media appearances until they come up with alternatives -- to any problem -- worth considering.
Posted by: john sherman on March 30, 2009 at 9:26 PM
Many good points. I find heartening the fact that we know that Obama's folks are actually reading Krugman, Friedman, Herbert, etc in the NY Times and thinking about the points in the columns. It makes me happier just knowing that there are people in the White House reading and thinking over differing opinions. And the Republican responses? I have only heard or seen simplistic, totally political, same old/same old, out of touch responses.
LAMBERT: Well, our girl Michele is getting a lot of free airtime protecting us from Chinese currency.
Posted by: Andrea Kish on April 1, 2009 at 2:45 PM
Brian, as a Vanity Fair semi-fan, you really ought to look at James Wolcott's "What's Wrong with Washington?" in the May issue. It's high, inside with a lot of steam and written with his characteristic brio.
LAMBERT: He rarely disappoints.
Posted by: john sherman on April 1, 2009 at 8:24 PM