By which title I mean to say that Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate in Economics, has been right all along about where the disastrous policies of deregulation, privatization and large tax cuts for the rich and multinational corporations would lead our Nation’s economy. Yet no one listened to him while the Republicans looted the Treasury and Wall Street gambled insanely on real estate and mortgage backed derivatives. No one listened to him while banking executives milked billions in salary and bonuses from the suckers, the rubes, etc.
And he’s still right — no one in Washington is treating the worldwide economic crisis with sufficient gravity and seriousness it deserves. Not the Republicans, not the Blue Dog Democrats, not a media controlled by conservative interests and (in the case of television seriously out of touch with the financial concerns of ordinary Americans) and not even our Post Partisan President.
A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts. […]
Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again. […]
It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy … the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.” […]
We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.
In short, despite an overwhelming defeat at the polls the Republicans are still controlling the message machine that is our corporate media. And the message they are pushing is one that has been tried. It was tried and now our economy is on life support. What is more, the current politicians in control of the GOP are all to willing to pull the plug. Even sadder, far too many Democratic members of Congress, out of fear of being labeled “liberal” or “socialist” (or whatever) by Limbaugh’s legions of ditto heads are following their lead. Democrats won the election because Republican policies created the mess we are in, but too many of these Congressional Democrats lack the courage of their convictions, or never had any convictions to begin with.
It’s as if we were still living in the times when physicians believed that bleeding their patients was the best way to cure disease despite all evidence to the contrary. They were convinced bleeding eliminated noxious humors from the body when all it did was hasten the death of the individuals under their care. In short their beliefs were dead wrong. Yet many of them continued to scoff at the germ theory of disease for many decades, even when germ theory was proven to provide positive outcomes for patients under the care of more “progressive” doctors. Like today’s Republicans, they couldn’t or wouldn’t abandon the failed theories and practices they had employed their entire medical careers, and in which they had a complete if unfounded faith. Unable to accept change and new ideas, they continued to do harm to, and even hasten the death, their patients, in the name of that misguided faith.
It’s past time for President Obama to stop playing nice with the insane collection of clowns, grifters, war profiteers, racists and faith based ideologues (and that’s not only a reference to Christian fundamentalists) we euphemistically refer to as the Republican Party. Just as in the case of those old doctors who kept bleeding their patients long after Louis Pasteur proved the disease was caused by germs, we know from experience that conservative methods of governance don’t work. We have all the evidence we need from history, both recent and not so recent. But will the President listen to Krugman and those of us who have been sounding alarm bells that seeking cooperation from radically wrong right wingers is a deeply flawed political strategy, or is it already too late?
I’ll give Krugman the last word here. God knows he deserves it.
So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.
It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.