Yet, the Right with its impressive propaganda capabilities has been able to beat back any sustained criticism of Reaganism. Millions of middle-class and working-class Americans continue to rally to economic theories that are devastating the middle and working classes.
Krugman's Question
On Monday, New York Times economic columnist Paul Krugman examined the curious question of why so many people behave so irrationally.
"When historians look back at 2008-10, what will puzzle them most, I believe, is the strange triumph of failed ideas," Krugman wrote. "Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything -- yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever.
"How did that happen? How, after runaway banks brought the economy to its knees, did we end up with Ron Paul, who says "I don't think we need regulators,' about to take over a key House panel overseeing the Fed?
"How, after the experiences of the Clinton and Bush administrations -- the first raised taxes and presided over spectacular job growth; the second cut taxes and presided over anemic growth even before the crisis -- did we end up with bipartisan agreement on even more tax cuts?
"The answer from the right is that the economic failures of the Obama administration show that big-government policies don't work. But the response should be, what big-government policies?
"For the fact is that the Obama stimulus -- which itself was almost 40 percent tax cuts -- was far too cautious to turn the economy around. " Put it this way: A policy under which government employment actually fell, under which government spending on goods and services grew more slowly than during the Bush years, hardly constitutes a test of Keynesian economics.
"Now, maybe it wasn't possible for President Obama to get more in the face of Congressional skepticism about government. But even if that's true, it only demonstrates the continuing hold of a failed doctrine over our politics."
Though Krugman's column focused on the mystery of why failed economic ideas continue to prevail, the same point could be made about foreign policy, where neoconservatives and other hardliners remain dominant in the Washington policy debates despite the calamities that their strategies have brought down upon the nation.
To me -- " having worked in national news for more than three decades - " a big part of the answer is the media imbalance. The Right has invested so much; the Left so little; and the mainstream careerists understand where the jobs are and where they're not.
Perhaps because he writes for the New York Times, the normally gutsy Krugman shies away from noting the media elephant in the room. Instead, he laid more criticism at Obama's feet for failing to more effectively and consistently make the case against Reaganism and in favor of more government activism. Krugman wrote:
"To borrow the title of a recent book by the Australian economist John Quiggin on doctrines that the crisis should have killed but didn't, we're still -- perhaps more than ever -- ruled by 'zombie economics.' Why? Part of the answer, surely, is that people who should have been trying to slay zombie ideas have tried to compromise with them instead. And this is especially, though not only, true of the president."
"President Obama has consistently tried to reach across the aisle by lending cover to right-wing myths. He has praised Reagan for restoring American dynamism (when was the last time you heard a Republican praising F.D.R.?), adopted G.O.P. rhetoric about the need for the government to tighten its belt even in the face of recession, offered symbolic freezes on spending and federal wages.
"None of this stopped the right from denouncing him as a socialist. But it helped empower bad ideas, in ways that can do quite immediate harm. Right now Mr. Obama is hailing the tax-cut deal as a boost to the economy -- but Republicans are already talking about spending cuts that would offset any positive effects from the deal. And how effectively can he oppose these demands, when he himself has embraced the rhetoric of belt-tightening?"
Another Answer
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