I heard Doris Kearns Goodwin interviewed on Imus this morning during my 6 AM drive to work, and lost all respect for her. She was flacking hard for Obama.
She claimed that "nobody knows what to do about the economy." She said that Obama must experiment with government's role just as FDR did. She said his personal popularity polls show that people believe that he cares, and that's the important thing. She said he needs time to solve all the problems (What!?!). Oh, I almost forgot. She said that teleprompters are the modern way (although neither she nor Don Imus were using one).
Wrong on all counts. Pure flackery by a partisan Dem delivering Dem talking points propaganda. I would have expected more from her.
I'll just take her first point, because I happen to know what to do: 1) Restore the uptick rule to discourage the highly profitable bear raids against solid companies (rumor is that Russian and Chinese hedge funds are making a mint doing that, probably in collusion). 2) Cut corporate taxes to encourage hiring 3) Cut cap gains taxes to encourage investment in business growth 4) Cut individual tax rates to unleash spending and to remove the crushing threat of higher taxes 5) Get rid of "mark to market": it makes it almost impossible to make a long-term inventment in a tree that needs time to bear fruit. 6) Quit the war against business and the delusion of big government "solutions" (ie my money) to everything from my health to GM's de facto bankruptcy, and 7) Talk up the American economy and its resilience.
In other words, unleash the animal spirits of the economy and the creative power of the people instead of frightening everybody by threatening to put it all on a tighter leash. People yearn to be unleashed to do things and to follow their dreams, and not to be hand-fed or to become serfs to The State. Disincentivization to effort and reward has been tried elsewhere, and it does not work very well. (Plus a prosperous nation is in a good position to take decent care of its feckless, unmotivated, parasitic, and unfortunate.)
But they will do none of those things, because they are not about what works. They are about their ideology and their political goals. They are clever, crafty and tricksy - but deeply unwise, and unwilling to think outside their little old 1930s box.
Why? Same old reason: These people live inside government, and thus play the government game. They love power, and somehow became deluded into thinking that they are smarter than us regular folks. Wrong! Disgusting as it may be, whatever 'system" they give us, people will find a way to "work it" for their own interests. It's called "incentive," and it is quite human: people want to take care of themselves, their families and their loved ones - and they want to be free to do things their own way, whether they screw it up or not.
It's about human dignity. Nobody can give anybody that. All anybody can do is to free people to pursue it.
