who brought America a "sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had
been missing." I was among those who found this deeply troubling —
because the idea that Reagan brought a transfomation in American
dynamism is a right-wing myth, not borne out by the facts. (There was
a surge in productivity and innovation — but it happened in the 90s,
under Clinton, not under Reagan).
All the usual suspects pooh-poohed these concerns; it was ridiculous,
they said, to think of Obama as a captive of right-wing mythology.
But are you so sure about that now?
Paul Krugman from NYTimes
"And here's this, from Thomas Ferguson: Obama saying
We didn't actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt
did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had
gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we
thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.
As Ferguson explains, this is a right-wing smear. What actually
happened was that during the interregnum between the 1932 election and
the1933 inauguration — which was much longer then, because the
inauguration didn't take place until March — Herbert Hoover tried to
rope FDR into maintaining his policies, including rigid adherence to
the gold standard and fiscal austerity. FDR declined to be part of
this.
But Obama buys the right-wing smear.
More and more, it's becoming clear that progressives who had their
hearts set on Obama were engaged in a huge act of self-delusion. Once
you got past the soaring rhetoric you noticed, if you actually paid
attention to what he said, that he largely accepted the conservative
storyline, a view of the world, including a mythological history, that
bears little resemblance to the facts.
And confronted with a situation utterly at odds with that storyline …
he stayed with the myth."
Care to comment
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment