{"id":2073,"date":"2009-02-12T12:07:56","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T17:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=2073"},"modified":"2009-02-12T11:24:29","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T16:24:29","slug":"interpeting-obamas-stimulus-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=2073","title":{"rendered":"Interpeting Obama’s Stimulus Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noam Scheiber at <\/a>The Plank<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Barack Obama is nothing if not a master rope-a-doper. For months last year, anxious liberals pleaded with him to respond to John McCain\u2019s lacerating attacks. And, for months, Obama soared above the fray. Then, in early September, the McCain campaign squeezed out two ludicrously dishonest ads\u2014accusing Obama of force-feeding sex education to kindergarteners and of calling Sarah Palin a pig. The press screamed bloody murder\u2014Joe Klein\u00a0labeled the former \u201cone of the sleaziest ads I\u2019ve ever seen;\u201d Joy Behar of \u201cThe View\u201d personally\u00a0told McCain they were \u201clies.\u201d At which point Obama saw an opportunity. With the media having pronounced McCain the aggressor and him the victim, Obama began to whale away\u2014on healthcare, on McCain\u2019s age, even Charles Keating\u2014with virtual impunity.<\/p>\n

My sense is that we\u2019re seeing something similar play out with the stimulus.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andrew Sullivan quotes one of his readers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What many do not understand is that the government is playing for time, not some brilliant economic miracle. We do not have the money or political leverage to solve this problem from the top down by divine fiat. We have to buy time — literally — for the ten-thousand smaller acts of restoration and renewal to take place. All this flow of money, this vast seemingly indiscriminate transfusion of economic blood, has one purpose: to keep the patient’s heart pumping until the systemic crisis is past — another 6-12-18 months. It is\u00a0messy, sloppy, gross heroic medicine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andrew Sullivan has his own just slightly less optimistic interpretation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yglesias points out some of what Obama is dealing with<\/a> as Representative Steve Austria explains his opposition to Obama’s stimulus in historical terms:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression,\u201d Austria said. \u201cHe tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That\u2019s just history.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“That’s just history.” The article Yglesias cites points out the slight problem with this “history”:<\/p>\n

Most historians date the beginning of the Great Depression at or shortly after the stock-market crash of 1929; Roosevelt took office in 1933.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noam Scheiber at The Plank: Barack Obama is nothing if not a master rope-a-doper. For months last year, anxious liberals pleaded with him to respond to John McCain\u2019s lacerating attacks. And, for months, Obama soared above the fray. Then, in early September, the McCain campaign squeezed out two ludicrously dishonest ads\u2014accusing Obama of force-feeding sex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[143,1032,4],"tags":[58,782,627,1291,408,916],"class_list":["post-2073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-financial-crisis-economics","category-politics","tag-andrew-sullivan","tag-matt-yglesias","tag-noam-scheiber","tag-stimulus","tag-the-plank","tag-tnr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-xr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2073"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2075,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions\/2075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}