Mr. Obama’s victory feels more than a bit like defeat. The stimulus bill looks helpful but inadequate, especially when combined with a disappointing plan for rescuing the banks. And the politics of the stimulus fight have made nonsense of Mr. Obama’s postpartisan dreams.
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Paul Krugman ended his column in his Friday New York Times column with this warning and a bit of paraphrase from a W.B. Yeats poem:
“And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach–a feeling that America just isn’t rising to the greatest economic catastrope in 70 years. The best may not lack all conviction, but they seem alarmingly willing to settle for half-measures. And the worst are, as ever, full of passionate intensity, obliviious to the grotesque failure of their doctrine in practice.
“There’s still time to turn this around. But Mr. Obama hs to be stronger looking forward. Otherwise, the verdict on this crisis might be that no, we can’t.”
Click here to read Paul Krugman’s full column in the Friday, February 13 New York Times titled, Failure to Rise.