Paul Krugman just posted a short entry on his blog about Bush and Katrina. It's at http://tinyurl.com/6ulsml. Seems there's an article in Vanity Fair that quotes Bush aides who say that Katrina did Bush in. I'll read it carefully later; just taking a quick break right now. But Krugman has a rather interesting take. Katrina may or may not have been the nail in the political coffin for Bush. But Krugman compares two photos, each taken in Air Foce One: the first of Bush looking down on NYC after 9/11 and the second of Bush looking down on a different city: New Orleans after Katrina. Krugman points out: the first photo worked PR wonders. The second didn't. Why the difference? According to Krugman, it's because with Katrina, there was no hiding what had happened. It's not that Bush was hiding something about 9/11; it's that after 9/11, the White House put up smoke screen after smoke screen on any number of fronts, and by the time Katrin hit, it was clear: the White House was an empty shell run by a hollow man.
I'm not naive enough to think that Obama will be the cure for all that ails the country. And in any case, that's a terrible burden to saddle someone with. But I can't think about the last eight years without feeling a little dazed. George Bush was just as vapid as many of us feared. He surrounded himself with people caught up in big bad ideas drove a good many lifelong Republicans to fits.
Manupulation, lies and deceit are a big part of the sad story. Breathtaking stabs at the arrogation of power -- all that mightily disturbing. But the big sin, in my view, was contempt for government. It's a sin that goes back a long way. Ronald Reagan's joke about the dread of hearing someone say "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" comes to mind. So does Grover Norquist's quip about starving government until its so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub. But those were just the tag lines. The anti-government idea ran deep.
Good government matters. There are things that governments can do that the market can do only badly or not at all. The idea that we just need to free the pent-up forces of the market and all will be well stands exposed as the nonsense it always was. Of course we need well-functioning markets. But they need to work against the backdrop of a well-functioning government. Why should this ever have seemed like a crazy thought?
So it's swings and roundabouts. At least for the next few years, government will be back big time. I'm hopeful that Obama's pragmatic instincts will prevent that from meaning "with a vengeance." But the idea that for a while we might have people in charge who believe that there is such a thing as good government is a big relief.
I'm not naive enough to think that Obama will be the cure for all that ails the country. And in any case, that's a terrible burden to saddle someone with. But I can't think about the last eight years without feeling a little dazed. George Bush was just as vapid as many of us feared. He surrounded himself with people caught up in big bad ideas drove a good many lifelong Republicans to fits.
Manupulation, lies and deceit are a big part of the sad story. Breathtaking stabs at the arrogation of power -- all that mightily disturbing. But the big sin, in my view, was contempt for government. It's a sin that goes back a long way. Ronald Reagan's joke about the dread of hearing someone say "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" comes to mind. So does Grover Norquist's quip about starving government until its so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub. But those were just the tag lines. The anti-government idea ran deep.
Good government matters. There are things that governments can do that the market can do only badly or not at all. The idea that we just need to free the pent-up forces of the market and all will be well stands exposed as the nonsense it always was. Of course we need well-functioning markets. But they need to work against the backdrop of a well-functioning government. Why should this ever have seemed like a crazy thought?
So it's swings and roundabouts. At least for the next few years, government will be back big time. I'm hopeful that Obama's pragmatic instincts will prevent that from meaning "with a vengeance." But the idea that for a while we might have people in charge who believe that there is such a thing as good government is a big relief.
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