The always impressive Paul Krugman, the Economics Professor who writes for the New York Times, argues that it's naive to think our big problems can be waived away with a simplistic call to bipartisanship.
In "The Great Divide," Krugman points out that in spite of the devastation of Bush’s economic policies favoring the wealthy and increasing the income gap, most of the Republican candidates are marching lock step with Bush instead of distancing themselves from his policies. For no other reason, Krugman posits, than cowering “before the power of movement conservatism.” A conservative movement that “does not tolerate deviations from tax-cutting, free-market, greed-is-good orthodoxy.” Krugman warns that while American opinion is turning progressive in response to the Bush era, the Republican base hasn't budged from its orthodoxy. Krugman offers this point as a:
useful reality check for those who believe that the next president can somehow usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation.
Barack Obama's oversize ego offers himself as being uniquely capable of waving a magic wand and uniting the country. He speaks and acts just like the white guys I was in a status law school with - I recognize the smugness, the belief that they alone are capable of being rational and objective. One of Obama’s nonsensical platitudes - by the way, just the type of claiming-everything-while-really-saying-nothing that gets you law review editor positions - in the Saturday debates was, “When the American people are determined to make things happen, they can.”
Really. That easy, huh? Sen. Clinton countered with real life examples where the “American people” were foibled by a conservative movement with a stranglehold on the House of Representatives and the White House. This is Professor Krugman's point.
As much as Barack naively natters about how he alone can unite the American people, he has no armor or true understanding of the opposition a Democratic president would face in 2009. As John Edwards acknowledged in the debate, “You can’t nice these people.”
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