“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Paul Krugman; Triumph of the Wrong?
In these closing weeks of the campaign, each side wants you to believe that it has the right ideas to fix a still-ailing economy. So here’s what you need to know: If you look at the track record, the Obama administration has been wrong about some things, mainly because it was too optimistic about the prospects for a quick recovery. But Republicans have been wrong about everything.
About that misplaced optimism: In a now-notorious January 2009 forecast, economists working for the incoming administration predicted that by now most of the effects of the 2008 financial crisis would be behind us, and the unemployment rate would be below 6 percent. Obviously, that didn’t happen.
Why did the administration get it wrong? It wasn’t exaggerated faith in the power of its stimulus plan; the report predicted a fairly rapid recovery even without stimulus. Instead, President Obama’s people failed to appreciate something that is now common wisdom among economic analysts: severe financial crises inflict sustained economic damage, and it takes a long time to recover.
John Nichols: Richard Milhous Ryan: No Specifics, Just a ‘Secret Plan’
Richard Milhous Nixon said in 1968 that the war in Vietnam was the critical concern of that year’s presidential contest, the one issue that had to be addressed by the candidates. And he addressed it with a “secret plan” to end the war. No details during the campaign, the Republican nominee for president explained; voters just needed to trust him and he would cut the right deals once elected.
Paul Ryan says in 2012 that budgeting to cut taxes for the rich while at the same time doing away with deficits is the critical issue of the presidential contest, the one that has to be addressed by the candidates. And he addresses the issue with a “secret plan” to cut taxes and balance budgets. No details during the campaign, the Republican nominee for vice president explains; voters just need to trust him and he will cut the right deals once elected.
For most people who have heard or read about Hugo Chávez in the international media, his reelection on Sunday as president of Venezuela by a convincing margin might be puzzling.
Almost all of the news we hear about him is bad: He picks fights with the United States and sides with “enemies” such as Iran; he is a “dictator” or “strongman” who has squandered the nation’s oil wealth; the Venezuelan economy is plagued by shortages and is usually on the brink of collapse.
Then there is the other side of the story: Since the Chávez government got control over the national oil industry, poverty has been cut by half, and extreme poverty by 70 percent. College enrollment has more than doubled, millions of people have access to health care for the first time and the number of people eligible for public pensions has quadrupled.
Tracy Bloom: Romney’s ‘Etch A Sketch’ Abortion Positions
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney “reaffirmed” his staunch pro-life abortion position on Wednesday, saying his stance on the hot-button issue hasn’t changed. At least not since he became pro-life midway through his political career.
Like on many issues-taxes, health care, stem-cell research, minimum wage, immigration reform, etc.-Romney has flipped-flopped positions in a seemingly concerted effort to appeal to a certain ideological group of voters. This is not an earth-shattering revelation by any stretch of the imagination, as evidenced during the presidential primary when his Republican rivals challenged him on his evolving abortion stance. And after Romney suggested Tuesday that abortion-related legislation would not be a major part of his presidency, he was forced once again to clarify his position.
“I think I’ve said time and again. I’m a pro-life candidate. I’ll be a pro-life president,” Romney said Wednesday, attempting to convince social values conservative voters once again, perhaps for the final time, that he’s their man.
E. J. Dionne: Sherrod Brown’s Lessons for Obama
If anyone can testify to the problem of giving really rich people a chance to tilt the political playing field, it’s Sen. Sherrod Brown.
A proud labor-populist, Brown seems to invite the hostility of wealthy conservatives and deep-pocketed interest groups. The amount they have spent to defeat him went somewhere over $20 million this week.
Brown can live with that. His uncompromising advocacy on behalf of workers, toughness on trade, and progressive policies on a broad range of other issues have allowed Brown to build a formidable organization across Ohio, and a large cadre of small donors.
David Sirota: A GOP Shift on Taxes?
When it comes to tax policy, Mitt Romney is not merely a spinner, an equivocator or a run-of-the-mill dissembler. He’s a liar. Hyperbolic and overwrought as that label seems, it is, alas, the only accurate description for someone who would, in February, promote a proposal to cut taxes “on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent” and then appear at an October debate and insist that the very same proposal “will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.”
For the most part, analyzing such hideous dishonesty is where political reporting has started and stopped. How big a liar is Romney? Was he lying in the first statement or the second one? These are, no doubt, important questions-and to answer but one of them, it’s obvious Romney was lying in the most recent one. As the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center reported, the Republican nominee’s proposal, if enacted, would “result in a net tax cut for high-income tax payers and a net tax increase for lower- and/or middle-income taxpayers.”
However, critical as such short-term fact checking is, it misses the much bigger news embedded in all the subterfuge. In short, it misses the genuinely mind-boggling fact that a Republican nominee for president is now campaigning for president on a promise to not cut taxes on the wealthy.
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