I have noticed a tendency to dismiss those who are worried about our country right now, about the need for strong leadership. Those of us who see a need to move away from so much bipartisanship and compromising are criticized sharply.
Robert Kuttner has had two very scathing columns recently, but he seems very qualified to offer strong opinions on the economic state of our country.
A brief summary of his accomplishments.
Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, as well as a Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow. He was a longtime columnist for BusinessWeek, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe.
Robert is the author of eight books, including the recent New York Times bestseller, Obama's Challenge: American's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency, (Chelsea Green, 2008). Robert's last book, The Squandering of America, explores political roots of America's narrowing prosperity and the systemic risks facing the U.S. economy. He has just begun work on a new book on the challenge of regulating global capitalism.
Bob's best-known earlier book is Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets (1997). The book received a page one review in the New York Times Book Review. Of it, the late economist Robert Heilbroner wrote, "I have never seen the market system better described, more intelligently appreciated, or more trenchantly criticized than in Everything for Sale."
Demos.org Robert KuttnerMore at the link.
On July 31 he posted a column at Huffington Post called The Goons of August.
The Goons of AugustLet us face the momentous truth: The United States has been rendered ungovernable except on the extortionate terms of the far-right. For the first time in modern history, one of the two major parties is in the hands of a faction so extreme that it is willing to destroy the economy if it doesn't get its way.
And the Tea Party Republicans have a perfect foil in President Barack Obama. The budget deal is the logical conclusion of Obama's premise that the way to make governing partners of the far right is to keep appeasing them. He is the perfect punching bag. He can be blasted both as a far-left liberal and as a weakling.
We did not have to reach this pass. At any of several points in the past two years, a Democratic president could have called out the Republicans on the sheer perversity of the policies they are demanding. Most voters do not want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. The Paul Ryan "Roadmap for America's Future" alone, in the hands of a politically competent Democratic president, should have been enough to destroy Republican credibility.
...."How do you invite the radical right to take power? Start with thirty years of stagnant of declining living standards for most people. Then add a financial crisis made on Wall Street. Next, elect a Democratic president who raises hopes, but who turns out to be a close ally of the same forces that caused the collapse. Give that president a temperament that refuses to blame the right, and is mainly about seeking accommodation. The right then gets to put Washington and Wall Street in the same bucket, and blame the Democrats.
Indeed that is happening now. "The right then gets to put Washington and Wall Street in the same bucket, and blame the Democrats."
He reminds us that it is "a fearsome time in the history of our Republic. And the politics of extortion by the Tea Party Republicans will not end with this deal. On the contrary, the deal will encourage more of the same."
But he was not done yet expressing his utter frustration.
Here is a column from the middle of August that does not spare this administration.
Looking for Some Good NewsThrough the smog of rhetoric and demagoguery, more and more Americans are coming to correctly blame Republicans for the obstructionism on the budget agreement that helped trigger panic in financial markets. With so many far-right Republicans having picked up House seats in the 2010 midterm, the election of 2012 could be a good year for a Democratic comeback.
Good news, right?
The only problem is that we have our own albatross in the White House. Barack Obama is not likely to have coattails. And his own strategy for dealing with prolonged stagnation neither motivates voters nor fixes what ails the economy. Oh, and it divides his own party. Talk to elected Democrats on the subject of Obama off the record, and you get unprintable rage.
..."Think of the great acts of leadership by past presidents. Roosevelt himself started out as a deficit hawk. He had to alter his own thinking and then lead public opinion to appreciate that large public works programs reduced unemployment (and temporarily increased public deficits, but that was okay). He also had to lead public opinion when he called for rearmament and the first peacetime draft and lend-lease aid to Britain, because he foresaw war with Hitler. If Roosevelt had just followed polls, Nazis might well be still governing in Berlin.
And I say amen to this comment about 2012.
Obama may yet be saved by the sheer extremism of the likely Republican nominee. But we should not bet the farm on that either. I vividly remember being reassured that Ronald Reagan was too far-right, and George W. Bush too dumb, to be elected. So much for that theory.
Last week Kuttner appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann....
here's the video. He simply and calmly made point after point about the harm being done by the deficit hawks. He made one comment that really struck home with me.
He said what really dismayed him was to hear Perry's opening commercial in which Kuttner says he sounded more like FDR than Obama himself does. He is angry because he says the president should run as one who wants to put people back to work, and not leave it to someone like Perry.
I agree. I am seeing ads being run now every day by right wing Republicans where I live in which they are defending Medicare and Social Security from a Democratic president.
I understand Kuttner's frustration.
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