Once more Thomas Friedman has filled the editorial space of the New York Times with a clueless recycling of Villager centrist nonsense. If only President Obama would show he's willing to 'stand up' to his own base, Friedman implores, and set in motion a long term plan to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, etc. etc. in a Grand Bargain, then Republicans will joyfully embrace his proposals, corporations will throw open their coffers to jump start the economy, and the banishing of the uncertainty that has cast a pall over our republic will lead us all into a new day of optimism.
And ponies for everyone.
Does Friedman even read the rest of the NY Times, or turn on a television? Has he ever listened to talk radio? Is there any more of a poster boy for clueless pundits living in a fantasy world? Could we please have some kind of intervention here?
Even Ross Douthat shows more awareness of the world as it is, if only by the care with which he crafts alibis and excuses for the failures of the conservatism in all its forms. (Mr. Douthat deserves a "Catholic Moment" involving tar, feathers, and the families of the Church's victims for his latest offering.) Frank Bruni has noticed just how nasty the Republicans have become, even if he can't make the connection that this is where the party is coming from now. Friedman just remains oblivious to it all.
More ranting below the Orange Omnilepticon.
Friedman starts right out with the whole uncertainty myth.
“People’s incomes are so stretched,” said Curtin [who directs the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment], “that any additional uncertainty about how taxes or government spending might affect them has a big impact on their situation and how they plan for the future. ... There is real economic uncertainty out there.” In addition, he said, historically, “people have always turned to Washington in times of economic crisis, but now they’re losing confidence in the government’s ability to reshape the economy, and that affects their buying and investing habits.” People now think they have to “take more control themselves.”
emphasis added
Investing habits? Now there's a tell. America is in trouble because the investing class is uncertain. Or could it be something not on Mr. Friedman's radar - the fact that the recovery has benefited only a tiny fraction of the population? For 99% of the country, the recession is still in full effect - and the end of the payroll tax cut only made things worse. People still have NO MONEY!!! But the investing class wouldn't notice that. And neither would Mr. Friedman. As David Sirota spells it out:
"...But Friedman's not everyone. He's not just "doing pretty well" and is not just any old columnist. He's not just a millionaire or a multimillionaire - he's a member of one of the wealthiest families in the world, and is one of the most influential media voices on the planet, who writes specifically about economic/class issues. If politicians are forced to disclose every last asset they own, you'd think at the very least, the New York Times - in the interest of basic disclosure - should have a tagline under Friedman's economic columns that says "Tom Friedman is an heir to a multi-billion-dollar business empire." "
So what is Friedman's solution to
unparalyze America?
What to do? To be sure, the G.O.P.’s lurch to the far right has been more responsible for this paralysis than the Democrats, but Barack Obama is president. He wants to succeed. The country needs him to succeed. Therefore, he owes it to himself and to the country to make one more good shot at a Grand Bargain on spending, investment and tax reform before he opts for a strategy of trying to pummel the Republican Party, hoping that he can win the House for the Democrats in 2014 and then push through his second-term agenda unencumbered. I don’t think the latter will be so easy, and I think the former would give the country so much more of a lift and the president so much more momentum to get the best ideas in his speech — like infrastructure, early childhood education and a trade agreement with the European Union — enacted.
emphasis added
The emphasized bit in the above is what is known as a disclaimer - something you admit up front and then completely ignore for the rest of the discussion. It's trivial, not worthy of examination - if you're a member of one of the richest families on the planet. The fact that the Republicans have gone complete honking, shark-jumping, balls to the wall nuts is not the problem. Nope, it's all up to the President.
TO have any effect, though, the president can’t just say he is ready for “tough” decisions. He has to lead with his chin and put a concrete, comprehensive package on the table, encompassing three areas. First, new investments that would combine immediate jobs in infrastructure with some long-term growth-enablers like a massive build-out in the nation’s high-speed broadband capabilities. [OOOOH! Technology! Friedman always gets excited about that.] That would have to be married with a long-term fiscal restructuring, written into law, that slows the growth of both Social Security and Medicare entitlements, along with individual and corporate tax reform. [Translation: stiff people hurting the most while exacting some cosmetic pain upon those best-equipped to undo it later when no one is looking.] Obama has hinted at his willingness to do all of these. They should be agreed upon in 2013 and phased in gradually, starting in 2014. There are a lot of good bipartisan packages out there to choose from; we just need one that puts us on a trajectory to shrink our ratio of debt to gross domestic product over time. Otherwise, we will have little in reserve to fight the next economic crisis or 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy.
That last bit is worthy of deconstruction all by itself. Bipartisan packages - Check! Bipartisan is automatically double plus good in Friedman world. Shrink our ratio of debt to GDP - Check! But by cuts - NOT by putting people back to work to grow GDP. Debt bad! The next economic crisis or Hurricane Sandy? As best as can be determined, Friedman seems to be implying the government needs to be piling up buckets of cash to bail out Wall Street the next time they screw up, and to clean up after the next big storm. Funny - nothing in there about financial reform or regulation, nothing about addressing climate change. That might call for more government, not less.
Speaking of which...
"Our choice today is not “austerity” versus “no austerity.” That is a straw man argument offered by both extremes." Because one side is just as bad as the other. And certainly not to mention the fact that we've been doing austerity all along. (Dr. K has been calling that out repeatedly. But then Friedman doesn't read his own newspaper.).
"It’s about whether we phase in — in the least painful way possible — a long-term plan that balances our need to protect the most vulnerable in this generation while funding the most opportunities for the next generation, and still creating growth. We can’t protect both generations in full anymore, but we must not sacrifice one for the other — favoring nursing homes over nursery schools — and that’s what we’re on track to do." In other words, old people, it's time we turned you into Soylent Green so your grandkids can still have a school lunch program.
"A Grand Bargain now, rather than a meat-ax sequester, would offer stability for the long-term and maybe even a boost for the short term. “It would give people some reason to redeem their hope in their own economic future,” said Curtin. “It would be such a relief for most consumers to see that the government was actively working as a cohesive unit toward the betterment of the economy.” " Yes, the country would cheered up by seeing both parties wield the surgical scalpel together in a program of joint vivisection instead of letting fly with the meat axe. Where's Sweeney Todd when you really need him?
Let's go back to that disclaimer again, shall we?
To be sure, the G.O.P.’s lurch to the far right has been more responsible for this paralysis than the Democrats, but Barack Obama is president.
Friedman follows it up with this in his closing paragraph:
After the whipping the G.O.P. took in the election, I believe there is now a group of Republican politicians and C.E.O.’s who would meet Obama in the middle, if the president showed he was ready to take on some of his base as well. If the president tries, and I am wrong, well, he’ll have a few bad weeks. If I am right and enough Republicans meet Obama on a Grand Bargain, it would both split the G.O.P. between the sane conservatives and the certifiable crazies and give the president a real foundation for a truly significant second term.
emphasis added
Sorry Tom, the inmates are still in charge of the asylum. Anyone in the Republican Party who shows any sign of sanity must undergo public shaming. Take a look at one of the rising stars of the Republican Party, a man who has ridden as far as the politics of division can take him, via Frank Bruni:
WHEN a Vesuvius like John McCain tells you that you belch too much smoke and spew too much fire, you know you’ve got a problem.
And Ted Cruz, a Republican freshman in the Senate who has been front and center in his party’s effort to squash Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense, has a problem. He’s an ornery, swaggering piece of work. Just six weeks since his arrival on Capitol Hill, he’s already known for his naysaying, his nit-picking and his itch to upbraid lawmakers who are vastly senior to him, who have sacrificed more than he has and who deserve a measure of respect, or at least an iota of courtesy. Courtesy isn’t Cruz’s métier. Grandstanding and browbeating are.
What Friedman and Bruni fail to fully acknowledge is that the behavior of a Ted Cruz is the product of the direction the Republican Party has been headed for decades, the bastard child of Richard Nixon's Silent Majority and Ronald Reagan's government as problem - not solution, the spawn of Newt Gingrich's Contract ON America as funded by the Koch brothers and Karl Rove's brain trust. There's an overlapping structure of beliefs, rationalizations, and just plain stupid driving the party these days. Here's a synthesis.
• Conservative ideology is the only legitimate basis for policy and action. It can never fail; it can only be failed.
• Republicans are the only legitimate party in America, and only conservative Republicans within that party are legitimate.
• The Democratic Party, liberals, progressives will destroy America if not stopped at every turn.
• What's good for the Republican Party is good for the country. Period.
• Government is always too big, and never the answer to anything - unless you're talking about the military.
• The (latest) economic collapse was driven by government efforts to help free-loading poor people buy houses they couldn't afford, not out of control bankers gambling with other people's money.
• It's more important to stand on principle and keep anything from getting done than it is to solve the country's problems if it involves the least compromise with Democrats.
• Lazy brown people who won't work for a living are coming to America to steal jobs.
• It's unconstitutional to regulate guns or bankers, but not lady parts.
• The rich pay too much in taxes and the poor don't pay enough.
• The clearest proof of liberal media bias is when they report exactly what conservatives say and believe, and a majority of Americans reject it.
• The clearest proof of electoral fraud is when real conservatives lose at the polls - because America is a conservative country with conservative values.
• The biggest victims of racism and sexism are white males.
• Companies will go broke and be uncompetitive if they pay employees a living wage, pay women as much as men - and if they don't pay top management enough.
• Ruined health and a poisoned planet are the trade offs we must make so that free markets can work.
• Global warming and climate change are a liberal conspiracy.
• America is a Christian nation where freedom of religion means being able to enforce religious beliefs on those who don't share them.
• Public schools and unionized teachers are undermining America by teaching kids science and critical thinking.
• All Democrats are would-be socialist Marxists who hate America and want to punish success by redistribution of wealth.
• The business of America is business.
• The purpose of schooling is to turn out workers.
• American workers are greedy for wanting decent pay and benefits; CEOs who demand bonuses and golden parachutes are only seeking just recognition of their irreplaceable value and genius.
• FDR was wrong; the New Deal must go.
• Taxes must always go down, government must always get smaller.
• What is widely claimed to be the richest nation on earth with the highest standard of living can't afford to give kids a decent education through college, provide everyone with healthcare, or a secure comfortable retirement.
• Anyone can become rich if they just work hard enough; nobody is ever poor because of circumstances beyond their control or a system that is stacked against them.
• America is the greatest nation on earth, and anyone who doesn't agree hates America.
• America is on the verge of final collapse!
And so on and so on. To read Friedman, you'd barely get a hint as to the extent of toxicity currently bubbling up from the Republican Id. Tom Friedman may not want to acknowledge it fully, but even he had to make grudging reference to the crazy in his latest epistle from Bubble World. Even
Professor Pangloss would be getting alarmed at this point - but not Friedman.
Kevin Drum is wondering if the tide is finally starting to turn.
I'm curious. It seems to me that something has happened over the past three months: the nonpartisan media has finally started to internalize the idea that the modern Republican Party has gone off the rails. Their leaders can't control their backbenchers. They throw pointless temper tantrums about everything President Obama proposes. They have no serious ideas of their own aside from wanting to keep taxes low on the rich. They're serially obsessed with a few hobby horses — Fast & Furious! Obamacare! Benghazi! — that no one else cares about. Their fundraising is controlled by scam artists. They're rudderless and consumed with infighting. They're demographically doomed.
Tom Friedman isn't there yet, and the odds are he'll never be. His whole gig depends on him NOT acknowledging just how Ca-razy the G.O.P. is, or for that matter, his own
hermetically sealed thought processes. Belén Fernández dissects the Friedman intellectus:
Thomas Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, once offered the following insight into his modus operandi: “I often begin writing columns by interviewing myself.”
Some might see this as an unsurprising revelation in light of Edward Said’s appraisal: “It’s as if … what scholars, poets, historians, fighters, and statesmen have done is not as important or as central as what Friedman himself thinks.”
That Friedman has received 3 Pulitzer Prizes and sits on the Pulitzer Prize Board explains much about the decline of print media. Alexander Cockburn had Friedman's number a long time ago. It's
still worth a look.
Friedman is so marinated in self-regard that he doesn’t even know when he’s being stupid. "While the defining measurement of the Cold War was weight–particularly the throw-weight of missiles–the defining measurement of the globalization system is speed." Sounds good in a corporate roundtable, means nothing. The man just isn’t that smart, beyond the dubious ability to make money out of press releases praising the New Globalism and American power.
At the start of The Lexus and the Olive Tree Friedman boasts: "How to understand and explain this incredibly complex system of globalization? The short answer is that I learned you need to do two things at once–look at the world through a multilens perspective and, at the same time, convey that complexity to readers through simple stories, not grand theories. I use two techniques: I do ‘information arbitrage’ in order to understand the world, and I ‘tell stories’ in order to explain it."
Nice work if you can get it.
3:02 PM PT: Hat Tip to Digby for picking Dean Baker's take on Friedman. http://www.cepr.net/...
"Okay, now for the teaching part of this post. We know that Thomas Friedman gets most of the information for his columns from cab drivers. Print out copies of the graphs here on the investment share of GDP and consumption as a share of disposable income. Next time you have to take a taxi be sure to share them with the driver. If enough people do this, at some point Friedman will come into contact with a cab driver who can show him the graphs. Then he may learn a little economics and we would no longer have to see painfully wrongheaded columns on the economy in the Sunday NYT. "