Broder, the Official Pundit Rules, and Neo-Hooverism

Broder says that when Obama becomes President, his advisors will surely tell him that he must rein in his preferred programs on account of the huge deficits created by the bailout, and the Blue Dogs will fight for 'pay as you go' rules. Needless to say, Broder doesn't mention the Pentagon's upcoming proposal to increase defense spending by $450 billion over the next 5 years, but then, as others (I'd link if I could remember who) have reminded us lately, defense spending never counts as real spending with these clowns: health care for children has to be paid for, but wars and fighter jets don't.

Brian Beutler says, "Somewhere, buried deep in the stacks of the research library at NBC headquarters is a book of bylaws for American punditry, and one of those bylaws holds that a successful pundit must try--whenever possible, and for reasons unclear--to box politicians into the position of opposing desperately needed entitlement programs and other deficit spending." I'd add the words "non-military" before "deficit spending," and Dean Broder surely writes the bylaws, but other than that, he's nailed it.

And, in keeping with those bylaws, Broder doesn't even consider the prospect of Keynesian countercyclical spending to minimize the effects of the recession we're surely headed into. As Matt points out, this is no time for neo-Hooverism. The pundit class really has no grasp of economics. Lord knows I'm not an economist, but even I understand that much. Along those lines, Moody's has a nice chart rating the bang for the buck that different countercyclical measures would create, which Matt posts here.

Yglesias Asks: Where's Corporate America?

Damned good question.

especially on the right, normally when there’s an issue that’s perceived to be important to American business, corporate America makes its views known and conservative legislators, when asked to jump, say “how high?”

But as Matt points out, GOP legislators clearly aren't being given pro-bailout marching orders by the Chamber of Commerce or the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Yet the members of such organizations are supposedly the first wave of casualties in a credit crunch.

As Matt acknowledges, this doesn't mean the crisis is fictitious. But it sure makes you wonder what the game is, doesn't it?

My WAG is that the lobbyists for the C-of-C, the NFIB and all the rest, were in from the beginning on the whole Lucy-and-the-football stunt that the GOP was pulling over the past few days: get the Dems to Be Responsible, sucker them into a bad compromise, then pull out, stick them with the blame, and run against them. They felt safe in assuming a bailout was coming, so they were willing to protect their own, rather than needlessly make them vote for a very unpopular bill.

Like I say, this is no more than a wild-ass guess. But it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it was true.