Wednesday, July 28, 2010

What David Brooks Fails to Mention

In Tuesday's Times, David Brooks imagines he's a Democrat again, and from that position gives advice to Obama, who should be.
focused on the long term? He could explain that we’re facing deep fundamental problems: an aging population, overleveraged consumers, exploding government debt, state and local bankruptcies, declining human capital, widening inequality, a pattern of jobless recoveries, deteriorating trade imbalances and so on.
These long-term problems, Obama could say, won’t be solved either with centralized government or free market laissez-faire. Just as government laid railroads and built land grant colleges in the 19th century to foster deep growth, the government today should be doing the modern equivalents.
What Brooks doesn't mention is the sort of stuff in this OMB Watch post, because, as it says:
The administration gets little credit for these achievements, which are often wonky in nature and easily overshadowed by the hyper-partisan atmosphere of Washington.

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