I really used to enjoy Ezra Klein's work when he was blogging at the Prospect, but there must be something in the Post's water cooler that lowers its employees' political IQ points. I mean, this has got to be one of the stupidest bits of analysis I've read in some time:
Even if you disagree with every one of Mitt Romney’s policies, there’s a chance he’s still the best candidate to lift the economy in 2013.That’s not because he has business experience. For all his bluster about the lessons taught by the private sector, his agenda is indistinguishable from that of career politician Paul Ryan. Nor is it because he’s demonstrated some special knowledge of what it takes to create jobs. Job growth in Massachusetts was notably slow under Romney’s tenure. It’s because if Romney is elected, Republicans won’t choose to crash the economy in 2013.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if Congress gridlocks this year---if it simply gets nothing done---the economy will take a $607 billion hit in 2013 as the Bush tax cuts expire, the payroll tax cut expires and assorted spending cuts kick in. Falling off that “fiscal cliff,” they predict, will throw us back into recession.
But it’s worse even than that: Speaker John Boehner has said he wants another debt-ceiling showdown. We’re not expected to hit the debt ceiling until February or March, and so the only scenario in which the debt ceiling matters is one in which Congress has already pushed us over the fiscal cliff. So as bad as the last debt-ceiling crisis was---and Gallup’s polling showed it did more damage to consumer confidence than the fall of Lehman Bros---this one would be worse.
Miles Nadal, CEO of the marketing and communications firm MDC Partners, says that at a recent event with executives of more than 100 companies, the business leaders, panicked about this possibility, agreed on the best outcome for the economy: “a Republican landslide.” Why? “Because anything that breaks the logjam is positive,” he says. “The quality of the leader is less relevant than the ability to break gridlock.”
Jesus, where to begin.
First, we might as well agree that this is tantamount to saying that government-by-blackmail is somehow preferable to the stalemated arrangement we have now. The problem with this argument, of course, is that it fails to hold the people responsible for the stalemate, well, responsible for the problem they've created and perpetuated. The government isn't deadlocked because of some holistic dysfunction that's baked into the Constitution: It's deadlocked because one party no longer respects the legitimacy of the opposition party---which is to say, in our form of liberal democracy---and is using every parliamentary device to prevent it from acting. Any attempt to discuss breaking up institutional gridlock in Washington that fails to mention the words "unprecedented filibuster abuse" is frankly hard to take seriously as a piece of objective analysis.
In other words, if the economy craters next spring because a debt-ceiling agreement isn't reached, it won't be due to some intractable "deadlock," it will due to willful sabotage inflicted by one party against the President and his party. This really is not difficult to call out, and if all those worried businessmen want to ensure this problem doesn't play out next year, they should all be putting the screws to the GOP Congressional leadership and pressuring them to behave like grown-ups, not fretting over the existential danger of divided government. Heaven forbid we actually let the voters have the kind of government they want.
Second, I think the logical fallacy at work here is the assumption that a lot of Serious Persons in the Beltway media make about the political leadership on Capitol Hill, i.e., that when the dust settles after November, President Romney and an all-Republican Congress will come to their senses and not blow another huge hole in the deficit with tax cuts for rich people and escalations in military spending, and paying for it all by phasing out Medicare, turning Social Security into a private-equity fund, and axing entire government agencies like the EPA and the Energy Department because doing so would yield obviously disastrous outcomes. Which is to say, we should not expect Republicans to do what they say they will do because, well, at heart they're rational actors who will act rationally when they're handed the reins of power and not start needless wars, bankrupt the Treasury, turn the federal bureaucracy into a party patronage machine, and drive the American economy into the ground while blaming liberals for everything. Even though the last time (ahem) Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, they started needless wars, bankrupted the Treasury, turned the federal bureaucracy into a party patronage machine, and ran the economy into the ground while blaming liberals for everything.
Congressional Republicans have not shown an ability to govern rationally in any discernible way since 1994. Why Ezra Klein or anyone else who isn't working for Murdoch would believe for a second that they'll somehow moderate their positions after the voters hand them control of all three branches of the government---which they will interpret as a mandate for scorched-earth policy-making---is beyond my ability to explain. Anyone care to attempt an interpretation? I'm stumped.
---Vitelius
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