A Musical Prelude-The Supremes Waltz Into Arizona

A Musical Prelude-The Supremes Waltz Into Arizona

My parents loved the opera, and inflicted (I use that word with love) on me the privilege of going with them through most of my childhood.  The three of us sat in the front row of the orchestra of the old Metropolitan Opera House (front row, because I was too small to see over anyone) through several seasons of Puccini, Verdi, Wagner, Mozart, Rossini, them rapt, me trying not to wiggle.  It was a very long car ride home if I wiggled.

Burned into the deepest recesses of my brain are snatches of arias, bits of melody line, the odd piccolo or oboe solo, elephants, tombs, heroes and scoundrels, turbans, togas, and harlequin hats.  The opera had all types of strange paradoxes.  Why would two people entombed for their love sing when there was no air?  How did someone dying of tuberculosis have such a pure and supple soprano?  How could Riggoleto not know what was in the bag?  Who jumps off parapets? 

But Dad had a solid dislike of one opera, Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne Auf Naxos.” Of course, if you had a subscription, you got what they performed, and one year, glaring at him, were tickets to Ariadne Obnoxious. “Boring, who could listen to it?”  Dutifully, we went.  And then he did the unthinkable. He had us walk out-in between acts, of course-he was no barbarian.

I bring this up because of a snatch of something my friend Cynical Cynic sent me, from Jonathan Haidt’s  “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion.”  Haidt says “Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning comes second.  Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started…If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to find out the truth, you will be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased and illogical people become when they disagree with you.” 

This week is concert week at the Supreme Court, and it’s really a two-act drama; Arizona’s immigration law, SB-1070, handed down Monday, and tomorrow’s grand finale, Obamacare. 

You and I have the luxury of going with our gut.  We don’t have to be right, or rational, or, for that matter, even civil.  A lot of the time, we are none of the above.  We often fall into the intellectually lazy “It’s unconstitutional!!!” when what we really mean is “We don’t like it.”  Any time we want, we can be like Dad, and walk right out of Ariadne Obnoxious.

The Supremes don’t have that luxury.   They can’t walk out.  They need to put aside their “moral intuitions” and decide based on the text of the Constitution, as amended, and precedent.  In short, they aren’t supposed to engage in the sort of results-based analysis that most of the rest of us indulge ourselves in. 

And that is a real problem.  First of all, there are unpopular and even unwise laws that aren’t unconstitutional, just as there are operas that some people find abhorrent, while others choke up with tears of joy.  The Justices are not critics-their job is “Opera, or not?” Congress, the Executive Branch, and State legislatures write the music,  and the Court is supposed to decide simply whether it is constitutional music, not whether it sounds good.

The problem with that is that it flies in the face of two imperatives to legitimacy. 

The first is that a decision, even if well reasoned, needs to feel empirically rational in the real world.  “Citizen’s United”, with its assertion by Justice Kennedy that money will not lead to the inference of corruption, clearly doesn’t.   All of us know money corrupts.  We may support the decision because we think our guys can out spend the other guys, but we know it corrupts.  Personally, I agree with the legal reasoning behind Citizen’s United, but I detest the result.

The second is that the Court should stay away, when possible, from the overtly political.  Arizona’s SB-1070 has clear political overtones,  but real Constitutional issues.  Obamacare, to almost everyone, is purely political-the Supreme Court will select a winner, and the overwhelming perception is that the decision will not be based in law, but on ideology-on their individual “moral intuitions” from which they will then justify with post-intuition “moral reasoning.”  In short, there will be winners and losers from the Obamacare decision, but pretty much everyone thinks the fix is in-however it comes out.

I am going to hold out some hope that this will not occur, because I believe in the importance of an independent judiciary calling balls and strikes fairly.  I think the biggest challenge Chief Justice Roberts has had is in finding some areas where he can get more than five votes.  He showed great skill in the Arizona case, getting a unanimous decision in favor of that part of the law that allows police to question people about their immigration status in connection with “probable cause”, but joining the “liberal” wing in striking down three other sections which made it a misdemeanor for immigrants to not carry registration documents, criminalized the act of an illegal immigrant finding a job, and authorizing state officers to arrest someone merely on the belief that the person has committed a deportable offense.  Political or not, the Court decision is rational and appears balanced.

Will Roberts have as much luck with Obamacare, and does he even want to?  The conventional thinking is that it’s going to be 5-4 striking down the entire law, and there are conservative commentators who have been predicting (urging) the Court to go further and go after a chain of precedents that underpin Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. 

We should know shortly.  The orchestra has been warming up, and the performers squirting their throats for this Ariadne Auf Naxos of laws.  Is it opera-not the best, but opera?  Or are a majority of the Justices going to walk out? 

MM

Clemens Heat And Obama's Knuckler

Clemens’s Heat and Obama’s Knuckler

Roger Clemens beat the rap.  He reared back, as he had a hundred thousand times before, glared, and threw the ball right at the head of the hapless folk who dared challenge him.

24 years of major league baseball, over 20,000 batters, and the pleasant demeanor of a rattlesnake.  The government prosecutors showed what low minor league rookies they were; outgunned, out thought, out testified, out-evidenced.  Clemens’s attorney Rusty Hardin made mincemeat of the chief government witness, mocked the paltry and suspect physical evidence, and reminded us once and again that smarts and determination and sheer aggression often carry the day.

In the meantime, crafty lefthander Barack Obama was warming up in the bullpen.  The news hadn’t been really good for the home team recently, and Obama was coming off a couple of poor outings.  His fastball had lost a few miles an hour, and his slider lacked bite.  And he had never been one to brush people off the plate.  

Obama’s greatest strength was never his eloquent tongue.  It’s the fact that people revel in underestimating him. For more than three years we’ve been treated a constant barrage of his inadequacies, schoolyard name calling, questions about his intelligence, etc. etc.  But no one-not the GOP, not Hillary Clinton nor John McCain, nor anyone else, has ever been able to successfully answer the question, “just how does a young, mixed race, one term Senator with the middle name “Hussein” manage to become President of the United States?”

Perhaps it is because he is pretty darn smart and a lot tougher than people thought?  All those folk out there tuning into the echo chamber of outrage and insult that is Fox and Rush and the Tea-RNC often can’t be bothered to actually watch what has been happening on the field.

So, old Barack, a little grey in his hair, his arm a little tired, and surrounded by talk, even among his fans, of maybe just letting his contract run out at the end of the season and not re-signing him, took some of that smarts and toughness and started working on a new pitch.

As to Clemens, I never could understand why people would root for him even when he pitched for my Yankees.  He was a loud, in your face bully, and I don’t like bullies very much.   Even his fans think he probably took steroids.  That potentially makes him a cheater as well as a bully.  And, if he did take steroids and perjured himself during his testimony before Congress, that would make him a liar, a cheater, and a bully.  But that loud, in your face bully just faced down the government, and, in the end, if winning isn’t everything; it’s certainly a lot.  So, the Rocket gets an acquittal and a trip to Cooperstown.

Meanwhile, back in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama sees a rising tide and strides out to lectern.  He sets himself, winds and throws.  It’s a little hard to get it out, because Tucker Carlson has sent his Rottweiler to heckle (nothing like respect for the office.) But Obama doesn’t rattle all that easily, and he floats that pitch up to the plate and the GOP, pretty much en masse, drops their bats.

What the heck was that?  An Amnesty Knuckler?

Mr. Obama granted a two-year stay of deportation for certain immigrants who were brought here illegally as children.  The policy doesn’t give them legal status but creates time for Washington to create a permanent path. “These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag,” Obama said during an afternoon Rose Garden appearance. “They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper.”

After the GOP had gathered itself, it began to sputter.  Steve King, the Iowa Congressman, denounced it as only he can denounce.  But most of the rest of the GOP, including the Romney campaign, was a little more cautious; limiting their denouncing to only to Mr. Obama and the process he took.

What’s got their tongue?  This is, after all, a group that got itself into a froth when Osama Bin Laden was killed because Mr. Obama didn’t show pictures, and a year later, when, in an event of outrageous political propaganda, he marked the anniversary.

That’s a very good question, because conventional wisdom holds that prized independent voters tend to be fairly hard line on immigration matters. But the politics of this is actually trickier than you think. What Mr. Obama is aiming at is a part of what would become the “Dream Act”, currently being filibustered by the GOP in the Senate.  Mr. Romney has opposed the Dream Act and staked out other hardline positions on immigration.  Rising star Marco Rubio, on the other hand, had been working on a variation of the Dream Act that anticipates this very action-and only withdrew it last Friday when it became Mr. Obama’s initiative.  And GOP elders have been walking a tightrope between satisfying the Joe Arpaio wing of the party without permanently alienating the fastest growing bloc of voters in the country.  Good policy and good politics are hard.

It looks like Mr. Obama may have made good policy, and channeled his inner Roger Clemens at the same time. He brushed back (albeit with a soft toss) Mr. Romney and pointed out the core inconsistency in Romney’s and the GOP’s position-millions of children aren’t going to put peanut butter and pop tarts into rucksacks and self-deport.

So far, the voters seem to have acted counter intuitively-they may not much like illegal immigrants, but somehow they feel that deporting innocent children is a step too far.  Polling support is more than 2-1 in favor of Mr. Obama’s Knuckler. 

Not bad for a new pitch. 

MM

Lincoln Douglass And The 2012 Election

Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass And The 2012 Election

David Brooks wrote a column earlier this week, ruminating about changing attitudes towards authority.  “Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following. Democratic followership is also built on a series of paradoxes: that we are all created equal but that we also elevate those who are extraordinary; that we choose our leaders but also have to defer to them and trust their discretion; that we’re proud individuals but only really thrive as a group, organized and led by just authority.”  

Brooks uses the Lincoln and Jefferson Monuments as metaphors for the expression of just authority-“strong and powerful, but also humanized”.  These were men who used their power in the service of higher ideals, and the physical structures reflect that.  He contrasts that with the more inward, more self-centered, less expressive modern monuments of Eisenhower, Roosevelt, King, and the War memorials.

Brooks can get carried away with himself, and the metaphor is strained, but he is on to something here.   There is an ocean of difference between unquestioning acceptance of authority that goes along with a hierarchical structure and reflexive opposition to anyone in leadership who voices even the smallest degree of independence.  We are living in an era where we spend a great deal of time thumbing our nose at authority-particularly authority exercised by members of the opposing party.  And we do it in the name of common sense-our common sense, because if it is clear to us, it should be clear to them. 

This is not new; in the 19^th Century we had a codification movement-every man could be a lawyer or judge if the laws were written simply enough.  Whole political careers were built on “simple truths”-there’s a brilliant biographical essay on William Jennings Bryan by the late Richard Hofstadter that portrays Bryan not just as the “common man”, but as a common man, undistinguished in thought or idea, holding to simple concepts, a great voice for an unexceptional mind.

Unfortunately, the 2012 election already seems irrevocably closed to the marketplace of ideas.  Mr. Obama has been a disappointment-yes, he has real accomplishments, and yes, the Republicans, motivated by blind hatred and crass opportunism, have done whatever they could to see him fail, even at the cost of the nation’s well being.  But with all that, he has fallen well short of our expectations-he could do better, if we demanded it. Mr. Romney seems nothing more than a chameleon man, ready to invest in whatever principles bring him the maximum electoral return.   He wants the job; he will do and say what it takes to get it.  His passion seems to be for winning, not for using power in the service of higher ideals.  He, also, could do better, if we demanded it.   But we don’t, so there is no titanic contest of ideas here.

Brooks’ piece reminded me of another Lincoln Memorial, far smaller and less well known.  It was erected in 1876, with the contributions coming entirely from freed slaves, many who served in the Union Army, and is formally called the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln.  The statue itself is unremarkable and even controversial, with its depiction of a former slave at Lincoln’s feet.  Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave turned reformer, abolitionist, writer and statesmen, spoke at the dedication.

Douglass gave a speech like none other I can think of.  Douglass did not just praise, but criticized, sometimes harshly.  Lincoln, he said, was “preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.”  Lincoln held many of the prejudices of his time.  Lincoln would have sacrificed the slave’s freedom if he could have preserved the Union.  Lincoln was late in delivering the Emancipation Proclamation.  Lincoln was “ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country.” At length, and in great detail, Douglass goes on, a litany of Lincoln’s failures and flaws.

And yet, Douglass draws back.  He takes Lincoln’s measure, he judges the man in the context of his time and the impossible challenges of his office.   “I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”

How did Lincoln do this?  How did he get past the “voice of doubt and fear all around him?”  Douglass answers his own question.  Lincoln, “had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.”

With less than five months to go before the election, I wish Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney would take a few minutes, read the words of Frederick Douglass, and talk to us all like adults.

If they do, perhaps they may draw the comforts of history, or as Douglass says, “The honest and comprehensive statesman, clearly discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly endeavoring to do his whole duty, though covered and blistered with reproaches, may safely leave his course to the silent judgment of time.”

It worked for Lincoln.

MM

Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, And The 2012 Election

Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass And The 2012 Election

David Brooks wrote a column earlier this week, ruminating about changing attitudes towards authority.  “Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following. Democratic followership is also built on a series of paradoxes: that we are all created equal but that we also elevate those who are extraordinary; that we choose our leaders but also have to defer to them and trust their discretion; that we’re proud individuals but only really thrive as a group, organized and led by just authority.”  

Brooks uses the Lincoln and Jefferson Monuments as metaphors for the expression of just authority-“strong and powerful, but also humanized”.  These were men who used their power in the service of higher ideals, and the physical structures reflect that.  He contrasts that with the more inward, more self-centered, less expressive modern monuments of Eisenhower, Roosevelt, King, and the War memorials.

Brooks can get carried away with himself, and the metaphor is strained, but he is on to something here.   There is an ocean of difference between unquestioning acceptance of authority that goes along with a hierarchical structure and reflexive opposition to anyone in leadership who voices even the smallest degree of independence.  We are living in an era where we spend a great deal of time thumbing our nose at authority-particularly authority exercised by members of the opposing party.  And we do it in the name of common sense-our common sense, because if it is clear to us, it should be clear to them. 

This is not new; in the 19^th Century we had a codification movement-every man could be a lawyer or judge if the laws were written simply enough.  Whole political careers were built on “simple truths”-there’s a brilliant biographical essay on William Jennings Bryan by the late Richard Hofstadter that portrays Bryan not just as the “common man”, but as a common man, undistinguished in thought or idea, holding to simple concepts, a great voice for an unexceptional mind.

Unfortunately, the 2012 election already seems irrevocably closed to the marketplace of ideas.  Mr. Obama has been a disappointment-yes, he has real accomplishments, and yes, the Republicans, motivated by blind hatred and crass opportunism, have done whatever they could to see him fail, even at the cost of the nation’s well being.  But with all that, he has fallen well short of our expectations-he could do better, if we demanded it. Mr. Romney seems nothing more than a chameleon man, ready to invest in whatever principles bring him the maximum electoral return.   He wants the job; he will do and say what it takes to get it.  His passion seems to be for winning, not for using power in the service of higher ideals.  He, also, could do better, if we demanded it.   But we don’t, so there is no titanic contest of ideas here.

Brooks’ piece reminded me of another Lincoln Memorial, far smaller and less well known.  It was erected in 1876, with the contributions coming entirely from freed slaves, many who served in the Union Army, and is formally called the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln.  The statue itself is unremarkable and even controversial, with its depiction of a former slave at Lincoln’s feet.  Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave turned reformer, abolitionist, writer and statesmen, spoke at the dedication.

Douglass gave a speech like none other I can think of.  Douglass did not just praise, but criticized, sometimes harshly.  Lincoln, he said, was “preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.”  Lincoln held many of the prejudices of his time.  Lincoln would have sacrificed the slave’s freedom if he could have preserved the Union.  Lincoln was late in delivering the Emancipation Proclamation.  Lincoln was “ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country.” At length, and in great detail, Douglass goes on, a litany of Lincoln’s failures and flaws.

And yet, Douglass draws back.  He takes Lincoln’s measure, he judges the man in the context of his time and the impossible challenges of his office.   “I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”

How did Lincoln do this?  How did he get past the “voice of doubt and fear all around him?”  Douglass answers his own question.  Lincoln, “had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.”

With less than five months to go before the election, I wish Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney would take a few minutes, read the words of Frederick Douglass, and talk to us all like adults.

If they do, perhaps they may draw the comforts of history, or as Douglass says, “The honest and comprehensive statesman, clearly discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly endeavoring to do his whole duty, though covered and blistered with reproaches, may safely leave his course to the silent judgment of time.”

It worked for Lincoln.

MM

Scott Walker And The Greeks: Towards A More Imperfect Union

Scott Walker And The Greeks: Towards A More Imperfect Union

The last couple of weeks have forced us to pay attention to two nasty civil wars-the deepening economic crisis in Europe, and the recall election in Wisconsin.  Both demonstrate what happens when deep structural issues, entrenched positions, raw ambitions, and cold reality collide.

The New York Times columnists David Brooks and Paul Krugman have been focusing on Europe, entitlement reform, austerity and economic stimulus.   Brooks has just written something on Wisconsin’s governor Scott Walker, a hero to GOP hardliners for his slash and burn tactics.  

Krugman’s position has been consistent since the 2008 crash; governments, here and in Europe,  need to do what they can to stimulate their economies so as to get the maximum amount of money into the hands of the most people, where, presumably, they can spend it and stimulate organic growth.  Krugman belives austerity (whether it is imposed on the Greeks or domestically) is the worst remedy in time of recession-by sucking money out of the system, you deepen the cycle of decline.  This isn’t just a liberal view-his work is supported by Desmond Lachman of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who adds that tax increases also have an adverse impact.  Krugman and Lachman understand something that the austerity fanatics refuse to recognize.  The less people have to spend, the less they will spend, and that has a ripple effect. If you cut Granny’s Social Security payment by $100, and she is a member of the 1%, it’s irrelevant.  But if she gets by every month with just a little extra to spare, that $100 is real.  So, she stretches out her visits to the beauty parlor, and goes to the movies once a month instead of twice, and skips the Sunday brunch at the diner.  She still makes do because she’s frugal.  But every one of the businesses who serve her take in a little less every month.  With enough Grannies skipping the matinee and doing home permanents, the marginal reduction in revenue starts to become real-tips are down, profits decline, small businesses are pushed towards the brink. Granny is a job creator.

Brooks is both a Euro-skeptic and a “frugalist.”  He sees Greece’s hair shirt as necessary, but the EU as essentially doomed.  Germans are not Spaniards are not Greeks are not French. Without a common culture, economic control emanating from Brussels and Berlin, wrapped in a Euro bowtie, is just another form of statism. 

Brooks holds to an ideal that an educated society can achieve its highest aspirations through shared values of personal virtue and the free market.  That is not possible in Europe, but here, we will all be Calvinists; prudent, thrifty, hardworking,  and possessing moral rectitude. Brooks wants to virtue us out of deficit spending, middle class entitlement programs, etc. He thinks Granny should have a little less, but not be forced to eat cat food.  And he wants her to volunteer for it out of a sense of public duty.

Walker would laugh at both Brooks and Krugman.  He doesn’t care about Granny, unless she’s has a trust fund. He’s not into theory. And why compromise when you are in charge?  Government is the mechanism to reward your friends and destroy your opponents.  He took his oath of office and promptly turned his death ray on his enemies-the public sector unions.  In the name of fiscal probity he slashed compensation, benefits, pensions, and just to stick the knife in further, collective bargaining rights  He exempted the police and firemen because they were more likely to vote Republican.  He plowed the savings into tax cuts for business and the affluent.  This set off a titanic battle between him and the unions, culminating in this last Tuesday’s recall vote, which he won in a cakewalk. 

Walker is now a reverse Robin Hood GOP rock star. He’s going to get a prime speaking spot at the GOP convention, and he’s being talked up for a role in the Romney administration.  On cue, conservative columnists have been writing fawning paeans the likes of which haven’t been seen since the romantic poetry of Byron.

So, what does our cerebral and communitarian David Brooks make of all this?  Well, he’s a little queasy, even though he’s a fan of austerity. And he is too smart not to realize that scapegoating public employees alone is not enough to close the deficit.  But he’s willing to take the win, not unlike the classics professor who is also a hockey fan.  Sending out one’s goon to punch out the opposing team’s star is a tad coarse, but the sight of the Stanley Cup being hoisted high tends to assuage any feelings of guilt.

As for Krugman, he’s viscerally disgusted by the greed. And he’s intellectually appalled by the policy failures, which is more relevant.  Because for all his knee jerk liberalism, Krugman knows his numbers.  Austerity does not correlate with growth.  Reagan himself understood that.

And, interestingly enough, that’s exactly what’s happening in Greece.  There is no question that bloated public payrolls and the social welfare system have played a key role in pushing the country towards the economic brink, and they will have to be reformed. But, since the new austerity measures demanded by the Germans and the technocrats have been adopted, the deficit has grown even wider.  Tax receipts are significantly down, in part because of more evasion, but more importantly, because economic activity is down.  Grandma Rallou and friends aren’t spending either.  Krugman is right.

So, what is the answer?  If Krugman is right about austerity, and Brooks is right that we still need to figure out how to reform taxes, spending, and the big entitlement programs, what next? 

In Wisconsin, it’s Walker carrying the day, and his win is seen as a signal to other GOP Governors that now is the time to milk the cow and kneecap their enemies.   Unfortunately, that’s going to be a signal to the Democrats, if they ever return to power.  Never compromise, just take.

How about the rest of us, the folk who would like a better economy, a more rational taxing and spending policy, a future for ourselves and our kids?

There are a couple of hopeful signs. The politicians may not be paying attention to us, but some of us are starting to pay attention to them.  There’s one other odd number in the Wisconsin exit polls.  17% of the Walker voters said they would vote for Obama. Think about that for a second. 

Maybe Wisconsin really is, in the great Republican Progressive Robert La Follette’s phrase, a “laboratory for Democracy.”

MM