There Is No Cat - Prescription for an ailing party and country

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Saturday, November 9, 2002

Prescription for an ailing party and country

Paul Krugman's column in yesterday's The New York Times seemed to sum up The Current Situation very clearly to me.

What hasn't changed is the fundamental wrongness of this administration's direction. Too many pundits, confusing politics with policy -- or engaging in sheer power worship -- imagine that a party that wins a battle must be doing something right. But it ain't necessarily so. Political victory doesn't make a bad policy good; it doesn't make a lie the truth.

He even offers a prescription for the Democrats (something that's admittedly not in short supply at the moment, but I like the approach Krugman takes here):

It's obvious what the Democrats should stand for: Above all, they should be the defenders of ordinary Americans against the power of our burgeoning plutocracy. That means hammering the Republicans as they back off on corporate reform -- which they will.

Whether the Democrats actually do any of this stuff is anyone's guess. But if they don't do something like what Krugman proposes, the so-called emerging Democratic majority may be a long time coming. It should help, though, that the Republicans backing off on corporate reform should, sadly, ensure that the economy remains in the toilet as retail investors continue to stay away from the market in droves. Not that I want that to happen, but it seems like an inevitable consequence of Republican policies. Bad for business, good for businessmen.

Posted at 2:58 AM

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What do you mean there is no cat?

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

- Albert Einstein, explaining radio