Go for the Juggler, Obama

Paul Krugman has a piece in the Times this morning advocating that President-elect Obama pursue a full-blooded “progressive agenda.”

In opposition to the warnings of the center-right pundits who recommend that Obama go slow and not attempt too much change, Krugman echoes most citizens in our democracy who advise or more accurately demand: Change.

That rabble! And it’s all going so well.

Seriously, in light of the gargantuan problems facing our country and the irrefutable electoral mandate, in which direction do you think Obama will direct his legislative and administrative agendas?

Putting aside the ludicrous notion that we are a center-right country that discredited-by-facts pundits are spewing (and didn’t we just have an election or two these last two years repudiating the thesis?), Obama can be counted on to go for the juggler.

That sage advice decided upon by the American people in the 2008 election is called an “electoral mandate.”

Following the radical interventions of the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve System into the financial systems (without which we would be looking at, at best, a deep L-shaped recession as critical confidence dissipated), Obama is assembling the toughest political operation available to fight for the people who elected him to bring about change, and offer hope.

Obama, contra Bush, will save Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and expand the health care system to: Provide health care for more Americans.

Obama will likely push an array of innovations across the board that will be geared to help working Americans achieve the American Dream, or at least give them a fighting chance to survive and prosper during what we hope will only be a short-lived U-shaped recession.

The fact is that Bush was spot-on correct to bail-out critical streams of the financial system.

And Obama is equally spot-on correct to directly bail out the American public by giving them a fighting chance to make their children’s’ futures brighter than what may seem apparent during these next couple of years.

Cries of “welfare” and “socialism” or other such nonsense emitted by the rightwing who saw the results of their economic fantasies and orthodoxies obscenely played out in front of the American people these last 10 years will not sit well because voters aren’t likely to soon forget the great bail-out.

As Krugman says, “… a serious progressive agenda — call it a new New Deal — isn’t just economically possible, it’s exactly what the economy needs.”

And politically it’s exactly what enough politicians require to stay in office.
- via mal contends