By consistently conflating short-term and long-term economic goals, the president and his party may have missed an opportunity to explain the crucial difference between the two, and they have all but ensured that voters this fall will give them credit for neither. ...Matt Bai
That's a wonderful (awful) insight on Matt Bai's part. Damn it!
Some say the most important thing any of us can do is "just pay attention." I think that' s what Obama failed to do. And he'll pay the price.
What all of this means for the country is that, even if Mr. Obama ultimately succeeds in stabilizing the economy, he faces a political climate that seems to be growing more hostile to the scale of public investment that many economists say the nation needs to keep pace with foreign competitors.
And that, you would think, is the very definition of a crisis having gone to waste.