One of the marks of rightwing politics -- whether we're talking about Germany in the '30s, or Latin America in the '70s, or American for the past three decades, we're talking about an effort to impose collective amnesia on the public. "Turn the page" was the cry on the right in Santiago when Chile tried to impose justice on Pinochet and his followers. Collective forgetfulness -- amnesia -- has been the rule in the US since Reagan. We are incredulous when Romney tries to blame job losses during the Bush administration on Obama, but complicit when we allow the ship of lies to sail on.
... Mr. Romney tried to make a closed drywall factory in Ohio a symbol of the Obama administration’s economic failure. It was a symbol, all right — but not in the way he intended. ...
...First of all, many reporters quickly noted a point that Mr. Romney somehow failed to mention: George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was president when the factory in question was closed. Does the Romney campaign expect Americans to blame President Obama for his predecessor’s policy failure?
Yes, it does. Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr. Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of 2009, that is, before any of the new administration’s policies had time to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don’t remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall. ...
...That factory is still closed, said a Romney adviser, because of the failure of Obama policies “to really get this economy going again.”
Actually, that factory would probably still be closed even if the economy had done better — drywall is mainly used in new houses, and while the economy may be coming back, the Bush-era housing bubble isn’t. ...Paul Krugman, NYT___
Let's hope the French, who are about to vote, remember how Sarkozy handled the French economy during his time in office. Maybe they'll be smarter than Americans about willful amnesia.
I don’t know much about French politics. From here, however, it looks as if Sarkozy has a very clear idea of what he should be doing on economic policy, while Hollande doesn’t.
And this is a reason to root for Hollande. ...Krugman
