Douthat's sadistic critique

Ross Douthat's smugness has entered the clinical stage:

Four years ago, the Obama presidency was hailed as the beginning of an extended liberal renaissance....

There is no world in which [this] could have been perfectly realized. But the ways in which they’ve been disappointed have delivered some hard lessons. It isn’t just that Obama failed to live up to the (frankly impossible) standard set by his 2008 campaign, and the media adoration that accompanied it. It’s that the nature of his failures speak to the limits of the liberal project, and the tensions and contradictions within the liberal coalition.

Yes of course there were internal tensions and contradictions. They're Democrats. Disputes erupted from the inside, as Douthat is all too happy to note, on immigration and cap and trade.

But he goes on from there--chronic worries about the deficit, for instance. Yes, there were and there are deficit worries; but the deficit hysteria that prevented additional Keynesian efforts was the exclusive creation of the folks who brought us these ungovernable deficits in the first place. This, Douthat neglects.

He then farther twists and smugly insults some more:

[T]here was the failure of [the] stimulus bill to deliver anything like the kind of rebound that Obama’s technocrats confidently projected. This failure isn’t necessarily an indictment of the theory behind Keynesian economics. But at the very least it exposes two limitations on Keynesianism in practice: The difficulties that even experts can have assessing the true state of the economy, and the ways in which the push and pull of democratic politics makes it difficult to simply keep throwing money at a problem.

First, Obama's "technocrats"--others call them economists, but "technocrat" is so pleasingly sinister sounding, isn't it?--projected from computer models based on unknowingly outdated, flawed data. Subsequent, more accurate data, Mr. Douthat, bespoke a vastly greater catastrophe that your party had inflicted upon us. Can't argue with you there, and that is, after all, your argument. Other economists suspected this greater catastrophe and, accordingly, urged a greater stimulus. But, naturally, your party woud have none of it, so effective recommendations were pared for recklessly political, not intelligently "technocratic," reasons. Anyway, the stimulus bill then performed as the model projected, thus confirming--not blurring--the uncanny precision of theoretical Keynesian economics. And Mr.Douthat, Keynesian economics is a trifle more complicated than your cynical, sarcastic assessment of one that "simply keep[s] throwing money at a problem."

I'll skip over yet more of Douthat's revisionist history and go straight to the kicker:

Again, every administration has its share of disappointments, and every ideology has to make concessions to political reality. But what we don’t see in this campaign cycle is much soul-searching from Democrats about the ways in which their agenda hasn’t worked out as planned.

Instead, in a country facing a continued unemployment crisis and a looming deficit crunch, liberals have rallied behind a White House whose only real jobs program is "stay the course" and whose plan to deal with long-term deficits relies on the woefully insufficient promise to tax the 1 percent.

This lack of a plausible vision, more than his stutters and missed opportunities, is what doomed the president in last week’s debate.

Douthat's analysis is indescribably sadistic. To the extent that Democrats have experienced notably pressing failures, virtually all the blame, without having to search any souls, can be laid directly at your party's feet, Mr. Douthat. The GOP has premeditatedly acted as vicious saboteurs of a better tomorrow. Should you ever acknowledge that thunderingly conspicuous fact of political and socioeconomic life, then perhaps some credibility can be restored to your soul.

Further, Obama has of late deliberately restrained bold visions through positive government only because of electoral exigencies. True, with hindsight's benefit, we know he should have counter-acted your party's unconscionable lies and anti-government hysteria earlier. At the time, he didn't know how susceptible to unvarnished GOP bullshit the swing vote would be. He knows now; he's known it since 2010. And he's had to cope with it, as delicately as possible, because the slightest bit of visionary boldness could push this precarious nation straight into the predatory arms of yet another colossally inept Republican president--a prospect which you, Mr. Douthat, so thoughtlessly and persistently embrace.

Comments

[Marc McKenzie]

A line from THE GODFATHER (the novel) sums up my thoughts on Douthat:

"The f***ing son-of-a-b***h, the f***ing son-of-a-b***h."

Please pardon the crude language, but he deserves no less.

[Robert Lipscomb]

Douthat is simply humping the leg of the fundamental truths of this campaign.

We liberals, progressives and socialists finally have a president who has implemented an impressively liberal, progressive and socialist agenda and presidential candidate who is willing to support that agenda and to attack Reaganomics.

The Republicans via the Romney campaign have launched their version of the Battle of the Bulge, but Obama and the Chicago Boys are not typical liberal, progressive and socialist bed-wetters. They have been expecting a street fight and are ready for it.

The Romney / GOP campaign has exposed their weakness. They do not believe in neo-Reaganomics - at least not as a viable campaign policy platform. So, they have flipped, flopped, lied and hidden. Having conceded that, the Chicago Boys are making the campaign about trust and the real, hidden agenda of the GOP.

Look, the polls said things were about tied going into the conventions. Then the Dems explained what was really going down. That is why they need the Big Lie.

OMG, we are ONLY a 2.75 to 1 favorite to win.

http://www.oddschecker.com/specials/politics-and-election/us-presidential-election/winner

Good Lord, people. :-)

[AnneJ]

Where to begin? I don't want to read the whole column so I'll just go off of the excerpts that were posted here. This is nothing less than abusive relationship. Republicans do the beating first and then start in with the verbal abuse to get into the victim's head so that they abandon all hope of ending the relationship. It is the victim's fault for being abused and it is the victim's fault for failing to do anything about it.

Oh and by the way where was Douthat in 2008 when Obama was elected? I don't remember the president promising radical changes overnight. He said right from the beginning that it took this country a long time to get where it was at that time and would take a long time and effort on everyone's part to turn things around for the better. If he failed at anything it was his naive assumption that the republicans cared just as much as he did about fixing the problems ills and finding compromise to get things done, but they were having none of it. Every time he extended his hand in bipartisanship they slapped it back by calling him a socialist, communist, Kenyan muslim questioning his very existence as a U.S. citizen let alone trying to work with him. Does Douthat deny all of that? I don't know why they couldn't have just helped put this country back on the road to a more robust recovery and then tried to take all the credit for it. In retrospect that would have seemed more respectable. But then again who among us had a clue how nasty these guys were going to be after 2008?

[Peter G]

Why PM you'd think from the tenor of this post that fellows like Douthat and Brooks were supping with the devil. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Douthat is the maitre'd and Brooks the Somelier. Rubin is, obviously, busing tables.

[Robert Lipscomb]

@PeterG: LOL

[Marcia E]

Anne J:

The metaphor about an abusive relationship is apt; but in the case of the left's response to Obama's debate performance, it's equivalent to developing full-blown Stockholm Syndrome after a single half-hearted slap on the fanny.