Krugman: State of Delusion

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Sat, 04 Feb 2006 08:03:15 -0800

[Zepps_News] Krugman: State of Delusion

 

 

 

 

Paul Krugman: State of Delusion

 

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, February 3, 2006

 

http://www.topplebush.com/oped2519.shtml

 

 

 

 

So President Bush's plan to reduce imports of Middle East oil turns out

to be no more substantial than his plan -- floated two years ago, then

flushed down the memory hole -- to send humans to Mars.

 

But what did you expect? After five years in power, the Bush

administration is still -- perhaps more than ever -- run by Mayberry

Machiavellis, who don't take the business of governing seriously.

 

Here's the story on oil: In the State of the Union address, Mr. Bush

suggested that " cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol " and other

technologies would allow us " to replace more than 75 percent of our oil

imports from the Middle East. "

 

But the next day, officials explained that he didn't really mean what

he said. " This was purely an example, " said Samuel Bodman, the energy

secretary. And the administration has actually been scaling back the

very research that Mr. Bush hyped on Tuesday night: the National

Renewable Energy Laboratory is about to lay off staff because of cuts

to its budget.

 

" A veteran researcher, " reports The New York Times, " said the staff

had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in

wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. "

 

Why announce impressive sounding goals when you have no plan to

achieve them? The best guess is that the energy " plan " was hastily

thrown together to give Mr. Bush something positive to say.

 

For weeks administration sources told reporters that the State of the

Union address would focus on health care. But at the last minute the

White House might have realized that its health care proposals, based

on the idea that Americans have too much insurance, would suffer the

same political fate as its attempt to privatize Social Security.

( " Congress, " Mr. Bush said, " did not act last year on my proposal to

save Social Security. " Democrats responded with a standing ovation.)

 

So Mr. Bush's speechwriters were told to replace the health care

proposals with fine words about energy independence, words not backed by

any actual policy.

 

What about the rest of the speech? The State of the Union is normally

an occasion for boasting about an administration's achievements. But

what's a speechwriter to do when there are no achievements?

 

One answer is to pretend that the bad stuff never happened. The

Medicare drug benefit is Mr. Bush's largest domestic initiative to

date. It is also a disaster: at enormous cost, the administration has

managed to make millions of elderly Americans worse off. So drugs went

unmentioned in the State of the Union.

 

Another answer is to rely on evasive language. In Iraq, Mr. Bush said,

we have " changed our approach to reconstruction. "

 

In fact, reconstruction has failed. Almost three years after the war

began, oil production is well below prewar levels, Baghdad is getting

only an average of 3.2 hours of electricity a day, and more than 60

percent of water and sanitation projects have been canceled.

 

So now, having squandered billions in Iraqi oil revenue as well as

American taxpayer dollars, we have told the Iraqis that from here on

in it is their problem. America's would-be Marshall Plan in Iraq,

reports The Los Angeles Times, " is drawing to a close this year with

much of its promise unmet and no plans to extend its funding. " I guess

you can call that a change in approach.

 

There is a common theme underlying the botched reconstruction of Iraq,

the botched response to Katrina (which Mr. Bush never mentioned), the

botched drug program and the nonexistent energy program.

 

John DiIulio, the former White House head of faith-based policy,

explained it more than three years ago. He told the reporter Ron

Suskind how this administration operates: " There is no precedent in

any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete

lack of a policy apparatus. ...I heard many, many staff discussions

but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were

no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. "

 

In other words, this administration is all politics and no policy. It

knows how to attain power, but has no idea how to govern. That is why

the administration was caught unaware when Katrina hit, and why it was

totally unprepared for the predictable problems with its drug plan. It

is why Mr. Bush announced an energy plan with no substance behind it.

And it is why the state of the union -- the thing itself and not the

speech -- is so grim.

 

--

 

 

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court

order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about

chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

 

 

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

 

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