My impression from reading this is that the unbearable burden of being Fred Hiatt has reached the point where Fred Hiatt can barely endure having to be Fred Hiatt, but since his job depends on being Fred Hiatt, Fred Hiatt he will be.
Also, asking Obama to do what he has already done, is doing, and will continue to do is not a valid form of criticism or commentary. It’s especially bad when you feel compelled to acknowledge as much in your column and yet go ahead and do it anyway.
Nailed it. How embarrassing for Hyatt, and for the Post.
It should be embarrassing for them but they are hermetically sealed in their beltway bubble such that they have no clue how truly terrible they are.
What a piece of crap that piece is! From my lofty and elderly perspective let me assure you that people were wringing their hands over the first $100B budget in the 1960’s (President Johnson, I believe). IIRC, that budget didn’t include Social Security but did include USPS which was subsidized at that time. Newspaper editorialists were also having the vapors over 2.5% to 3% inflation. Well, now I can compare prices then to prices now by adding a zero to the end. i.e. A fast food hambueger was 25 cents then, with the Whopper at a lofty 30 cents (now $2.97). A Coke was 12 cents (including Illinois 2 cents bottle deposit), roughly a buck now. A $3000 Impala is now a $32,000 Impala, but includes automatic transmission, air conditioning, and power windows and doors, all of which were optional in the 1960’s, as was the radio (a proper case for hedonic adjustment). Rents were in the $100 range and my first house in 1971 was $36,500 (new), now $259K according to Zillow. I expect that when my grandchildren are my age there will be at least another zero on the end of all those prices. Of course, some things were much more expensive. A color TV was $600 then but not $5,000 now. A computer (slower than now with less magnetic storage and only 256 (not G or M or even K, 256!) bytes of semiconductor memory was millions of dollars. That’s probably the most extreme counter-example.
The whole point is that doom-sayers have been around forever saying that the government can’t afford to protect any but the most wealthy of citizens and that inflation will destroy the nation unless working people become peons. A pox on them all. Literally.
I’m definitely saving this for the next time I hear this sort of pushback. I wish I could cram it down Larry Kudlow’s throat.
Thank you for the high praise!
To the corporate DC punditocracy and talking head lice, “leadership” means Obama capitulating to Repubs on the sequester and ordering the Dems to go along. Someone’s gotta cave, and of course it can’t be the “conservative” movement!
And where are the calls for “leadership” from Speaker Drunken Boner? Or Mitchipoo? Only the prez can “lead”, apparently….
The President and Congress get no mention or credit from Hiatt for the rather massive deficit reductions and spending cuts they’ve done already.
And, of course, the debt is the most important thing ever and must take priority over job creation.
Sociopathic asshole. Again.