His recent column purporting to tell the "whole truth" about our problems (like he'd know the truth if it drove a Lexus straight into a freaking olive tree planted on the front lawn of his estate) says:
Beginning with Eisenhower and continuing to some degree with every cold war president, we used the cold war and the Russian threat as a reason and motivator to do big, hard things together at home — to do nation-building in America. We used it to build the interstate highway system, put a man on the moon, push out the boundaries of science, teach new languages, maintain fiscal discipline and, when needed, raise taxes. We won the cold war with collective action.
George W. Bush did the opposite. He used 9/11 as an excuse to lower taxes, to start two wars that — for the first time in our history — were not paid for by tax increases, and to create a costly new entitlement in Medicare prescription drugs. Imagine where we’d be today if on the morning of 9/12 Bush had announced (as some of us advocated) a “Patriot Tax” of $1 per gallon of gas to pay for education, infrastructure and government research, to help finance our wars and to slash our dependence on Middle East oil. Gasoline in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, averaged $1.66 a gallon.
My God. I'm nearly stunned to speechlessness by the sheer rock-pounding stupidity of it all. It takes blaming Bush to levels that I think even the Executive Office of the President would find too far fetched to peddle.
"To some degree" all presidents used the Cold War to unite us in big projects? Carter? And let's not mention that Johnson united us to fight communism in Vietnam, eh Tom? And by sticking to presidents, Tom can ignore the intense resistance much of the Democratic Party embarked on to stop the Cold War so we could live in peace with the Soviet Union (whose leaders really weren't much different than us, right? Moral equivalence ran rampant then) rather than try to defeat them as the Evil Empire that deserved to die. In the end, despite early cooperation by both parties in the Cold War, Republicans won the Cold War with darn little help from the loyal opposition.
And what's with the part about starting two wars? I thought the party line was that Afghanistan was the "good" and "necessary" war in response to 9/11 and only Iraq was the "war of choice."
And for the first time in our history we fought wars not paid for by new taxes? Wasn't cutting taxes a "stimulus" to the economy in recession from the dot.com bubble bursting (ahem, from the Clinton era) and that little thing called the September 11, 2001 terror attacks? Just what are Tom's thoughts on stimulus and defict spending, anyway? Hmm?
And even on his own terms this argument is stupid. The Persian Gulf War? Vietnam? We avoided deficit spending to pay for those wars? And the bigger picture is that we raised taxes in past wars to avoid going further in debt not instead of going in debt. We raised taxes and slashed domestic spending and production (rationing anyone) and borrowed money because war cost so much as a percentage of our GDP. We had to take more from the people. Today, war spending is a tiny fraction of our economy. We could have raised taxes, but even War on Terror spending levels are below our Cold War levels of "peacetime" spending. That would have been taxes of choice and not taxes of necessity. And let's hear Friedman call for putting our economy on a war footing by retooling those Lexus factories for MRAPs. Or want to opine on repealing that big government drug program that Bush pushed instead of paying for the wars? I won't hold my breath.
No, Johnny One-Note simply wants an excuse for a gas tax. As if even our current gas prices without his tax have pushed us to magically find alternatives to fossil fuels. Any comments on the Canada pipeline, Tom, for slashing our dependence on Middle East Oil? God almighty, he's a friggin' idiot.
Still, you have to admire Friedman's audacity. If only Bush had raised the gas tax by a buck, the anti-war Left would still be united in defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban. But he didn't, so advocating a retreat from Afghanistan without ensuring victory is OK--and Bush's fault, really. However brainless his opinions on foreign policy (and domestic policy--and I'll assume pretty much everything including moustache maintenance issues) are, he at least has a political cleverness of reflecting and transmitting Upper West Side liberal conventional wisdom.
I sometimes try to imagine where we'd we'd be today without Thomas Friedman's flawed opinions. Sadly, I just can't drink enough to induce that level of reality-bending happiness without exceeding toxity levels that would (however mercifully) kill me.
I must say it again. I won't say you can't drown in a pool of Thomas Friedman's wisdom. But you would have to be drunk and face down to do so.
UPDATE: Santelli think Friedman's answer in this exchange is "idiotic." Well, today his answer. Tomorrow? Who knows what kind of progress we'll get? Bay steps, people. Baby steps.
It frightens me that people in power read Friedman--and not for laughs, I hasten to add.
UPDATE: Link to Friedman's article fixed. I'm not sure how it got that screwed up.
