Chess? Checkers? Russian Roulette?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

The overall Obama economic strategy is coming into focus and it is, as many had hoped, something of a liberal Trojan horse.

The administration is using unrealistic economic projections that nobody believes and political gamesmanship with the deficit to create a theoretical space where everything Obama wanted to do anyway makes sense in the context of the economic emergency.

It's clever assuming one thing: That the economic crisis has been mis-stated... that a sturdy recovery will commence very soon and that nurturing the wing-nut politics of deficit-grievance will not paint Obama into a corner.

If the economy is going to recover nicely without too much fuss then we will have moved a lot of the Democratic agenda under cover of the crisis.

If, however, the economy is as bad as everyone (including, ostensibly, Barack Obama) thinks then we are sitting on a political powder keg. If you humor deficit hawks on the brink of a depression (cynical even by political standards) then you will have earned what happens when deficits come in at twice your estimates. If developments necessitate scrapping the tax increases you get the full political down-side of passing them without the benefit of collecting them.

I have been quite critical of the "Obama is lying about everything because he's a genius" school of divining the deceptive master plan hidden behind the public pronouncements. I prefer to take him at face value, for good or ill. (It's not that I don't think fooling the people is smart politics. It is. But that doesn't make it attractive or compatible with the ideals of liberal democracy. And it recalls a poker situation which is the "if he knows that I know that he knows..." recursive over-analysis. Most of the time someone raises it is because he has a hand.)

But in this case I have to believe that the approach cannot be taken at face value. It is almost impossible that Obama actually believes any of these numbers. He can't be THAT isolated.

So this is indeed a "crisis not going to waste." And that's cool. We will have accomplished a lot of things I favor.

But there will be trouble ahead if it turns out that the boogey-man used to move our agenda isn't a boogey-man at all, but a very real monster.