Paul Krugman, "This Republican Economy": The Buck Doesn't Stop Here

Paul Krugman is a master of smoke and mirrors.

Obama has been president for the past three and a half years, and for the first two of those years he controlled both the House and Senate, but in his latest New York Times op-ed, "This Republican Economy" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/opinion/krugman-this-republican-economy.html), Paul would have us believe that the current economic debacle is all the Republicans' fault. Krugman even tars the Republicans for defrauding the American electorate:

"So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn’t let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed."

The Republicans didn't let Obama get away with big-spending policies? Oh really? True, total government spending is going down because near-bankrupt state and local governments can't print money, but meanwhile US debt exceeds $15 trillion; the federal deficit for fiscal 2011 was some $1.65 trillion, equal to "10.9% of gross domestic product, the largest deficit as a share of the economy since World War II" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703361904576143253522341850.html); and in February 2012 the US government recorded its highest ever monthly deficit of some $229 billion (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/08/government-records-highest-ever-monthly-deficit/).

Spend more? The problem is that ultimately "someone" will have to pay for this. Meanwhile, allow Obama to make more Solyndra-type loans? I don't think so.

In furtherance of his grand conspiracy theory, Krugman states:

"For some reason, however, neither the press nor Mr. Obama’s political team has done a very good job of exposing the con."

America's left-leaning press and Obama's team of political dilettantes, i.e. Axelrod and Plouffe, have been unable to expose the con? The fools! Or maybe there is no "con" to expose. Maybe it's time for Obama to take responsibility for what he has wrought. In August 2011 Obama declared
(http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-3445_162-20095106.html):

"'It frustrates people, understandably, when you've got an unemployment rate that is still too high, an economy that's not growing fast enough. And for me to argue, 'Look, we've actually made the right decisions, things would have been much worse has we not made those decisions,' that's not that satisfying if you don't have a job right now,' the president said. 'And I understand that, and I expect to be judged a year from now on whether or not things have continued to get better.'"

Well, not surprisingly Obama no longer wants to take responsibility and no longer wishes to be judged "on whether or not things have continued to get better."

Krugman concludes that Obama and his political team's "best bet, surely, is to do a Harry Truman, to run against the 'do-nothing' Republican Congress that has, in reality, blocked proposals — for tax cuts as well as more spending — that would have made 2012 a much better year than it’s turning out to be."

Or in other words, Krugman would have Obama pass the blame on to someone else. Obama should declare, "The buck doesn't stop here," and instead battologize the immortal words of Homer Simpson, "I didn't do it."

The problem is that Americans are far smarter than Krugman thinks.