One of Hugh Hewitt’s listeners catches Paul Krugman “liberating” a catchy phrase or two from the late William Butler Yeats.
Reeling, the president went to Virginia to try and aid the sinking Deeds campaign for governor and revive the administration’s dreams of single-payer but delivered some lines that were instant classic examples of “Chicago bipartisanship.”
“I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking,” the president graciously announced. “I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.” Perhaps the president forgets when the busted and broken Medicare and Medicaid systems were installed, but LBJ is already out of the way.
Staggered and worried, congressional Democrats spoke from various secure locations around the country about their reluctance to meet with constituents, especially the halt, the blind and the lame. Paul Krugman wept.
“Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction,” Krugman moaned, “perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.”
Listener Brad e-mailed:
“Even a semi-literate like myself catches the lure-shinyness of what I think was William Butler Yeats:’The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity.’
“What a sophomoric flourish. Really? The dark foreboding of Yeats as he watched the Europe of the 30s divide up into the dispirited and the maniacal. That’s what Krugman sees from his forest ranger tower? Jeez Louise, talk about subtle code words! Why not be half the man that Nancy Pelosi is and make a bare swastika allegation?”
You know, if I had done what Krugman did here in my seventh grade English class, my teacher would have failed me outright. But Krugman’s passing others words off as his own thoughts is not the point of Hewitt’s article. Rather it is the frantic unraveling of the best laid plans of the leftist elements in Congress and the White House. Please go read the whole thing.
I’m the one picking on Krugman here.
I’ve long felt that Krugman has all the intellectual depth of an oil sheen on a parking lot puddle. But I have read Yeats (courtesy of that seventh grade teacher I mentioned) and I suspect Krugman completely misses the point. What is slouching towards Bethlehem is not born of the right Krugman so loathes.
Incidentally, the poem Krugman passes off as his own deep thinking is here.
