The Chicago Tribune this afternoon has taken its final step of becoming a full-fledged member of the liberal media. Welcome aboard, gang!
At about 2:30 p.m., the Trib posted online its endorsement of Barack Obama over John McCain. The Tribune, long known as “the Republican voice of the Midwest,” has never before endorsed a Democratic presidential nominee. While it has backed Horace Greeley and Theodore Roosevelt for president when they ran as independents, this is as far as the paper has strayed from its GOP roots.
So the Trib’s endorsement today is stunning. I’m sure it set off Dave Diersem’s pager big time.
The Trib noted in its editorial the abandonment of principle on the part of the Republican Party, citing that the “government ran a $237 billion surplus in 2000, the year before Bush took office — and recorded a $455 billion deficit in 2008.”
Point of order here. From what I understand, what the government had on its hands in the late 1990s was a projected budget surplus, not an actual budget surplus. The balanced budgets that congressional Republicans forced former President Bill Clinton to accept helped build what would have been an eventual budget surplus had the ratio of revenues to expenses remained the same over a period of years.
The funny thing about projected surpluses, they’re frequently revised. The projected budget surplus of the late 1990s was contantly being revised because, as anyone with a basic grasp of tax issues knows, the ratio of revenues to expenses rarely remains the same over an extended period of time. In any given month, something could happen to increase or decrease either the government’s revenues or expenses — or both.
That said, the Republicans should have fought harder to maintain at least part of the projected surplus. Yes, we were in a recession and needed to stimulate the economy with tax cuts. And yes, we were attacked on 9/11 and entered a new fight against global terrorism. These things cost money.
But once in power, the Republicans lacked the political courage to preserve the fiscal discipline they championed when Clinton was in the White House. All bets were off — or, perhaps, all bets were on (this sounds costlier). The Trib is correct that the GOP lost its way.
And it’s true that McCain has not kept to all the issues he advocated during his presidential run in 2000. But has the Trib considered what will happen if the Democrats control both Congress and the White House?
Some months before his death, economics legend Milton Friedman gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal his wife, Rose. In the interview Friedman speculated that what made the economy work in the late 1990s was a divided government, the Congress in the hands of one party and the White House in the hands of another. You can’t get a better check-and-balance than that.
There’s some value to this notion. McCain may not have made wise choices in this campaign, but perhaps his election would ensure the necessary resistance to Democratic spending.
Were I writing the editorial for the Trib and needed some reason to retain the tradition of endoring (mostly) Republican candidates, that idea would have dominated. But then again, what do I know?
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Stumble It!
Suburban Shoutout 