Bill Kristol tries to fill the shoes of 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Economic Sciences, Paul Krugman, in the New York Times this morning, by writing “Admit We Don’t Know,” which obviously includes Kristol himself.
If you have missed the column, don’t worry. Here’s an extended summary:
Schumer doesn’t know how big the stimulus package should be.
No one else does: “It’s not as if his colleagues have a better understanding of what has happened, or of what should be done. And it’s not as if the rest of us do”
Kristol welcomes “the expected appointment to senior positions in the Obama administration of economists like Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner,” etc., but he hopes that such “best and…brightest” will at least “entertain the possibility that a lot of what they think they know is wrong.”
Kristol then, surprisingly, admits that Obama could be taking over the presidency at something resembling a “Lincolnian moment”—well, sort of.
And Kristol concludes with an inspiring self-analyzing admission: “I’ve worked in government. It’s hard to do much thinking there at all, let alone thinking anew.”
Well, it seems that it is hard to do much thinking, let alone thinking anew, outside of government, too. But, apparently one can get paid better for writing about such “thinking.”
When is Paul Krugman coming back?
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.