{"id":3642,"date":"2011-07-24T15:40:53","date_gmt":"2011-07-24T19:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=3642"},"modified":"2011-07-24T19:08:39","modified_gmt":"2011-07-24T23:08:39","slug":"circular-firing-squad-time-among-liberal-economists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=3642","title":{"rendered":"Circular firing squad time among liberal economists"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jeffrey Sachs<\/a>: "At every crucial opportunity, Obama has failed to stand up for the poor and middle class." Paul Krugman<\/a> feels much the same about the debt-ceiling negotiations. The endorsement of Obama by the National Education Association representative assembly garnered enough votes (more than 70%), but still less than previous endorsements. The guy's a sellout, people say, or he's an incompetent negotiator.<\/p>\n

This is the label applied to the president who signed national health-care reform; who signed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell; who pushed through the largest fiscal stimulus in the history of the country in the depths of the Lesser Depression; who pushed through a number of other, smaller stimulus bills that extended the employment of thousands of public-sector workers in the past few years; and who appointed two liberal justices to the Supreme Court. You can disagree with his decisions, but it's hard to say he's been entirely incompetent at getting BFDs done (to borrow from Joe Biden).<\/p>\n

That's not to say I either agree with everything Obama has done or that he's has made the right political judgments regardless of the policy issues. In particular, I think he made three big mistakes in handling economic issues over which he had some control:<\/p>\n