I remember emailing you that O'Neill was a good
appointment since he had intellectual integrity. .
.Heh, heh heh. Looks like the supply-side ayatollahs
are trying to break the man's spirit by making him
point man for defending the indefensible. But maybe
O'Neill is subtly paying them back by doing a really
bad job of it. I never thought I would see a Treasury
Secretary basically say "numbers, schmumbers" when
challenged on his fuzzy math.
But in any case, I'm emailing because I have a
suggestion and a question.
The suggestion is that, in your next series of
domestic policy columns, why not go high-minded and
postive? For example: 1) what a responsible fiscal and
tax policy would look like 2) how far the current
debate is from that ideal, and how hard will it be to
fix. 3) Assuming there were a principled and competent
Republican and Democratic party, what would be the
real trade-offs and choices facing us? In other words
what we should be doing, why we're not doing it, what
the consequences might be.
The question I have is, when you took the NYT op-ed
post, you said "it was the most influential
publication in the world." After one year, how
influential do you think you have been? Now that
you're part of both the media and academia, what do
you think is the nature of the influence these
institutions have on policy, policy-makers and public
perception?
posted by Anonymous at 9:23 PM
