And you should come, because we’ve put together a truly impressive lineup. Click here for more full details and email this address (events@tnr.com) to RSVP. Just as a thumbnail: It’ll take place at the National Press Club on Tuesday, February 23, from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m.

The Daily Beast's list of the top 25 most influential liberal journalists is one of those horrible buzz-driven contrivances that have multiplied on the internet. This particular one, written by conservative journalist Tunku Varadarajan, is mostly an exercise on passive-aggression and incomprehension of its subjects. (I'm "emotional" on taxes. Fred Hiatt is "a traditional liberal in all matters domestic." It's very strange.)

The other day, over lunch, Frank Foer and I were discussing Gabe Sherman's cover story about the Washington Post. Frank was marveling, "Gabe is the most entrepreneurial, least lazy reporter I've ever seen."

Now Washington Post chairman Don Graham responds, "I found Gabriel Sherman's piece ("Post Apocalypse," February 4) particularly lazy."

The Journal has a wide-ranging story today on the extent to which the government's role in the economy has grown. The gist of the piece is that the expansion has been significant, which is almost certainly true, at least in the short-term. (Much of the intervention will be unwound in the next few years, though some of it won't.)

Still, I'm not entirely sure this is the right question to ask. Given that the whole financial system came close to disintegrating last fall, and that the real economy nearly followed, anyone but a complete neanderthal would have expected a pretty significant government expansion. The question is whether government expanded more, less, or about as much as we would have expected. Coincidentally, the editors of our web site have re-posted the piece Frank Foer and I wrote on this subject back in May, which argues that the expansion of government under Obama isn't as significant as you might have predicted. Ditto for his ambitions going forward. We now have about eight months' more data to work with, but I think the argument still holds up reasonably well.

Relatedly, a subtext of the Journal piece is that the consequences of all the government expansion are more negative than positive at this point. Take, for example, this detail:

Bank of America Corp. also has repaid its aid, freeing itself from the condition lenders hate most about the bailouts: Treasury oversight of executive pay. Even so, it sought the Treasury's advice on a pay package before hiring a new chief executive.

The bank was considering paying $35 million to $40 million to hire Robert Kelly, CEO of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., much of it to buy out his unvested shares and options. The Bank of America board wanted to know how that would go over in Washington. Treasury paymaster Kenneth Feinberg told the bank that if it were still under his purview, he would reject the package. Around the same time, President Obama publicly bashed "fat cat" bankers.

With those two signals, the talks with Mr. Kelly fizzled, according to officials involved with the decision. The bank instead promoted an insider, Brian Moynihan, who had been working to repair the bank's reputation in Washington. ... Mr. Moynihan, by contrast, told Obama aides in October that Bank of America wanted to work with the White House to achieve U.S. policy goals in areas like small-business lending and foreclosure prevention.

I think we can all agree that, in an ideal world, a board should be able to hire the best possible candidate for a job, regardless of his political skills. But, of course, we're pretty far away from that ideal. When it comes to the financial sector, one of the things that makes the world fall far short of the ideal is the government backing (both explicit and implicit) that makes it much, much cheaper for big banks to borrow money.  As Dean Baker pointed out to the Journal:

I had to learn this from Frank Foer’s proud father --  Frank's  book on soccer, How Soccer Explains the World: an Unlikely Theory of Globalization was recently named by Sports Illustrated as one of the most five most influential sports books of the decade.

These did not reach the intensity of the 100 hours war in 1969 between Honduras and El Salvador which was also over fought over World Cup soccer matches.

That would be the Jennifer Aniston theory of Obamaism, of course.

A bit of back-story: After Frank Foer and I wrote a piece earlier this year laying out our theory of Obamaism, The Atlantic's Derek Thompson helpfully reimagined it as the Jennifer Aniston theory. As Thompson explained it in this post: 

This is, in a nutshell, the theory that Obama prefers to tweak incentives for private actors rather than have the government take over. The name comes from the Aniston movie The Break-Up, where her character famously tells her live-in boyfriend that she doesn't want to do the dishes for him; nor does she want to force him to do the dishes: She wants him to want to do the dishes.

At the time, we all saw evidence of Obama's Aniston-ism in his approach to health care, climate change, and toxic bank assets. (See the original post for more.) Now, Thompson spots something similar in Obama's thoughts on Wall Street regulation. Particularly this riff from Obama's speech last Monday:

The pro-Romney folks over at the Corner are starting to hyperventilate.