Seriously. Should he turn it down?
Update: Mickey Kaus agrees with me. I need to rethink my position.
On an ordinary day, Henry Aaron, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, comes across as the quintessential policy wonk: knowledgeable, thoughtful, measured, perhaps even a tad boring. With his rumpled suits, snowy hair, and rosy jowls, the genial septuagenarian brings to mind one's favorite uncle--assuming that uncle had spent the past 40 years exploring tax policy, health care financing, and the intricacies of sprawling entitlement programs.
My friend Mickey Kaus has a rejoinder to my latest column, in which I suggest that the emphasis on cost-cutting--while most likely a strategic mistake--was nevertheless easy to understand in retrospect. Among other things, he suggests, some people did predict this. Like, for example, Mickey.
It’s been theorized (by Mickey Kaus and Maureen Dowd, among others) that Hillary Clinton is the beneficiary of misfortune and some of its attendant states: enfeeblement, debasement, etc.
Around the world, national theologies are crumbling: communism, apartheid, and, here in America, the worship of guns—to foreigners, the single craziest thing about us. Do you sense an outbreak of sanity about gun control? I do. There was retired Chief Justice Warren Burger preaching sacrilege on the cover of Parade magazine a couple of weeks ago.
