Serving the Policy

In today's anti-Obama rant (now bi-weekly!), Paul Krugman makes exactly the wrong point about the economy:

This collapse in economic confidence has occurred even though the full economic effects of the implosion of the housing market and the freezing of the credit markets have yet to be felt. As more things fall apart, perceptions will only get worse.

All of this should work to the Democrats’ advantage. They can contrast the Clinton boom with the Bush bust; they can make the case that Republican economic ideology, with its fixation on privatization and deregulation, helped get us into this mess.

The problem is, the policies that contributed to the Clinton boom have almost nothing to do with what we need today. Krugman acknowledges that we're facing an economic crisis that's been precipitated by deregulation of the financial industry- but these are policies that President Clinton moved forward! Nostalgic appeals to the anti-government '90s won't build the rhetorical groundwork for a crisis-containing intervention.

This also happens to be the wrong message politically. To draw a real distinction between themselves and conservatives, a liberal/Democratic message would have to distance itself with its Clintonite past and make an affirmative committment to proactive intervention for everyone's benefit. You could probably find a more delicate phrasing of the idea, but the point is to craft a message that draws contrasts, defines the alternative negatively, and actually promotes the policies you're pushing.