While I just recently started reading this book, and it was a late addition to my readings essay list of books I wanted to use, this is a very good book. A collection of essays from Paul Krugman’s years at the New York Times, and some before he started there, give insight into the “revolutionary power” we face in the current administration. The third and final installment of my PolySci readings essay can be found below. Be sure to read part 1 and part 2 as well.
When Paul Krugman finished the introduction to the hardback edition of The Great Unraveling, US forces had just taken Baghdad. Krugman had went out on a limb, and as he states, ?I went beyond criticism of specific policies to argue that the Bush administration poses a challenge to America as we know it, that Bush represents a ?revolutionary power? that aims at a transformation of American politics? (Krugman, xv). Krugman goes on to explain how the current administration is the first to ever cut taxes in the face of a war. The Bush administrations strategy of ?starve the beast? has cut the revenue and pushed us into the largest deficit ever. This is now being used as an excuse to cut, or reform, social programs that are popular with the public, but not with conservatives on the right. This can be seen in the current push to reform social security with private accounts.
Krugman attempts to explain how it was possible for our country, a country with so much going for it, to go downhill so fast, and why leaders in the private sector and government made such incredibly bad decisions. The book is a collection of columns that Krugman wrote for The New York Times between January 2000 and January 2003. He promises that taken as a whole these columns tell a coherent story.
Between 1992 and 2000, 32 million workers were added to U.S. companies and unemployment fell to a 30-year low. Poverty also sharply fell for the first time since 1960s.
Krugman asks the question, what went wrong? ?The Onion, a satirical weekly, published the mock news story for January 18, 2001, reporting President-elect George W. Bush declaring, ?Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over.? And so it has turned out.? (Krugman, xxxiii). Krugman suggests the turning point for many people was September 11, 2001, but he states for him, the turn was much slower and broader than that. He states we knew people were out to attack us in our own country; it wasn?t that big of a surprise when they finally managed to do that. ?The real surprise was the failure of leadership, private and public, right here at home? (Krugman, xxxiii).
Krugman calls the Bush administration a ?revolutionary power?, that is, they are a power that does not accept the current political system?s legitimacy. He discovered a book that describes this situation almost perfectly. ?It?s not a new book by a liberal, writing about contemporary America; it?s an old book by, of all people, Henry Kissinger, about nineteenth-century diplomacy? (Krugman, 5). Krugman claims Kissinger had it right: ?people who have been accustomed to stability can?t bring themselves to believe what is happening when faced with a revolutionary power, and are therefore ineffective in opposing it.? (Krugman, 12)
Krugmans columns read like a snapshot in time, from the soaring stock market uneasiness of 1997 to the post September 11th environment we live in now. Accounting scandals, hidden agendas and revolutionary powers, Krugman paints the bleak picture of how we got here, and why no one has noticed until it was too late.
Hitchens and Krugman both point out failings in our current political leaders, and even hint at the much bigger problem of a failing of the media. As the people we entrust with delivering us with the truth, the current administration has used the media?s old standing tradition of pointing out both-sides of an opinion while never really calling any government proposal a flat-out lie. This has enabled the current administration to hide its ultimate motives behind falsehoods and phony numbers that don?t add up to their stated purpose. If there was a reporter brave enough to stand out from the crowd, the right-wing media would quickly label them as conspiracy theorists or unpatriotic to question the current administrations handling of a particular problem. We have lost our way in this new era that has been swept in underneath us. Hopefully we can find our way once again before it is too late.