http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000370.html
Debate in San Diego
Colleague 1: So how did your debate in San Diego go?
Brad DeLong: Fine.
Colleague 2: Who were you debating?
Brad DeLong: ***** Schmalensee--but it wasn't much of a debate.
Colleague 3: Why not? ***** can be ferocious--he's very quick on his
feet, and always very well prepared.
Brad DeLong: Because this year he's voting for Kerry.
Colleague 1: Huh.
Colleague 2: Former George H. W. Bush Council of Economic Advisers
member ***** Schmalensee is voting for Kerry?
Brad DeLong: What's strange about that? You're voting for Kerry.
Colleague 3: I wasn't a subcabinet appointee for George H. W. Bush.
Brad DeLong: George W. Bush is not George H.W. Bush.
Colleague 1: What pushed him over the edge?
Brad DeLong: He was most exercised about the Bushies failure to take
any steps to fix electricity markets--he really believes that
properly-structured electricity markets could work very well and be a
very good thing, you know--that and Iraq.
Colleague 2: Bush policy failures in electricity markets rank
fifteenth or so in reasons to vote against the Bush administration.
Colleague 1: Iraq, Tora Bora, the trashing of our alliances, the
deficit, the tax cut...
Colleague 3: Wimping out on entitlement spending, the steel tariff,
global warming, the farm bill...
Colleague 2: The Medicare drug benefit that was little other than a
large transfer of money from taxpayers to the executives and
shareholders of pharmaceutical companies...
Colleague 1: Civil liberties, Abu Ghraib, fuzzy math...
Colleague 2: So what did you do?
Brad DeLong: We debated whether, on economic policy, George W. Bush
has governed from the right or from someplace out in the Gamma
Quadrant. We shouted down questioners who wanted us to find
*something* good in the Bush economic record. (We did have good words
for Mark McClellan at the FDA streamlining drug approval procedures,
and for Tim Muris at the FTC.) We agreed that we were glad we were not
health care economists and thus did not have the job of finding ways
to put downward pressure on medical costs without compromising quality
of care, because neither of us is confident he understands very much
about how to do that. We speculated on why the Bush administration has
turned out so badly--especially as Schmalensee knows and has enormous
respect for almost all of the high Bush appointees. We talked to
ourselves as economists do--probably over the heads of the audience.
It was fun. I wish that the University of California at San Diego
would post the video...
Colleague 3: So of the 1000 or so subcabinet appointees of George H.W.
Bush... How many do you think are voting for Kerry this November?
Brad DeLong: Of George W. Bush's cabinet appointees, how many are
voting for Kerry? I really cannot see Colin Powell, Paul O'Neill, or
Christie Todd Whitman in the privacy of the voting booth voting for
Bush. And from the subcabinet, I'm having a very hard time envisioning
Anne Krueger, Ken Dam, Peter Fisher, Rich Clarida, or Randy Kroszner
voting for Bush. I have a hard time envisioning anyone even
half-briefed on the current situation and on Bush's policies voting
for Bush...
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 1.2 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: -3 million jobs and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -1075 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
.
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