Staying the course, right over the cliff
by digby
Brad DeLong muses about the sad fact that Nick Clegg hasn't forced Cameron to resign in the UK. He points out that Clegg's career would be over ... but then it already is.
He says:
It may be the end of the Liberal Democrats--but they have a much better chance if they admit they made a big mistake in selling their soul to the Conservatives for a mess of pottage than if they try to brazen it out and support the current government.
It is long past time for the Liberal Democrats in Britain to go into opposition: for them to cross the aisle and declare that they have no confidence in the Cameron-Osborne government. The longer they delay, the worse for Britain.
That certainly does point out the virtues of a parliamentary system doesn't it?
He links to this great piece by Paul Krugman discussing where the government went wrong and asks:
Why are Cameron and Osborne incapable of admitting that they made a bad mistake, firing their advisors, and changing their course? I think that it's the fact that they have been raised on the myth of Margaret Thatcher, who Stayed the Course.
I'm guessing it's the same here, actually. "Stay the course" was the Reagan mantra too and the President and his men seemed to be convinced that their economic and electoral trajectory was going to be the same as his as well. I believe that this presidency was modeled in many ways on Reagan's. The policies, of course, aren't exactly the same, but the notion of "transformation" was always there and Obama explicitly saw himself as one who would be as transformative as the Gipper.
I think the question that was never asked about all that was what the transformation was going to look like. And I'm increasingly convinced that he didn't know the answer.
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