Independence daze
by digby
Uh oh. It's little Tommy Friedman, 6 years old*, dreaming of a magical unicorn who will make mommy and daddy stop fighting:
I still don’t know if I’d support an independent. Like others, I worry about electing the wrong person by accident. (See: Ralph Nader and George W. Bush.) But I know what I’d pay good money to see: an intelligent independent candidate just taking part in the presidential debates, because it would make both Obama and his Republican opponent better. One independent I’d like to see play that role is David Walker.
Walker was the country’s chief auditor, serving from 1998 to 2008 as the U.S. comptroller general. He is currently the chief executive of the Comeback America Initiative (www.tcaii.org), a nonpartisan group dedicated to getting America’s fiscal house in order. Walker — who came in second to Hillary Clinton in a reader poll that Politico conducted last October for favorite Third Party candidate — told me that he has no desire to run but that he’s been speaking across the country, trying to do what Perot did.
Yeah, he's been very helpful --- to his mentor and benefactor, wealthy anti-government conservative Pete Peterson, the man who has been saying since the mid 70s that we must immediately end "entitlements" or his grandchildren will all be living like animals. Meanwhile, the original doomed grandchildren are now grandparents themselves ...(No word on global warming --- apparently not in his wheelhouse.)
There is no secret to all this. It was revealed more than 30 years ago by Reagan's budget chief David Stockman:
The purpose of ginning up the social security crisis was "to permit the politicians to make it look like they are doing something for the beneficiary population when they are doing something to it, which they normally would not have the courage to undertake."
I get why David Walker, whose raison d'etre is to fearmonger the deficit does what he does. It's his job. But what in the world is Thomas Friedman's excuse?
*trademark Atrios