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I will suggest that President Bush understands money better than any President we have ever had. He understands it better than most economists. He understands it better than our illustrious pundits. President Bush understands money the way a financier understands money. He sees it as a force or a power that one squirts at the world to make the world change. He sees it as a weapon.

Jacobin capitalism?

bookmark. Overall, I agree.

I hope my wife doesn't read this. She'll think she's a genius for running up $40,000 in credit card debt.

I will suggest that President Bush understands money better than any President we have ever had. He understands it better than most economists. He understands it better than our illustrious pundits. President Bush understands money the way a financier understands money. He sees it as a force or a power that one squirts at the world to make the world change. He sees it as a weapon.

I really doubt it. Is it just more "throwing money at problems"?

From the Opinion Journal today:

That Was Fast http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/politics/11poverty.html?ei=5090&en=f4277df5c2847789&ex=1286683200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

"Liberal Hopes Ebb in Post-Storm Poverty Debate" reads a New York Times headline today. Jason DeParle reports:

*** QUOTE ***

As Hurricane Katrina put the issue of poverty onto the national agenda, many liberal advocates wondered whether the floods offered a glimmer of opportunity. The issues they most cared about--health care, housing, jobs, race--were suddenly staples of the news, with President Bush pledged to "bold action."

But what looked like a chance to talk up new programs is fast becoming a scramble to save the old ones. . . .

"We've had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks," said Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal advocacy group in Washington. "We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn't actually happening."

*** END QUOTE ***

The Times quotes a couple of conservative antipoverty types, the Heritage Foundation's Stuart Butler and the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise's Robert Woodson. Butler identifies half the reason for the problem: that "the left has just talked up the old paradigm: 'let's expand what's failed before.' "

There's another part of the problem, though. Although the left is wedded to a failed ideology and the right has better antipoverty ideas, most conservatives view poverty as a fairly marginal issue. This makes political sense: The inner-city poor vote overwhelmingly Democratic, when they vote at all, so Republicans have little incentive to worry about how to improve their lives.

George W. Bush seems pretty clearly to be an exception to this; all indications are that he genuinely cares about the poor. And he did put forward some innovative ideas in the wake of Katrina. But there is a sense among political observers that the president is in a weak political position right now; if so, one would expect his poverty ideas to go by the boards.

Those who really care about the poor, then, should hope that the president recovers politically (or that his current supposed malaise is a case of wishful thinking on his opponents' part). The alternative is to wait for the left to free itself from its ideological straitjacket, and we wouldn't hold our breath for that.