In the Crossfire
Begala defends 'It's Still the Economy, Stupid'
Friday, December 20, 2002
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush and the U.S. economy are the focus of "Crossfire" co-host and political strategist Paul Begala's new book, "It's Still the Economy, Stupid." Has the U.S. economy gotten better or worse since Bush has been in the White House?
Begala joined hosts Robert Novak and Tucker Carlson on Thursday to defend his book.
CARLSON: I actually read your book, got so mad I yelled at the dog by the end. I agreed with your acknowledgments, they were fantastic. Actually it was very clever, your book. And it seems to me is that it makes the bottom-line argument that Bush has wrecked the economy.
BEGALA: He's done all he can. There are externalities that affected it. We were in trouble when he came into office. It's true Clinton didn't repeal the business cycle. It is true 9/11 did us grievous damage. But when you see a drowning man you don't throw him an anvil.
And that's what Bush did. His economic policy took a bad situation and made it much, much worse.
CARLSON: But you say it's much, much worse. I just want to finish my thought here and have you respond to it.
Average people don't seem to agree with you. A lot of polling on this. A lot of polling on this. I want to hit you with two of them. The CNN/Time poll asked people about [their] financial situation. Seventy-seven percent of Americans say their financial situation is good.
Next poll, which was taken this week, asked Americans, "What do you think the effect of the Bush White House is going to be on the economy for next year?" Sixty-five percent of Americans think next year's going to be even better than it is this year.
So your premise is wrong, isn't it?
BEGALA: No, people are always hopeful at the Christmas season. But two polls came out this week. Both of them said overwhelmingly that people would rather have the government invest in things that make us safer and smarter and stronger than give another big tax cut to the rich. They didn't ask it the way I would have with that loaded language. They asked it very neutral.
Both The Los Angeles Times poll and The Washington Post/ABC poll asked people about economic issues. All of them come down on my side. Why didn't the party win the recent election? Because they didn't campaign on my book. They didn't campaign Democratic economic issues. They ran around saying, "Oh, I'm for Bush's tax cut, too."
NOVAK: Paul, I know it's bad form to ask authors how they write their book but as I read your book, I found so much deja vu of stuff that I had heard on the campaign trail this year. Did you run around campaign boiler rooms and pick up the unused parts of their speeches and paste them together? Was that the way you put the book together?
BEGALA: No, no, no. I've written a lot of speeches for a lot of politicians.
NOVAK: And they sound like it in this book.
BEGALA: What's unusual about this book -- and, I think, as a scholar yourself -- is it's meticulously footnoted. There are 622 footnotes. You don't find that in most of the right-wing diatribes. You may not agree with what it says but it's carefully researched and carefully footnoted.
NOVAK: Here's a thing that offends some people. It offends me, to tell you the truth.
BEGALA: I hate to offend you, Bob.
NOVAK: You call the president stupid.
BEGALA: Oh, no, no, no.
NOVAK: That's what the reference to. You call him Junior during the whole [book.]
BEGALA: He is. He's not senior. He's junior. You got to distinguish him from his father.
NOVAK: He's not a junior. He's not George W.H. Bush -- George Jr. And you treat him with such disrespect. Do you think that's funny, or...
BEGALA: I think politicians should be laughed at. I actually know Bush a little bit and I think he's a good guy.
NOVAK: Why should they be laughed at?
BEGALA: Well, maybe you lack a sense of humor, Bob. We can treat that, you know, these days.
The title comes, of course, from a very famous sign that my pal Carville put up in the war room, "It's the economy, stupid." And my point is, "It is Still The Economy, Stupid."
If I wanted to make it about Bush, I would say "It's Still The Economy and He's Still Stupid." But I do not actually believe that.
CARLSON: But what if it's still the stupid analysis of the economy, and that is what the "Austin American Statesman" essentially said of your book in a review. I just want to read you one part which I think gets right to the core problem with the book: "Begala assumes that Clinton economic policies will work in any time and place.
"He ignores the critical fact that the economic boom didn't ignite until two years after Clinton got his deficit-reducing budget through Congress. It took technological advances, private sector advances to spur amazingly productivity increases and allow the Federal Reserve to repeatedly lower interest rates."
So the bottom line here is, ordinary Americans innovating and working hard are responsible for the boom under the Clinton administration.
BEGALA: Duh. Duh. But...
CARLSON: Then why do you give Clinton credit for it?
BEGALA: Let me finish the answer. Duh.
But were they stupid under Bush? Were they stupid under Reagan? Were they lazy under Bush? No. Government policies matter and Clinton removed this god-awful Reagan/Bush deficit, paid it down and then invested in things like education to make people smarter. And that's what triggered the boom.
He liberalized capital markets, right? He pulled the government out of borrowing all that money to pay off the debt. Allowed entrepreneurs then to borrow money so they could apply their genius and expertise.
To believe your theory, you have that believe people were stupid when Reagan and Bush were president. They were not. |
