THE HIJACKED CRISIS BY PAUL KRUGMANNEW YORK TIMES
For the fact is that right now the economy desperately needs a short-run fix. When you’re bleeding profusely from an open wound, you want a doctor who binds that wound up, not a doctor who lectures you on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle as you get older. When millions of willing and able workers are unemployed, and economic potential is going to waste to the tune of almost $1 trillion a year, you want policy makers who work on a fast recovery, not people who lecture you on the need for long-run fiscal sustainability.
THE SYSTEM WORKS BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMERWASHINGTON POST
The conventional complaint is that the process was ugly. Big deal. You want beauty? Go to a museum. Democratic politics was never meant to be an exercise in aesthetics. Not just ugly, moan the critics, but oh so slow. True, again... [But] without this long ugly process, the debt issue wouldn’t even be on the table. We’d still be whistling our way to Greece. Instead, a nation staring at insolvency is finally stirring itself to action, and not without spirited opposition. Great issues are being decided as constitutionally designed. The process is working.
CLUELESS IN WASHINGTON BY EUGENE ROBINSONWASHINGTON POST
Jobs. The issue is jobs... You might expect the president and Congress to design and implement a nationwide project of infrastructure renewal that would put Americans back to work, spark a burst of growth and leave us with tangible assets that would increase our competitiveness in the global economy. But you’d be disappointed. And you’d lose faith in the ability of officials to respond to a crisis they don’t even seem to notice. The disconnect between what the nation cares about and what its leaders care about seems to widen day by day. Hello? Is anybody in Washington listening? Does anybody even care?
NOT SUCH SUPER CHOICES EDITORIALWASHINGTON POST
The best way to describe the spate of appointments to the new “supercommittee” on debt reduction is depressingly predictable. Or perhaps predictably depressing. None of the congressional leaders... took much of a risk, if any. They named individuals to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction who for the most part know the substance well but have shown little inclination to move away from entrenched positions of party orthodoxy: no new taxes on the Republican side, no touching benefits on the Democratic side.
THE LEFT'S SUMMER OF DISCONTENT BY JAMES TARANTOWALL STREET JOURNAL
Obama botched the budget negotiation not because he wouldn't fight but because he didn't know when to give in to minimize his losses. He stubbornly clung to his demand for a tax increase long after it was clear that was a deal breaker, yielding only when the alternative was to risk imminent catastrophe... [President] Clinton was ideologically flexible, whereas Mr. Obama is rigid. Yet the left stuck with Mr. Clinton even through his impeachment. Everyone loves a winner, and progressives are angry and disconsolate with Mr. Obama because they increasingly see him as a loser. But if the president is a loser, it is precisely because he is one of them.
BRITAIN'S WELFARE ROAD TO RIOTS BY DOUGLAS MURRAYWALL STREET JOURNAL
Did the country at least get anything for its [record spending] under Labour? Only a generation of young Britons who consider work not merely a "lifestyle choice," but a crummy one at that. Under Labour, a life on welfare appeared the best life to live. It is no surprise that the north London borough of Islington has been among the riot scenes this week. Prosperous and left wing, it is also scattered with the welfare beneficiaries whom Labourites have created. To that extent the borough was the postcard exemplar of leftist Britain. And now it's up in smoke.
DON'T SAY YOU WEREN'T WARNED BY RONALD BROWNSTEINNATIONAL JOURNAL
Pursuing a bipartisan “grand bargain” on the deficit while sharpening partisan lines over an economic recovery agenda [will] require the political dexterity Obama displayed more as a candidate than as president. White House aides say they don’t consider those two tracks incompatible and insist Obama this fall will more forcefully present alternatives to Republicans on both the deficit and the economy. That can’t come soon enough for Democrats worried that Obama won’t save his own job unless he provides Americans a better sense of how he intends to protect theirs.