Whatever you do, don’t blame the voters for the financial crisis
The financial crisis, says George Will, is rooted in the general desire to spend more than one earns. But our leaders can’t say that because any politician who badmouths the voters will soon become an ex-politician.
We are waist deep in evasions because one cannot talk sense about the cultural roots of the financial crisis without transgressing this cardinal principle of politics: Never shall be heard a discouraging word about the public.
Concerning which, a timeless political trope is: Government should budget the way households supposedly do, conforming outlays to income. But the crisis came partly because so many households decided that it would be jolly fun to budget the way government does, hitching outlays to appetites.
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Populism flatters the people, contrasting their virtue with the alleged vices of some minority — in other times, Jews or railroad owners or hard-money advocates; today, the villain is “Wall Street greed,” which is contrasted with the supposed sobriety of “Main Street.” When people on Main Street misbehave by, say, buying houses for more than they can afford to pay, they blame the wily knaves who made them do it, such as the “nimble” Babbitt.
Stop me before I live beyond my means again.