The King Has No Clothes?

A Republican Senator made a statement about the stimulus plan yesterday saying that "the king has no clothes" meaning that someone has to have the guts to point out that the plan is bogus. I've been trying to think of my own analogy. It seems to me that the GOP commitment to their economic ideology in the face of this economic crisis is similar to armies that cannot adapt to changing situations (both strategic and tactical). Some famous WWII general once said that you get 5% credit for the plan and 95% credit for the execution of the plan. As a young army officer I admit that I was never that great at planning. However, I was very good at adapting to changing tactical situations and that helped me tremendously. At a strategic level, the US Army has had a very difficult time adapting to fighting an insurgency as opposed to a conventional war. David Petraeus, an innovator and heavy thinker, has pretty much fixed that problem though. Early in the 20th Century armies had a very tough time adapting to the introduction of machine guns and armor and full frontal assaults against automatic weapons were the norm in WWI. Eventually tactics and strategies were adapted.

I would like to see someone in the GOP make the "no clothes" observation about their own economic ideology and admit that maybe it's time to adapt and agree that the government can and should play a role in managing the economy. Of course that role should wax and wane with the situation. The GOP is stuck in their belief that the New Deal really did nothing to help the economy out of the Depression when it's quite possible that, without actually reversing the Depression, the New Deal may have helped slow it down. The other thing that Republicans can't quite grasp is that consumers and the market place have changed dramatically since the Depression. Consumers have access to goods and services that our forebears could never have dreamed of and consumers also have access to credit which was unheard of early in the 20th Century. Credit cards weren't even introduced until the 1960's (I think).

Both sides of the isle may need to adapt and give up some of their cherished beliefs in order to save this country from further anguish.