[James Kwak writes:]

Helene Cooper of the New York Times wrote a “news analysis” story saying that the challenge for President Obama is this:

    “Is he willing to try to administer the disagreeable medicine that could help the economy mend over the long term, even if that means damaging his chances for re-election?”

The problem, she goes on to say in the next paragraph, is that the economy is in bad shape:

    “The Federal Reserve’s finding on Tuesday that there is little prospect for rapid economic growth over the next two years was the latest in a summer of bad economic news.”

 Now ordinarily I wouldn’t pick on the Times for something like this: it is just a newspaper, after all. But this case is a good example of  right-wing talking points leaking into the mainstream media and then becoming part of the conventional wisdom, which is something that should be cut off as soon as possible.

This framing has a certain kind of narrative resonance: Is the young, “untested” leader of the free world willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the country? Is he, like Harry Potter, willing to face death to save the world from Lord Voldemort?

The problem is, it’s completely backwards. The “disagreeable medicine” Cooper suggests is budget cuts, including cuts in entitlement programs like Social Security. But that has nothing to do with the problem she presents at the beginning: slow economic growth. Anyone who is reading this blog already knows that budget cuts are contractionary in the short term. The “medicine” the economy needs now is more government spending, not less, and there’s nothing disagreeable with putting more people to work and building more stuff that people want.*