Memo to Fareed Zakaria
Dear Fareed,
It's so much easier to write this after hearing President Obama's stirring and profound inauguration speech. Had I written it before that, I might have been gentler than I plan to be now. Call it a "We the People" versus the Village Pundits moment.
I refer to your one-hour parade of punditry entitled Memo to the President. Heather looked at your pundit parade and said everything I might have said, so let me simply address your "instructions" for President Obama.
ZAKARIA: That will depend on the future of American growth. The president inherited an economy in free fall. He helped prevent a second Great Depression. But he also inherited an economy that was fundamentally unbalanced.
For over 20 years, economic growth in America has been slow, recoveries have been jobless and median wages have declined. We need a new strategy for growth based on reform and investment. We need major reforms of regulations and tax policies to make America competitive and growth oriented but we also desperately need new investments for the future.
We need a world-class infrastructure, not one that is now ranked 25th in the world according to the World Economic Forum. We need highly trained workers. We need to rebuild our great state universities to be centers of access and excellence so that every American has a path to success.
In the 1950s and '60s, America spent 5 percent of its GDP on investments for the future. Today, that number is 3 percent. And it's likely to fall in the years ahead as entitlement spending crowds out everything else.
We now spend $4 for every American over 65 compared with $1 for every American under 18. We are demonstrating vividly our preference for consumption over investment, for the present over the future, and for our own interests over those of our children.
If President Obama can change this trend, he will probably not get much applause today, but he will restore the American economy, secure America's place in the world and his own place in history.
Other than your nonsense about the generational differences in spending, I would more or less agree with what you said, were it not framed in a context that suggests he hasn't already tried to do these things. You would have done better had you decided to craft a "Memo to the Congress" about what they have failed to do. Evidently either your research or your memory is flawed when it comes to what this president "must do."
Infrastructure - In 2009, just after he was inaugurated, President Obama launched a sweeping initiative to bring high-speed rail to this country. In four short years, Republican governors killed it in Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin while puffing up and bragging about how they support job creators. Ha! We're moving ahead in California as well as the Northeast corridor but that is the exception instead of the rule. This is shameful. Yet you mentioned nothing about that.
