From the Economist:
“Not everyone believes in Barack Obama’s promise to change Washington. But at least the faces will change. Should he win the White House, Mr Obama will bring in a new team to run the federal government, the Oval Office, and the Democratic Party…On domestic matters, Mr Obama has assembled a team of sharp academic economists who premise their work on his supposed ability to sell sophisticated policy. Most prominent up until now has been Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor…[his] record suggests neither the hostility towards globalised capitalism nor the desire for large-scale redistribution that conservatives, spooked by tales of Mr Obama’s left-wing voting record, might fear: Mr Goolsbee is a problem-solver who favours such unsexy proposals as altering American tax forms…As of this week, though, Mr Obama’s newly appointed economics director is Jason Furman…a staunch free-trader who once praised Wal-Mart and has favoured lowering corporate taxes.”
Wait, what?
Obama’s voting record has been one of the farthest left throughout his career, and he wants to use a UofC professor and a “staunch” free market guy as part of his economics team?
Chicago School economists are known for favoring free-market economics. Because of this, they are relative outcasts in the academic world where free-market views are often dismissed as cold and callous attitudes.
Precisely the kind of people that are probably going to vote for Obama – young, far-left-leaning activists, idealists – are precisely the people that studied schools of economic thought that couldn’t be more OPPOSITE of those views held by UofC academics. The people who like Obama should technically be at odds with his decision to appoint two free-market economists.
If Obama’s doing what I think he’s doing, it’s this:
He is putting himself in a position where he can masquerade as a benevolent and hyper articulate liberal, while at the same time using otherwise conservative economic policies that actually work.
Free-market policies work best, but they are counter-intuitive and less than glamorous to talk about. So he quietly appoints free-market advisers. He’s basically using conservative policies to ultimately boost a liberal image.
All this being said, the fact that Obama selected two free-market guys for his team might not even mean a whole lot. He might not listen to them. Either Obama knows that free-market policies work, and thus appointed people with those views as advisers, or Obama wants to create the illusion that he is more conservative than his voting record would suggest, in order to please Republicans.
I hope it’s the former.
