http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/09/02/rahm-emanuels-misguided-mantra-no-crisis-should-go-to-waste/
Rahm Emanuel's Misguided Mantra: 'No Crisis Should Go to Waste'
Walter Shapiro
Senior Correspondent
"No crisis should go to waste," Emanuel told the Washington Post for its post-election edition, stressing that he was speaking for himself as an Illinois congressman -- and not Barack Obama. Two weeks later, having been named White House chief of staff, Emanuel gave his mantra the presidential imprimatur as he told a conference of business leaders organized by the Wall Street Journal: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. . . . Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Now with the glub-glub economy going down for the third time and almost certainly taking congressional Democrats with it, Emanuel's aphorism about the can-do benefits of a crisis seems more likely to make the Hubris Hall of Fame than the next edition of "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations." At minimum, with the benefit of hindsight, it should be rewritten as "No crisis can fester for two years without dire political consequences."
It is no secret that early on the Obama economic team misjudged how high the unemployment rate would soar -- and how intractable the crisis would become. In contrast, Nobel Prize-winning liberal economist Paul Krugman presciently warned in a New York Times column written just after the 2008 election, "Democrats won big last week -- but they won even bigger in 1936, only to see their gains evaporate after the recession of 1937-38. Americans don't expect instant economic results from the incoming administration, but they do expect results, and Democrats' euphoria will be short-lived if they don't deliver an economic recovery."
Rahm Emanuel's Misguided Mantra: 'No Crisis Should Go to Waste'
Walter Shapiro
Senior Correspondent
"No crisis should go to waste," Emanuel told the Washington Post for its post-election edition, stressing that he was speaking for himself as an Illinois congressman -- and not Barack Obama. Two weeks later, having been named White House chief of staff, Emanuel gave his mantra the presidential imprimatur as he told a conference of business leaders organized by the Wall Street Journal: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. . . . Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Now with the glub-glub economy going down for the third time and almost certainly taking congressional Democrats with it, Emanuel's aphorism about the can-do benefits of a crisis seems more likely to make the Hubris Hall of Fame than the next edition of "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations." At minimum, with the benefit of hindsight, it should be rewritten as "No crisis can fester for two years without dire political consequences."
It is no secret that early on the Obama economic team misjudged how high the unemployment rate would soar -- and how intractable the crisis would become. In contrast, Nobel Prize-winning liberal economist Paul Krugman presciently warned in a New York Times column written just after the 2008 election, "Democrats won big last week -- but they won even bigger in 1936, only to see their gains evaporate after the recession of 1937-38. Americans don't expect instant economic results from the incoming administration, but they do expect results, and Democrats' euphoria will be short-lived if they don't deliver an economic recovery."