February 16, 2004
"What's the difference?" Dep't
Brad DeLong has a vignette of economic policy-makinmg within the Bush Administration that's enough to make your blood run cold.
Brad reports this as Hubbard fooling Bush and the others, which strikes me as insufficiently subtle. What's really happening is that Bush and the others are asking to be fooled, and Hubbard is complying. That's not less disgraceful behavior by Hubbard than Brad's interpretation, but it's much more disgraceful behavior by the others.
It's wrong, or at least incomplete, to say that the Bush Administration has no respect for the truth. The Bush Administration, in reality, has no respect for the facts: for the sheer facticity of the world, its character of being stubbornly what it is even though it logically could have been otherwise.
