While I can’t say that I’m a fan of the name “libertarian paternalism” for this movement, they are definitely on to something that is sorely needed today in our shallow political landscape.

The traditional labels of “conservative” and “liberal” are tired, out of date, and frankly stupid – these are labels hurled back and forth by political gasbags to conveniently label viewpoints. We can now see more clearly than ever what a total crock so-called conservatism has become, with multi-millionaires and large corporations coming hat-in-hand to the government for bailouts because they are “too big to fail.”

Likewise, many people on the far left are rather uninformed about the unintended economic consequences of too much regulation and high taxes – which can sometimes make the problems worse that they are trying to solve, though at least they tend to be less disingenuous than the hypocrites of the Right.

Economists are human too, and the “Dismal Science” is notoriously faddish when it comes to embracing trends. The Keynesian revolution of the 1930s was replaced by the supply-side model of the Chicago school in the 1970s and 1980s, which is looking more and more hollow by the year. The emperor wears no clothes!

I would be interested in knowing what the authors’ views would be about the tax code. Everyone knows that the American tax system is ungainly, wasteful, corrupt and just too complex. To me it seems that “libertarian paternalism” could easily be abused by special interest, indeed it already is via tax breaks, credits etc. for this moneyed interest or that. What fixes would the authors recommend in applying their ideas to the tax code, and how would they prevent this sort of abuse? I would be greatly interested in knowing more.

While I have a hard time agreeing with a couple of the specifics in the editorial, the power of its philosophical appeal cannot be denied. It seems to offer a way out of the tired Reaganite dichotomy of conservative/liberal and is another reason why I’m for Obama even though I don’t agree with all his positions. We need a different direction in the discussion. I can't think of a more important subject that affects us all today.

The “controversy” over Obama’s “bitter” remarks is the best example so far this campaign season of the utter bankruptcy of our political “process”, and the complicity of “journalists” in our media with making a shambles of our “democracy” – as well as great excuse to overuse “ironic” quotation marks ;-)

You can apply a lot of different adjectives to this sort of thing and the way it’s been covered: tired, hysterical, clichéd, sad. I’m just happy that I don’t watch TV – merely the thought of listening to talking airheads parse Obama’s words, spinning their impact, and following the birdbrained “Obama is elitist, naïve, out of touch” narrative like a flock of noisy seagulls makes my head ache. It’s bad enough to read it in print or on the web.

The media created this non-story, and the media perpetuated this non-story as well as the accompanying narrative which has now been rotting on the vine for a week (“Obama is elitist! Joe Six-pack must be furious!”). Obama was in fact speaking in favor of the interests of Mr. Six-pack honestly. His only mistake was in using wording that gave Clinton and the media an opening for a cheap shot, and the ability to spin the “elitist” narrative for all it’s worth.

In reality, each of the three candidates would seem to be wealthy, politically connected and “elitist” to some degree. Why do the chattering airheads not acknowledge this? The answer is that they have little capacity for digging into the minutia of voting records and the nuts and bolts of policy. They are incompetent and shallow, and have convinced themselves (and are apparently desperate to believe) that they are Serious, Weighty Political Analysts. Character-driven, horse-race, identity politics driven political coverage is all they know or are competent to write about, which basically means they write about what each other thinks.

Obama’s unique advantage is that he does not think voters are too stupid to think for themselves, and therefore he speaks of things that the current political elite knows but doesn’t want to say, i.e. bitterness among working-class voters. The subject is not new, nor is Obama the first to speak about it – he’s merely the first politician to really acknowledge that this conventional wisdom exists. I don’t even think he was necessarily saying he agreed with the characterization, either – however even if he did, that is not really grounds for the “elitist” narrative.

What a sad state of affairs we’ve come to when out-of-context remarks are used to pass judgement on the “character” of a candidate, as if the media spin about said “character” is anything but a media creation in the first place, interpreted and endlessly self-reinforced by the wizards of punditocracy that “know how things work”. Then we get 30 years of politics more divorced from reality every passing week.

News flash: there is a lot of “bitterness” out there towards our “elitist” media and their idiotic, shallow manipulations, too. Michael Lind (his Salon column this week was an egregious example), Chris Matthews, Tim Russert and every single political columnist on Slate never seem to comment about that, though.