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How can we tell? Does he just not care enough to pay attention, or does he lack the capacity to remember, or even to distinguish the known from the unknown in his own brain?
In the end, the policy effect is the same.
Democrats may need those 'purple' states in the mid-midwest where a call to cut subsidies isn't going to play too well. And if the Decider can't even keep straight the name of the primary focus of world trade discussions, I'm pretty skeptical of the Administration doing something as well.
I've been thinking more about agricultural subsidies since reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma." In it, Michael Pollan interviews a conventional corn farmer who, essentially, thinks that subsidies are stupid and create a trap for small farmers like him.
Given the consolidation in agriculture and the loss of family farms in the Midwest, is the constituency for subsidies much bigger than ADM and Cargill? If not, it seems like there could be a movement to reduce or eliminate them if enough non-farmers saw it as an issue of fiscal responsibilty and if the reduction was paired with some sort of support for transitioning/retiring land/value-add projects that could benefit small farmers.
