RARELY IS THE QUESTION ASKED: IS OUR CONGRESSMEN LEARNING? It's study hall for the new Democratic Majority, as Nancy Pelosi is running some issue education sessions for her caucus this week. The first class, on Iraq, presents a fair array of thinkers, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Holbrooke, and Major General John Batiste, among others. The second, on the economy, appears to have only one speaker: Robert Rubin.
Now, Rubin's a smart guy, and as his positions on certain issues have changed, he's inching slowly towards the mainstream of progressivism. But this is a guy whose prescriptions, above all, failed to alleviate the precise problems the Democratic Party is now charged with mitigating. NAFTA is widely considered a mediocrity -- if not a failure -- that neither created the (deceptively) promised jobs in America nor stemmed the flow of illegal immigration. And Rubinomics, for all it virtues, enhanced productivity without enduringly ending wage stagnation. Moreover, Rubin is a Wall Street guy, with the centrist, deficit-reducing policies you expect from that crowd.
Undoubtedly, Rubin should be part of any economic education session for incoming Democrats. But that he's slated to play professor all by himself is worrying. What about Jacob Hacker, whose ideas on economic insecurity are legitimately new and important? Jared Bernstein? Elizabeth Warren? Warmed over Clintonomics is not a sufficient response to the problems of the Bush economy. Rubin's points deserve consideration, but his is not the only, or even the most compelling, response to the current moment, and it'll be to the Democratic Party's discredit if they lack the imagination to turn to cutting edge scholars rather than just former officials.
--Ezra Klein
