The party of fiscal responsibility

The broad consensus among economics bloggers and journalists seems to be that the bank bailouts and the stimulus have saved us from the kind of capitalism-ending, society-crushing, world-order-overturning Greater Depression that many feared just half a year ago. That's one reason why people are not giving Obama more flak for the record $1T deficit toward which we are heading. The other reason, of course, is that that deficit is largely inherited; it's a result of the collapsing economy combined with Bush's tax cuts.

But the new consensus seems to be that this kind of deficits can only be tolerated until the threat of imminent Depression is past us. Obama is going to have to quickly shift from being the Great Stimulator to being a more Clinton-style deficit hawk.

Republicans, of course, will try to capitalize on America's suspicion of deficits - in fact, they are already doing this in a big way. But that dog won't hunt, because the public long ago stopped thinking of the Republicans as being anything even remotely resembling "the party of fiscal responsibility." In fact, the fact tha Obama's 2009 deficit is being given the benefit of the doubt probably reflects the fact that the public believes a Democratic president - only a Democratic president - can and will take the nation's fiscal future seriously enough to rein in spending in the future. In fact, the ludicrously hypocritical, opportunistic Republicans might be performing a useful function by holding Obama to his promises.

Still, though, it's a very scary, unstable situation when a nation only has one party that care about the nation's solvency. At least we have one, instead of none.