How the Grand Bargaineers Hurt America

By Matthew Yglesias  |  Posted Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012, at 12:15 PM ET

Jon Chait writes that "the liberal critique of Peterson Inc. is that its advocacy of deficit reduction is wrong," but that his critique is different. Rather, his issue is "that these groups are very bad at understanding how to achieve their goal." The problem, according to Chait, is that the professional deficit scold industry fails to adequately account for the fact that it's the modern conservative movement's foundational opposition to tax increases that prevents deficit reduction. Noam Scheiber, reviewing Bob Woodward's book, seems to have a similar critique:

Woodward argues that the White House and Congress failed to reach a major deficit-reduction deal last summer because Obama didn’t provide the necessary leadership, even though this thesis is untethered from Woodward’s own reporting, to say nothing of reality.

Betsey Stevens & Justin Wolfers offer a similar argument in Bloomberg View this week, noting that over the past generation Democrats have consistently been the party of fiscal responsibility and the GOP the party of high debt. That is all, I think, correct. But I'd like to push the idea that the deeper critique is also correct—the focus on long-term fiscal policy is misguided and it's the misguided nature of this focus that helps drive the odd interventions into partisan politics.