Paul Krugman for OMB? Don't Make Me Laugh...

Now that Peter Orszag has announced his pending resignation from the government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the popular blog Baseline Scenario has started to lobby for Paul Krugman to be nominated for the position. Krugman, of course, is the Left's favorite economics writer (for the New York Times), as well as a professor at Princeton.

"But for the OMB position, the dynamic of a hearing would be terrific for the president’s specific agenda and broader messages. Krugman, of course, is the leading advocate for continued (or increased) fiscal stimulus. This is exactly President Obama’s message to the G20 this weekend.

Plus, when Republicans push back against Krugman on this issue, he will let them have it full blast on fiscal policy during the Bush administration. Krugman has, again and again, been an outspoken critic of the Bush era fiscal policy. He has precise chapter and verse on where the Bush team went off the deep fiscal edge."

If the goal is to make the Obama Administration look even more ridiculous than it already does today, then Obama couldn't possibly make a better nomination.

Krugman is a shrill partisan for the Left, who thinks that excessive "Keynesian" government spending should unabated.

So the plan is for Krugman to let the Republicans have it "full blast" for policies during the Bush administration? I guess it's not just the military that likes to fight the last war.

There was a period of time when the American public would at least be open to the idea of Obama suggesting that the current economic predicament is something he inherited from former President Bush. Those days are over.

As evidenced by the Senate's recent reluctance to pass a "Tax Extenders" bill that would have modestly increased our national debt, the American public is slowly but surely starting to clue-in that excessive government spending in the form of bailouts and over-regulation (healthcare, financial "reform", etc.) are what's killing this economy.

So make Paul Krugman the feckless head of OMB. It will be the equivalent of stringing him up as a pinata for everyone to take a swing at, with no risk of any kind of retaliation.