Steve Verdon has a post on his reaction to President Bush’s State of the Union address over at Dienonychus antirrhopus that I found very amusing which I presume was not Steve’s intent. Steve notes:
But there seems to be one thing Bush loves and that is lots of spending.
The reason I found this funny was that it was a classic illustration of the tension between Jacksonians and Hamiltonians. Hamiltonians (economic realists) are green eye shade types. They’re always worried about the bottom line, how much it will cost, and is it good for business. For Jacksonians (populist nationalists) credit is a sacrament and debt is a way of life.
It was a coalition of Hamiltonians and Jacksonians that brought George W. Bush to the presidency in 2000 and it was obvious (at least to me—I didn’t vote for him the first time around) that the Hamiltonians thought he would be like his dad i.e. one of them and didn’t realize just how Jacksonian W was.
