MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
D
ear Readers,
It’s time to quit. Since coming
to Washington in 1969 as a
young reporter, I have written,
by my crude calculation, about 2 million
words, most of them columns for
The Post, Newsweek and the National
Journal. Some years ago, I promised
myself that I wouldn’t overstay my wel-
come: I would not continue my column
simply because I could. I’m almost 75. If I
haven’t yet said what’s on my mind, I
never will.
Here are a few parting observations.
As regular readers know, I write on the
economy and its connection with society
and politics. Over the years, I’ve ex-
plored dozens of subjects: recessions,
inflation, executive pay, budget deficits,
climate change, poverty, the welfare
state, trade, taxes, aging, cybersecurity,
China, the stock market — and many
others.
So far as I can tell, nothing that I have
written has ever had the slightest effect
on what actually happened. I’ve routine-
ly suggested shutting down Amtrak, not
because I dislike trains (I don’t) but
because Amtrak is an excellent example
of how the federal government has ac-
quired so many nonessential functions.
Amtrak continues chugging along, cost-
ing billions of dollars for small public
benefits. But I’m resigned to this. No one
elected me to anything. In our system,
the people rule, not the pundits; and
that’s how it should be.
The truly big economic story of the
past half-century has been the rise and
fall of “macroeconomics.” This is econo-
mists’ fancy term for using interest rates,
taxes and government spending to regu-
late the economy’s growth and stability.
This once seemed doable. Now, less so.What happened?
In the 1960s, the American disciples
of British economist John Maynard
Keynes (1883-1946) argued that they
could tame the business cycle. One well-
known economist put it this way: “Re-
cessions are now generally considered to
be fundamentally preventable, like air-
plane crashes and unlike hurricanes.”
It didn’t work. Instead of reaching
“full employment” (generally defined as
an unemployment rate of 4 percent to
5 percent), we got easy money and
inflation (peak: 13 percent in 1980).
Paradoxically, we also got four reces-
sions from 1970 to 1982 as the Federal
Reserve tried to contain the inflation it
had unleashed. “Stagflation,” it was
called. Only a deep recession in the early
1980s, engineered by then-Fed Chair
Paul A. Volcker, reduced inflation to
single digits.
A similar saga occurred in the late
1990s and early 2000s. A long period of
solid economic growth — labeled the
Great Moderation by economists — fu-
eled easy credit, shaky loans, defaults
and insolvent lenders. Presidents
George W. Bush and Barack Obama
responded decisively. Fed Chair Ben Ber-
nanke and Treasury secretaries Henry
Paulson Jr. and Timothy Geithner did
yeoman work in avoiding a second Great
Depression. But that doesn’t excuse
their failure to anticipate the housing
boom and to preempt the bust.
I didn’t see it coming, either. But I’m
not an economist, as I periodically re-
minded readers. I’m just a reporter who
covers economics. One of the pleasures
of journalism is that you get to learn lots
of new “stuff.” I have learned much from
economists. With some exceptions, most
are intelligent, informed, engaged anddecent. In my experience, this truth
spans the political spectrum. But it’s not
the only truth.
Another is this: Economists consis-
tently overstate how much they know
about the economy and how easily they
can influence it. T hey maintain their
political and corporate relevance by pos-
tulating pleasant policies. Presidents
claim the good and repudiate the bad.
There are practical limits to how much
economic growth and living standards
can be accelerated and sustained.
Recessions remain a threat. Any
doubts about that were settled by the
2007-2009 Great Recession and global
financial crisis, which at the time was
the worst economic collapse since the
1930s’ Great Depression. The business
cycle hasn’t been conquered yet and
possibly never will be. That’s my main
conclusion from a half-century of
e conomy-watching. For at least three
reasons, I see this cycle of overpromise
c ontinuing.
First, the quest for economic status
and power pushes economists and their
political sponsors toward exaggerated
promises that lead to widespread public
disappointment. To be sure, there are
long periods of prosperity, but they tend
to end badly. That’s been the case since
the 1960s.
Second, people have a hard time
changing their minds. Once their minds
are made up, they are relatively impervi-
ous to argument, evidence and persua-
sion. Life is infinitely complex. To sim-
plify, people make assumptions. If they
routinely changed all their assumptions,
they’d go crazy, as would the people
around them. People do change, but the
catalyst is usually some traumatic event.
Third, modern democracies have ahard time making sacrifices in the pre-
sent for gains in the future. We’re al-
ready grappling with this problem.
From 2010 to 2030, the elderly’s share of
the population (65 and over) is projected
to rise from 13 percent to 20 percent.
Spending on Social Security and Medi-
care will skyrocket, and already is. Yet
we have done little to prevent spending
on the elderly from squeezing the rest of
the federal budget. Global warming pos-
es a similar issue: As yet, there is no
consensus to spend today in the vague
hope that we can curb climate change
several decades from now.
I hope I am wrong about the future.
That’s one excuse for my throwing in the
towel now, in the midst of one of the
great news stories of our time. I am a
man of the 20th century, but we are now
facing the problems of the 21st century,
which demand new policies and norms.
Goodbye and good luck — you’ll need as
much help as you can get.
***
My special thanks over the years to
Bill and Sue Jones, who made a young
reporter feel at home in a strange city; to
Richard Frank, the late editor of the
National Journal, who first assigned me
a column; to Peter Silberman, who
moved the column to The Post; to Marge
and Mel Elfin, who moved the column
also to Newsweek; to Rich Thomas, the
former chief economic correspondent
for Newsweek, who has been a constant
source of intellectual stimulation and
moral support; to Alan Shearer, who
syndicated the column through The
Washington Post Writers Group; to Joel
Havemann, a superb editor and better
friend; and to Fred Hiatt, The Post’s
editorial page editor who has kept me on
the op-ed page for many years.ROBERT J. SAMUELSONGoodbye, readers,
and good luck — you’ll need it
ANN KIERNAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTF
or nearly two years, Saudi Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman
has been attempting to regain his
place as an emerging global lead-
er despite his implication in war crimes
in Yemen and his brutal repression of
domestic dissent. In November, if Saudi
Arabia succeeds in playing host to
presidents and prime ministers at the
annual Group of 20 summit meeting, he
arguably will have done it.
Whether in person or virtually, Presi-
dent Trump and the leaders of Britain,
France, Germany, Canada, Italy, India
and other major democracies, along
with Russia, China and Turkey, are due
to honor MBS, as he is known, and his
father, King Salman, the titular head of
the regime, by joining the Riyadh
s ummit.
The question they all should be asked
between now and then is whether they
will bestow that redemption while Lou-
jain al-Hathloul continues to rot in the
notorious al-Hair prison, 25 miles from
the capital.
Hathloul, 31, is the best known of the
at least 28 women’s rights advocates
who have been jailed in Saudi Arabia
since 2018. A number of them have been
viciously tortured; none has been con-
victed of an offense. MBS’s bet is that his
crimes against them, and their continu-ing suffering, will be ignored for the
sake of an elite but all-but-meaningless
confab; the G-20, formed at the time of
the 2008 financial crisis, has accom-
plished nothing of import in the past
decade.
That can’t be said of Hathloul, who
while still in her early 20s became a
leader of protests by Saudi women
seeking the right to drive and an end to
the system of male guardianship. Mo-
hammed bin Salman, seeking global
prestige and foreign investment, elected
to lift the driving ban in June 2018 — but
not before crushing those who had
demanded the reform.
Hathloul, living in exile in the United
Arab Emirates, was abducted from there
in March 2018 and forcibly transported
to the kingdom. She was briefly released,
but on May 15, 2018, she and a number of
other women were seized and taken to
secret detention facilities, where they
were held incommunicado for months
and, according to their later accounts,
badly tortured.
Hathloul is still in prison in part
because she bravely told her family and
the official Saudi Human Rights Com-
mission what happened: She was
stripped, sexually abused, beaten, given
electric shocks and waterboarded. Her
torture was overseen by Saud al-
Qahtani, a top aide to MBS, who threat-ened to personally rape and kill her.
In all, 14 women’s rights activists were
arrested in 2018, and 14 more the
following year, according to Alqst, a
Saudi human rights group. But their
cases were overshadowed by another
MBS-ordered operation overseen by
Qahtani: the murder and dismember-
ment of exiled journalist Jamal
Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in
Istanbul in October 2018.
The global reaction to the Khashoggi
murder shattered MBS’s reputation. But
the experience did not change him. He
has continued to persecute any Saudi, at
home or abroad, who criticizes his
regime. He rejected demands, including
from the Trump administration, that he
purge Qahtani.
Instead of justice, he has offered fig
leaves: Last Monday, a court announced
that eight members of the 15-member
team sent to kill Khashoggi had been
given prison sentences ranging from
seven to 20 years. The same day, King
Salman placed phone calls to Russia’s
Vladimir Putin and France’s Emmanuel
Macron to discuss arrangements for the
G-20 summit. On Wednesday, he called
Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi of
India and Angela Merkel of Germany.
In the cases of the women, MBS has
conceded even less. In early 2019, eight
of those arrested in 2018 were releasedto home detention, and they and four
others were put on trial. The charges
against them were ludicrous: For exam-
ple, Hathloul (who was not released)
was said to have committed the offense
of providing information to human
rights groups and the European Union.
Maybe that explains why the trials soon
went dormant. There have been no
hearings in months, and none are
s cheduled.
A year ago, Hathloul’s family said she
had been offered her freedom — provid-
ed she videotape a statement saying she
had not been tortured. She refused, and
so she remains in a cell at al-Hair. For
three months this summer, she was
again incommunicado. Finally, on
Aug. 31, her parents were allowed to see
her. They found her weak from a hunger
strike.
Hathloul, and the regime, know that
her death might finally awaken the
consciences of the G-20 leaders, and
spoil the summit. It shouldn’t take that.
Macron, Merkel, Boris Johnson, Justin
Trudeau and others who don’t share
Trump’s love for dictators could accom-
plish far more than the summit will by
setting a simple condition for their
attendance: the freedom of Loujain
al-Hathloul and her fellow women
a ctivists.
Twitter: @jacksondiehlJACKSON DIEHLG-20 leaders, don’t forget the women rotting in Saudi prisons
W
hat in the world happened to
hope?
It’s hard to remember a
gloomier time in our public
life. So much of the analysis we read, the
news we consume and the hot takes that
fly by us on social media suggest that the
exits from this dreadful era are blocked.
We’re led to believe that our country faces
inexorable decline and that those who
see the possibility of reform and redemp-
tion are deluded.
We owe much of this pessimism to the
presidency of Donald Trump, and not
just because of his blindingly obvious
failures. Unlike most incumbents in our
history, he has bet his political survival
on the proposition that the country is
living through a dystopian nightmare
that only he can dispel.
Trump talks relentlessly about a crisis
of crime and violence, says that our
electoral system can’t be trusted, and
argues that those who are against him
are enemies of the country itself. He
promises yet more division if he is
reelected, threatens his political foes
with prosecution, and hints now and
again that he would like to be our leader
for life.
It is former vice president Joe Biden,
the challenger, who has the sunny view.
The heart of his argument is that there is
nothing wrong with our country that
can’t be cured as long as we throw Trump
out of office.
From the first day of his campaign to
this moment, he has made the same case:
We can view four years of Trump as an
aberration that we can put behind us. But
eight years would set us on a course from
which there would be no return.
What’s striking is that many who are
Biden’s strongest supporters and
Trump’s most fervent foes are deeply
skeptical of the old warhorse’s optimism.
There is, first, the fear that even if
Biden wins the popular vote — this now
seems nearly inevitable — he might lose
the electoral college. And if Biden pre-
vails there, too, it is easy to imagine
Trump trying to cling to power by dis-
crediting the result with a pack of lies
about the voting process.This, in turn, means that Trump’s most
fervent loyalists will never accept a Biden
victory. The new president will thus take
over a nation torn asunder, and the most
somber pessimists predict that armed
militias could threaten public order.
Less apocalyptic is the potential,
thoughtfully outlined last week by my
Post colleague Annie Linskey, “for post-
election clashes” within the broad coali-
tion Biden has assembled. In this view,
moderates and progressives in the party
will wage war over specific issues such as
the shape of a future health-care pro-
gram, and on the larger question of how
adventurous Biden’s overall agenda
should be. And nobody is expecting
Republicans to make Biden’s job any
easier.
In the face of all this grimness, I would
offer a practical case for hope.
It is equally plausible from current
polls to predict a close outcome or a
Biden landslide. Which is to say Biden’s
lead could shrink or grow. An over-
whelming Biden victory, which becomes
more likely if he performs well in the
debates, would obviate many of the
problems outlined above. In particular, a
Biden sweep would make Trump’s fraud
claims look absurd to many of his own
voters.
A big Biden win would help Democrats
take control of both the Senate and the
House, creating a real opportunity to
govern effectively. Okay, never underesti-
mate the Democrats’ capacity to tear
each other apart. But confronting a
pandemic and an economic catastrophe
would concentrate minds. Every Demo-
crat, from center to left, would under-
stand that blowing it this time would
cause irreparable damage to themselves
and to the country.
And while the differences across the
party’s wings are real, they’re also exag-
gerated. Between single-payer health
care and simply expanding Obamacare,
there’s a lot of room for compromise.
Ditto on how to combat climate change
and expand access to education and
training. And the economy is in suffi-
ciently dire shape that boldness, in both a
short-term recovery plan and a long-
term investment strategy, could look
simultaneously like realism to centrists
and a “New New Deal” to progressives.
Finally, as Adam Serwer argues in a
powerful and historically informed essay
in the Atlantic, a majority may well exist
for a new Reconstruction Era on behalf of
racial justice. We’re a better country than
Trump thinks we are.
Hope is not a feeling. It’s a virtue. We
have good reason to practice it right now
— and no alternative but to embrace it.
Twitter: @EJDionneE.J. DIONNE JR.A realist’s
optimistic
case for hope
A big Biden win would
help Democrats take
control of both the Senate
and the House, creating
a real opportunity to
govern effectively.