After David Gregory does his best to try to paint all of our current economic woes on President Obama, Peggy Noonan points out that most Americans for the first time in her lifetime don't think their children are going to be better off than they are, and after David Gregory shows a poll saying Americans think the last ten years have been the worst decade in history, even Noonan has to admit that those problems were brought about from the earlier part of that decade, but without mentioning Bush by name.
If Noonan were being honest about the cause of our current economic woes, it's her old boss Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics finally destroying what's left of America's middle class. We've been heading in this direction for a very long time and unless our politicians lose their fetishes for tax cuts and their refusal to do anything about outsourcing, this is just going to continue to get worse before it gets better. That pessimism Noonan's opining over is due to the fact that people are aware that our politicians are too bought and sold by big business to do anything to reverse the trends.
DAVID GREGORY: But-- and Peggy's point, I think. Whether it's about healthcare, the government stepped up, took some big whacks at policy. Namely dealing with the economy. And a lot of people said, "Well, wait a minute. Nothing's worked here. You know, you bailed out the banks. Started under Bush. You continued it. The auto companies. You did healthcare. You did the stimulus. And-- and we're still in the same position. I still don't have any equity in my house anymore and I can't find a job." That's a role of government issue.
PEGGY NOONAN: There is also this-- this growing from that but it's part of what we're talking about is this-- the biggest political change in the United States in my lifetime is the sense grownups have that their children will not have it better. It is a-- we are-- a happy people. You can walk along any street in America right now and you're gonna see people doin' Christmas and the holidays and it's wonderful. But there is deep down on the third level of thought a-- a strain of pessimism--
DAVID GREGORY: Well, and--
PEGGY NOONAN: --that I've--
DAVID GREGORY: --Peggy--
PEGGY NOONAN: --seen before.
DAVID GREGORY: --look at this from our recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. People's views on the last cen-- but-- on this last decade that it's the worst decade in history at 54 percentile.
FEMALE VOICE: Well, part of that-- (OVERTALK)
FEMALE VOICE: --that is being--
TOM BROKAW: And part of that--
FEMALE VOICE: --saying that--
TOM BROKAW: --because they--
FEMALE VOICE: --at the beginning.
TOM BROKAW: --were living through it. They don't have any idea what -- well let me take 'em back to 1938--
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Yes, exactly.
TOM BROKAW: --for example, when the prospect of war and World War II and the-- and the recovery wasn't working as well as FDR had hoped it would in that year. And we still had bread lines in America and the country was on its backside at that point.
PEGGY NOONAN: And we were--
TOM BROKAW: And----
PEGGY NOONAN: --hopeful.
TOM BROKAW: --and how about--
PEGGY NOONAN: And-- it was--
TOM BROKAW: --the worst--
PEGGY NOONAN: --dreadful.
TOM BROKAW: --how about the worst decade leading up to the Civil War?
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Yeah. I mean--
TOM BROKAW: You know?
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: --for those of us who are historians and who've lived in those other decades--
TOM BROKAW: Right.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: the 1860's, the 1930's, I'll still take this one, as troubling as it is.
