Income gap; Scott McClellan

The Nightly Build...

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The Return of the Gilded Age

Is the economy good or bad? Don Erler, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, tells us that it's good and getting better all the time. He dismisses the growing income gap between rich and poor by pointing out that "80 percent of poor American households have air conditioning, up from 66 percent a decade earlier?" So, quit complaining, you've got air conditioning, don't you?

In fact, growing income inequality is something to worry about, even if we are all living with more amenities than our grandparents did. If you value the America of the late 1940s and 1950s, it's probably because of the rise of the middle class. If you remember a time when we all shared the same values, it's probably middle class values you think of. The reason those values ruled America in those years was because the size of the middle class had grown to dominate the American scene. The income gap that characterized the Gilded Age (think tenements, child labor, wretched working conditions, contrasted with estates and mansions, dinner parties and servants) gave way to a vast middle class (think home ownership and automobiles and education and health care). Unfortunately, the shrinking of the income gap lasted only from about 1940 to about 1980. Just as quickly as the income gap disappeared, it reappeared. And as the gap grows again, the middle class is shrinking. Expect the benefits that a middle class brings society to disappear as well. This should concern us. When history looks back on our age, the disappearance of the middle class will be more important than whether another 14 percent of American homes got air conditioning or not.

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Scott McClellan Passes the Buck

Is there a reason why political insiders won't tell the truth until it's too late to matter? Back in the days of Watergate, special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus all resigned on principle rather than participate in Richard Nixon's illegal coverup of White House crimes. In the current White House, Scott McClellan, former press secretary to President Bush, loyally does his president's bidding, only setting the record straight long after he's out of office. According to Trail Blazers, McClellan is writing a book in which he tells us something everyone in the country knew in 2004:

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself."