I chatted with Mark Schmitt of The American Prospect yesterday. Here’s our discussion on McChrystal, and on the stimulus.

The question I brought up on the stimulus is whether liberals are throwing the Clinton economic program under the bus. They used to argue Clinton had rescued the economy and created the predicate for sustained growth by cutting the deficit in 1993. How does that square with the purported need for continued massive deficit spending to keep the economy growing now? Mark replied that not all liberals backed the Clinton program (the likes of Robert Reich attacked it from the left) and the situation now is different because interest rates can’t go any lower, whereas Clinton’s program was designed to bring down rates. (I couldn’t recall the details off the top of my head yesterday, but the Clinton interest-rate story doesn’t quite add up — interest rates had been declining before he took office, and Greenspan increased rates consistently during the year after the Clinton program passed.)