Clinton’s Dismal Scientists

AMONG academic economists, Bill Clinton may be the most popular incoming President in history. and his first budget may be the most highly praised White House economic proposal since Jimmy Carter backed gasoline rationing. Some 565 distinguished scholars have endorsed Clintonomics as “our best hope for reviving the nation’s economic growth.” The list of FOBs reads like a Who’s Who of Keynesian economics: it includes nine Nobel laureates and seemingly the entire economics faculties of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern, and the Brookings Institution, as well as many pop-economists who spent the 1980s writing on the failure of supply-side economics—Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, John Kenneth Galbraith, etc. These economists’ enthusiasm for Clinton nearly rivals their disdain for Ronald Reagan. That is to say, they like Bill Clinton a whole lot.

Unfortunately, this avalanche of scholarly support says far more about the partisan leanings of professional economists these days that it does about the wisdom of Clintonomics. If macro-economics was once a pseudo-science, today it is all too often merely an outlet for political propaganda.

About the Author

Stephen Moore

Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, a senior visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a senior economic adviser to the Trump campaign.

Featured Tags

AMONG academic economists, Bill Clinton may be the most popular incoming President in history. and his first budget may be the most highly praised White House economic proposal since Jimmy Carter backed gasoline rationing. Some 565 distinguished scholars have endorsed Clintonomics as “our best hope for reviving the nation’s economic growth.” The list of FOBs reads like a Who’s Who of Keynesian economics: it includes nine Nobel laureates and seemingly the entire economics faculties of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern, and the Brookings Institution, as well as many pop-economists who spent the 1980s writing on the failure of supply-side economics—Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, John Kenneth Galbraith, etc. These economists’ enthusiasm for Clinton nearly rivals their disdain for Ronald Reagan. That is to say, they like Bill Clinton a whole lot.

Unfortunately, this avalanche of scholarly support says far more about the partisan leanings of professional economists these days that it does about the wisdom of Clintonomics. If macro-economics was once a pseudo-science, today it is all too often merely an outlet for political propaganda.

About the Author

Stephen Moore

Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, a senior visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a senior economic adviser to the Trump campaign.