From the last Morning Jolt of the week:
Finally, a Presidential Candidate Ready to Tackle America’s Fun Deficit
Who’s ready for “fun camp”, America?
The punch-lines write themselves on this one, and that’s exactly what’s happening. Hillary Clinton, soon to announce her candidacy for president, spoke last night before the American Camp Association in New Jersey. In an effort to try to connect with her audience, she said, “We really need to have camps for adults. . . . None of the serious stuff. None of the life challenge stuff. More fun. I think we have a huge ‘fun deficit’ in America.”
So Clinton hands over to us all to consider the idea of a progressive sending adults to camps, and the idea of a politician infamous for being humorless and suspicious being an arbiter of “fun,” wrapped in a great big bow.
I haven’t seen a Democratic presidential candidate this enthusiastic about camps since FDR.
She may not have much to say about the national debt or the budget deficit, but you can’t say she doesn’t have a plan for the fun deficit!
In some ways, this is perfect. Give her a smidgen of credit; a few days ago we looked at the right-track/wrong direction numbers and noted that Americans are feeling anxiety about the future, and they’ve felt it pretty much since late 2008. Gallup tells us that Americans’ fears about terrorism, illegal immigration, and race relations are spiking, and fears about the economy and health care are still high.
Yes, Hillary, you’re right, we’re not having fun.
Yuval Levin summarized it well:
America’s families face stagnating wages, excessive tax burdens, rising health and higher education costs, barriers to mobility and work, disincentives to marriage and childbearing, and an economy increasingly held back by over-regulation, cronyism, institutional sclerosis, and mounting public debt. And each of these problems has been greatly exacerbated by a federal government that is overreaching, hyperactive, unwieldy, and immensely expensive.
The workforce-participation rate is at the lowest point since the late 1970s. Income inequality has worsened. A record number of Americans are collecting food stamps and living in poverty. And in the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008, we have experienced the weakest recovery on record. Median annual household income has actually gone down more during the so-called recovery than during the recession itself. The median income of American households decreased by as much in the two years after the official end of the Great Recession as it did during the recession . . .
Among the public, then, there is a very deep sense of unease and apprehension. Ground that people once believed was stable is seen as crumbling, and many Americans seem unsure what to make of it. But one thing they do believe: Right now politics is out of touch with what they’re experiencing. We’re witnessing a collapse of trust in government, most especially the federal government, and when it comes to Republicans and Democrats, the public’s attitude is: A pox on both your parties.
And Hillary’s answer is fun camps!
You know what would be a lot of fun? A roaring economy. You know those go-go 1980s that you guys keep lamenting as a decade of greed? That was fun.
No two ways about it, the ’80s had the best parties.