Commentary
Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, is understandably proud of what is likely to be his chief claim to posthumous fame and his only entry in “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.”
Way back in 2009, when he took the job of chief of staff to President Barack Obama, the country was still reeling from the financial crisis of 2008. But what seemed a calamity to pensioners, investors, and homeowners across the land looked to him like a political opportunity.
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” he advised the president.
By which it is to be presumed he meant that the market meltdown and subsequent federal bailout would afford the incoming administration an excellent excuse for loading the economy down with extra taxes and social spending, like the Affordable Care Act, and all kinds of extra regulation, like the Dodd-Frank Act of the following year….