Outsourcing

It is frightening when no one has the courage to take the right side of an issue. Now that Mr. Mankiw dared speak the truth, the dunces are indeed arrayed in confederacy. George Will nails it:

It is difficult to say something perfectly, precisely false. But Speaker Dennis Hastert did when participating in the bipartisan piling-on against the president's economic adviser who imprudently said something sensible.

John Kerry and John Edwards, who are not speaking under oath and who know that economic illiteracy has never been a disqualification for high office, have led the scrum against the chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw, who said the arguments for free trade apply to trade in services as well as manufactured goods. But the prize for the pithiest nonsense went to Hastert: ``An economy suffers when jobs disappear."

Ouch! Mr. Schumpeter rolls in his grave. Sadly, nobody will stand up for economics against panic. This is shaping up to be my least favorite issue in 2004. Republicans and Democrats will rush to parrot protectionism over dynamism.