Show me what “a broad array of ideological views” looks like

 

This, according to the Obama administration, is what “a broad array of ideological views” [ht: br] looks like:

• Paul Krugman (Princeton University), Alan Blinder (Princeton University), Claudia Goldin (Harvard University), Anat Admati (Stanford University), Erik Brynjolfsson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Roland Fryer (Harvard University), who were among the economists invited to have lunch with President Obama on 18 June; and
• Martin Feldstein (Harvard University), Robert Hall (Stanford University), Ben Bernanke (former Federal Reserve Chairman), Edward Glaesar (Harvard University), Luigi Zingales (University of Chicago), Kevin Hassett (American Enterprise Institute), and Melissa Kearney (the Hamilton Project), who were invited for lunch yesterday.

Apparently, that’s what we’ve come to in this country, when “consulting a wide variety of perspectives” is in fact limited to a discussion within a narrow range, from the extreme right to mainstream liberalism. No one who actually offered a real sense of the impending crisis before 2007-08. Nor anyone who is critical of capitalism and is seriously thinking about alternative economic institutions.

The problem is not just that Obama is only listening to a narrow set of views. The list of invitees to the two gatherings also serves as an official stamp of approval—that these economists’ views are worth listening to, and all other approaches to economic analysis can be safely marginalized.