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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. More

Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero … all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.

Reports of the Death of Obamanomics are Greatly Exaggerated

By Megan McArdle
Jul 9 2009, 10:39 AM ET Comment

I just can't get excited by conservatives who are listening hard for the distant sounds of herds of voters preparing to destroy Obama and his agenda.  Yes, his approval ratings are falling, but his approval ratings were never going to remain at their inauguration highs; once you start making actual policy, rather than pretty promises, you invariably start pissing some people off.  Yes, it turns out that FDR was more of a fluke than a model, and crises may not be such a good time for passing massive new agendas after all.  Yes, the green shoots seem to have shriveled.



But honestly, I feel like the punditariat needs to check its meds; the bipolar swings are starting to induce whiplash.  The second derivative of unemployment perks up, and the economy is back on track, the stimulus is working, and we're all going to go to heaven when we die (and have excellent universal health care right up to that point).  Retail figures fall, and Obama's presidency is over, climate change is going to kill us all if the recession doesn't get us first, and 95% of the Washington Post's columnists start bulk-pricing canned goods and ammunition.

I'm certainly not going to say that Obama is guaranteed re-election, or any part of his expansive agenda.  But it's far, far too early to count him out.
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