Panglossianism Or Pessimism

Ross has a sane post on the economic politics of both parties:

When economic times are tough, Democratic politicians and pundits tend to go way overboard exaggerating how dire things are, while Republican politicians and pundits tend to go way overboard insisting that everything's fine and the public needs to stop whining, stop listening to the media, and start enjoying the good times. In 1979, the tendency to play to type produced Jimmy Carter's famous malaise speech, in which the American people were informed that the solution to their economic problems was to accept a wartime mentality in which the government would massively regulate the energy sector and everyone would have to make do with much, much less. In the 2000s, it's produced too many Republicans who think and talk like Phil Gramm, whether they're insisting that a sluggish economic recovery with weak wage growth for most middle-income Americans actually represents "the greatest story never told," or claiming that we can just "drill our way out" of the current energy crunch.