Thomas Friedman is Making Me Feel Bad

I’ve written some not-so-nice things about the guy over the years, but this is a pretty great column, eh?

Nevertheless, the part about Sarah Palin not being any more capable of reforming Washington “than the first 100 names in the D.C. phonebook” did make me wonder if Brookings’ well regarded health and budget expert Henry Aaron is in the DC phone book. I don’t want to put a link to the guy’s information up on the blog, but suffice it to say that the answer is “yes” and given his name (those of us whose family names start with the letter “y” are ultra-sensitive to who among us is walking around with privileged names) he’s very plausibly one of the first 100 listings in the DC phone book, and probably knows a great deal about how we could improve Washington.

That digression aside, the larger point is that Friedman is making a lot of sense.