Hendrick Hertzberg’s latest “talk of the town” item opens with a hilarious meditation on the changing nature of presidential drug disclosures as witnesses by a New York Times article that appeared to have been accusing Obama of having done less drugs back in the day than his autobiography implied. Then, the pivot:

Voters, rightly, don’t much seem to care. But there is a glaring discontinuity between the lived experience of Americans and the drug policies of their governments. Nearly a hundred million of us—forty per cent of the adult population, including pillars of the nation’s political, financial, academic, and media élites—have smoked (and, therefore, possessed) marijuana at some point, thereby committing an offense that, with a bit of bad luck, could have resulted in humiliation, the loss of benefits such as college loans and scholarships, or worse. More than forty thousand people are in jail for marijuana offenses, and some seven hundred thousand are arrested annually merely for possession. Meanwhile, the percentage of high-school seniors who have used pot has remained steady, between forty and fifty per cent.

That’s what always seems to me to go missing in these “politicians behaving badly” stories. Do I think that having smoked pot should disqualify a person from being a U.S. Senator? Of course not. But a minority of people who smoke pot in this country do wind up facing rather severe penalties for having done so. The question for formerly drug using politicians who (rightly) expect to be forgiven is how they can continue to support a legal regime that has these consequences.

[The official Yglesias line on the issue is that there's good reason to keep adequate legal restrictions on marijuana in place so as to prevent the emergence of large marijuana firms with lobbying arms and sophisticated marketing and advertising arms. This, obviously, would still leave the door open for substantial liberalization of policy from its current status quo.]

The CBO’s latest projections see an economic slowdown that doesn’t become a recession. The letter accompanying the projections also nicely encapsulates why you won’t see me doing any macroeconomic forecasting (emphasis added):

CBO’s previous forecast, which was embodied in budget projections released in January, was finalized in early December 2007. However, data released since then––especially regarding the labor market––indicate that economic conditions are weaker than previously projected, and conditions in some segments of financial markets remain worrisome. Other indicators––such as production indices and information on retail sales and sales of new homes––also suggest a slowing in economic activity.

At the same time, changes in monetary policy have been more substantial than CBO assumed in December, and fiscal policy stimulus has been enacted. The Federal Reserve reduced the target for the federal funds rate by 125 basis points in January, and financial markets anticipate further easing in the near future. In addition, the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 will provide about $150 billion in tax rebates and business tax deductions in fiscal year 2008. CBO anticipates that the recent monetary and fiscal policy actions will provide significant support to the economy in 2008.

Basically, one of the biggest determinants of whether or not there’s going to be a recession is whether or not the Fed thinks there’s going to be a recession. If they think it’s likely, they’ll act aggressively to avoid one and there likely won’t be one. If they don’t think there’s going to be one, then there just might be a recession. At that point, though, in terms of accurate forecasting we’re talking about mind-reading rather than economics.

Via Patrick Appel, who’s doing a great job filling in for Andrew Sullivan, Andrew Ferguson takes a look at John McCain’s economic advisors for The Weekly Standard:

What makes it odd is [McCain's economics advisers] aren’t like each other at all, at least when it comes to their economic views. A couple of them, if you put them in the same room, would set off an intergalactic explosion like the collision of matter and antimatter.

One adviser, Jack Kemp, is the man who talked Ronald Reagan into embracing supply side economics in the 1970s, which launched the Reagan boom of the 1980s. He’s the world’s bubbliest advocate of tax cuts, dismissing the traditional Republican fixation on balanced budgets as “root canal” economics. Another adviser, Peter Peterson, is root canal economics. He’s a dour Jeremiah who called the Reagan boom a “mad, drunken bash” and thinks steep tax increases on income, gasoline, tobacco, and alcohol, on top of a 5 percent consumption tax, are necessary to put the government’s finances in order. He and Rudman run the Concord Coalition, an advocacy group that regards the federal government’s budget deficit as the country’s foundational economic problem.

Under the right circumstances, having advisors from competing schools of thought would probably be an asset. I would like to see the next president hear a take from the labor-liberal side of things and the neoliberal Bob Rubin school before making a major decision. Indeed, it would probably be smart to run things by some smart people from all the way on the other side of the political spectrum. The best policies can often secure support from a variety of different perspectives, and certainly complicated undertakings tend to be improved by accepting some critical input. The trouble is that to make something like this work you need the person in charge to actually be capable of assessing different kinds of advice and ironing them into something resembling a coherent policy and there’s little in McCain’s background to suggest that he has any idea of how to season a policy with a touch of Kemp and a dollop of Peterson.

Under the circumstances, someone or other is likely to emerge as the main driving force behind a McCain administration, just as George W. Bush turned out to be 98 percent Cheney/Rumsfeld and only 2 percent Powell/Armitage, but there’s no way for we the voters to predict in advance. Just as with McCain’s general ideological meandering, we’re left to take on faith that his personal powers of Straight Talkiness should give us reassurance that he’ll do the right thing even though he can’t communicate any kind of remotely clear vision of what the right thing is.

Michael Ledeen calls for expanded educational benefits:

Why has no candidate or national leader called for dramatic improvement in the educational benefits of the G.I. Bill? All our commissioned officers have college degrees (bet you didn’t know that), but the non-coms need scholarships, and the officers should get the same for graduate and professional school. I’m sure David will agree. And the candidates should, too. If we really “support our troops,” this is a fine way to do well for our society by doing good for our heroes.

That reminds me of this wacky incident from Bush’s State of the Union address:

President Bush drew great applause during his State of the Union address last month when he called on Congress to allow U.S. troops to transfer their unused education benefits to family members. “Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them,” he said.

A week later, however, when Bush submitted his $3.1 trillion federal budget to Congress, he included no funding for such an initiative, which government analysts calculate could cost $1 billion to $2 billion annually.

Meanwhile, it seems to me that Hillary Clinton actually has proposed more-or-less the thing that Ledeen says nobody has proposed:

Hillary will enact a GI Bill of Rights for the 21st century that will resurrect the spirit of the original 1944 GI Bill and offer service members, veterans and their families with expanded education, housing and entrepreneurial benefits. Her plan will guarantee equal access for all components of the Armed Forces – Active, Guard and Reserve – that have deployed overseas in support of a combat operation since September 11 or served two years of active duty since September 11. She will fund undergraduate education for service members, as well as education for specialized trade or technical training, and certification and licensing programs.

And then of course who could forget about the time when the administration was saving money by having National Guard units deploy for precisely 729 days so as to avoid giving them the education benefits to which they would be entitled were they to stay for 730 days.