Thomas Friedman's Hyperbole: America 'Needs an Arab Spring,' Government Makes 'No Decisions'

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman unloaded another lecture on Sunday about how our country is in dire need of reform, like an Arab backwater: "Does America need an Arab Spring? …has American gone from a democracy to a “vetocracy” —from a system designed to prevent anyone in government from amassing too much power to a system in which no one can aggregate enough power to make any important decisions at all?

Conservative economist Daniel Mitchell takes Friedman to task: "This is remarkable, in part because he is stunningly wrong. The political class in Washington manages to spend about $4 trillion per year and churn out tens of thousands of pages of new regulation annually."


Mitchell said "the part that really shocked me was that Friedman basically acknowledged that the problem is big government." Friedman wrote "the huge expansion of the federal government, and the increasing importance of money in politics, have hugely expanded the number of special-interest lobbies and their ability to influence and clog decision-making."

Wrote Mitchell:


Tim Graham
Tim Graham