What Would Keynes Really Do?

After the Obama stimulus seemed to fail, a Washington Post headline gibed: John Maynard Keynes, the GOP’s Latest Whipping Boy. On the left, of course, he’s still our guy, even if, like some “Keynesians,” we have never read a word of Keynes. Some pundits say that in the 2012 presidential election, the real candidates will be Keynes and Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist who raged against all forms of state planning (though Hayek liked national health insurance). If that’s the real presidential election, wouldn’t it behoove some of us true believers to ask, in this moment of double-dip despair, “My God, what would Keynes do?”