Wish I'd Said It: Johnson on Axelrod

Simon Johnson reports that David Axelrod did a session with Diane Rehm this morning:

He was awful. ... [T]there was no narrative – why exactly did we have a recession, why has it been so bad, and why aren’t the jobs coming back?

Without a narrative, how can anyone make sense of the past 18 months?

Axelrod can choose his narrative – and obviously doesn’t need to agree, for example, with the view that the financial system became dangerous and now needs to be reined in - but he has to say something coherent. You can’t just make isolated points like “the fiscal stimulus helped” or (even more confusing) “we’ll now address the budget deficit.”

There was really no explanation for why the economy has become such a difficult place for so many people. How did we go from apparent prosperity in 2007 to the deepest recession of the past 50 years? And how are we going to get the jobs back?

Well, strictly speaking, I didn't hear Diane Rehm so I'm not in a position to say whether Axelrod was awful or not. But it certainly fits my perception: you can't win without a story and these guys do not have a story.