A quick generic note: I’m constantly facing critiques along the lines of “Now you say A, but back in 1996, or 2003, or something, you said B. You’re not consistent!” Since I’ve written so much over the years, there’s plenty of opportunity for this sort of trawling, and I don’t have time to answer each case.

So what’s going on? One of three things:

1. The situations are different.

2. I’ve changed my views based on events.

3. I’ve changed my view because I’ve learned something.

An example of (1): The Bush tax cuts were not at all comparable to the Obama stimulus. The tax cuts were supposed to be permanent, reducing revenue by a couple of percent of GDP in perpetuity (and they may well end up doing that), whereas stimulus has always been envisioned as a temporary measure (and has proved very temporary in practice). It’s perfectly reasonable to worry about the effects of a willful permanent rise in the deficit that is the result of a “starve the beast” agenda but not worried about the effects of a temporary rise in response to a major crisis.

An example of (2): I used to be much more concerned about loss of investor confidence in the United States; the robustness of such confidence in advanced countries with monetary independence has been an important lesson.

An example of (3): I used to take the Pete Peterson “eek! aging population!” line too seriously; I didn’t realize until I got more into it that health care costs, not demography, are the main story.

So, enough with the gotchas. Why not evaluate what I say on, you know, its merits?