I’m more concerned with the pathological plight up the
upwardly-mobile middle class than I am the struggles of the
downwardly-mobile middle class. Not because I think Rudy’s wrong
and the poorer among us should fail, or that it isn’t tough for a
significant number of people. But because we’re way too complacent
and in denial about the family fracture, struggle, sacrifice, and
lack of savings that are becoming all too characteristic of middle
class families whose household incomes are actually on the rise. On
this count, Quin, I think George Will really blew it in his attack
on Huckabee, and to that extent it seems to me to contribute more
to the problem than the solution. Huckabee doesn’t make the mistake
of pretending that as long as our incomes are rising everything’s
peachy. But in a sad way, he and Will are talking past each other,
and, in tone and content, it looks like things’re getting ugly.