Week of April 27, 2009

By the time it is finished, G.M. expects to have only 38,000 union workers and 34 factories left in the United States, compared with 395,000 workers in more than 150 plants at its peak employment in 1970.

I used to blame Houston’s booms for wiping away our history. Money was made fast, and money was spent fast. For a while, it seemed that everywhere I looked, a bulldozer was scraping some perfectly sound building off its lot, making way for something bigger, newer, flimsier and uglier.

The landscape changed so fast it left me dazed, unable to recognize streets I used to know. I drove around asking, “What used to be there?”

The boom’s gone now. We’re in the teeth of a recession. And even so, the old buildings are still disappearing.

What’s going on? I asked David Bush of the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance. Have you noticed this?

“Yeah,” he responded drily, in the seen-it-all tone of Houston’s long-suffering preservationists. “The historic stuff’s still being torn down. But the difference is that now nobody’s building on the lots.”

The trajectory of Obama's presidency might have been determined by what he did in his first 100 days. His budget calls for doubling the national debt in five years and almost tripling it in 10. If the necessary government borrowing soon causes a surge in long-term interest rates, the result will be the 1970s redux—inflation and stagnation. If so, the 44th president will be remembered not as the second iteration of the 32nd (Franklin Roosevelt) but of the 39th (Jimmy Carter).

HNN Editor Reality Check: The national debt as of April 2009 was approximately $11 trillion. The CBO estimates the Obama budget over 10 years would accumulate $9 trillion in total annual deficits.

President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won't vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don't need another commission. We don't need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation's commitment to the rule of law.