Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Monday quarterbacking from the Sunday drivers.

Paul Krugman:

International travel by world leaders is mainly about making symbolic gestures. Nobody expects President Obama to come back from China with major new agreements, on economic policy or anything else.

But let’s hope that when the cameras aren’t rolling Mr. Obama and his hosts engage in some frank talk about currency policy. For the problem of international trade imbalances is about to get substantially worse. And there’s a potentially ugly confrontation looming unless China mends its ways.

Ross Douthat:

This dire figure [jobs] isn’t Barack Obama’s fault. Even in an age of near-trillion-dollar spending sprees, the president of the United States has only limited influence over the unemployment numbers. But the White House spent the winter pretending otherwise. The stimulus bill was framed and sold primarily as a jobs bill, and the Obama administration placed a substantial bet on the promise that the unemployment rate would start dropping before 2010 arrived.

Fareed Zakaria:

Other countries can perhaps emulate some of these traits, but none can replicate the creative cocktail that is America.

That might be true today. But could it be that American achievements reflect the past more than predicting the future? It's important to remember that many of the metrics that place the United States so far ahead are actually lagging indicators. Nobel Prizes tend to be given to scientists in their 70s, toward the end of their productive lives. What's happening among scientists in their 30s? Who's making the discoveries today that will receive Nobel Prizes four decades from now?

Clive Crook:

Sooner or later the US will find itself grappling with an immense fiscal problem. The recession and stimulus have combined to produce record-breaking deficits, and economic recovery will not come close to restoring balance. US voters have big questions to answer about the entitlements they demand and the taxes they are willing to pay.

EJ Dionne:

There were important eras in our history when citizens in large numbers were drawn to government service with a sense of mission and exhilaration. The New Deal was certainly such a time, as were the days of the New Frontier and (though it is unjustly derided now) the Great Society.

They came in part -- take note, President Obama -- because they were inspired by leaders who made it a point to call them into government.

Danbury (CT) News Times:

Quietly holding candles, hundreds of clergymen, congregants and reform advocates lined the sidewalks outside Independent U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman's Stamford home Sunday night in a show of support for universal health care...

"In some sense, it's poetic," said Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, who attended the vigil. "The place where Sen. Joseph Lieberman received his high school education, the place he visited upon his announcement to seek the vice presidency, a place where his run for the presidency began -- and it just so happens, a place across the street from where he lives."

Boston Globe:

It is true that for the majority of people H1N1 is a mild illness, generally causing two to four days of feeling lousy. But the virus is highly contagious. The sheer numbers are staggering. A school in Chicago closed last month when 800 of its 2,200 students were sick. With any flu there are people who will have complications and die. As the number of cases continues to climb, statistics are not in our favor.

For high-risk groups, such as pregnant women, talk of "mild illness’’ is meaningless. Stories are multiplying of the devastating losses of both baby and mother. In our small town there are young adults who were previously healthy now on respirators in intensive care units.