The Perfect Hiatt Hire
By 
Well, this was overdetermined:
The Washington Post today announced Megan McArdle will be a columnist for the Opinions section starting March 1. In this role, McArdle will write columns with a focus on the intersection of economics, business and public policy.
“Megan offers one of the liveliest, smartest, least predictable takes on policy, politics and everything else, from the history of washing machines to essential rules for living,” said Fred Hiatt, Editorial Page editor for The Post. “We’re excited to share her perspective and her distinctive voice with our readers and to deepen our coverage of economic and financial topics.”
Since conservative Washington Post columnists have more secure tenure than Article III judges, get used to it! Anyway, let’s relive some of the moments that led to this great development in American meritocracy:
- If only the Democrats were more competent, they would have passed a Medicaid expansion rather than the ACA, because the Supreme Court couldn’t have tampered with it.”
- “Rather than nutty gun control schemes that have no record of working anywhere but in many other liberal democracies, we should stop mass shootings by having young children rush at people firing semiautomatic weapons. I see no flaws in this plan.
- You can’t make an omelette without having a bunch of people burning to death because local regulations don’t require sprinklers.
- Memory is a weird thing. So maby every Democratic legislator was wrong both retrospectively and contemporaneously when they said that the federal exchange was not deliberately set up to fail.“
- “And I think some in New York are going to laugh even harder when they try to unleash some civil disobedience, Lenin style, and some New Yorker who understands the horrors of war all too well picks up a two-by-four and teaches them how very effective violence can be when it’s applied in a firm, pre-emptive manner.”
- “It wasn’t a statistic. it was a hypothetical.”
- As someone who will always have health insurance, my thesis is that health insurance does not actually have any value. If I’m wrong, I’ll send a Coke to your funeral.
- Republicans had no choice but to hold the debt ceiling hostage because the Democrats defeated a Supreme Court nominee with an up-or-down vote.
- And, of course, Roe v. Wade was actually bad for abortion rights. Can’t get your contrarian pundit card without that especially sour lemon!
Feel free to tell me what I’m forgetting. Give her this, she’s wronger about a wider variety of topics than Robert Samuelson.
…..(djw): One essential link for any post on McArdle’s oeuvre is Henry Farrell’s definitive response to the back-and-forth his post, linked above, on her endorsement of pre-emptive violence against anti-war protesters inspired:
The problem here is pretty straightforward. Megan McArdle believes that we would all benefit from more intellectual charity in the exciting cut and thrust of the blogosphere. There is indeed a plausible case for this. What there is not a plausible case for, in my opinion, is more intellectual charity towards Megan McArdle.