On Wednesday, February 18^th, I met with Dr. Robert Watson, Ph.D to discuss current events with a focus on President Obama’s “Stimulus Bill” which he was slated to sign the next day in Denver.

Dr. Watson is the Coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University, an author and frequent public speaker which is where I first met him and arranged for an interview. We met at his office on campus and I began with the first question below and what followed was an avalanche of keen insight by Dr. Watson which made for one of the most enjoyable afternoons I’ve had in a long while.

I would like to point out that this meeting turned out to be less of an interview and more of his “stream of conscious” insight into American history, current events and the future of our Democracy.

Lang: Since you are around young people all of the time, what do you think their sense of what’s going on with the economy and how would you characterize the economy…..recession, depression or something else?

Dr. Watson: Well, technically consecutive quarters of economic downturn is a recession so technically we are in a recession. You would be hard pressed to find an economist to say we are not in a recession…..and given the rise in unemployment, business and housing failures any way you look at it we are in a major recession and its going to get worse this year…..our national unemployment figures are moving to 8% but I believe that’s the tip of the iceberg as a lot of people fall between the cracks after exhausting their unemployment compensation along with the hidden economies of illegal activities, etc.

What I see as a college professor is: #1 that employers are not coming to campuses #2, students are not getting any job offers, and #3 students are graduating in debt…loans and grants have dried up under Bush in the last few years so they couldn’t be graduating at a worse time.

Now what we are seeing is kids who are 18-20 yrs old are the same age as soldiers dying in Iraq and every one of my students knows someone who went into the military… and in normal circumstances our students couldn’t find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map….but now because it has become so relevant to them….I mean it’s their Vietnam….I think that all of this has come together to make them more politically active and I think the students are a little more cognizant of the recession… more than young people normally would be.

In fact I just had one kid tell me that his parent told him that he has to get a job or else he would have to transfer to a less expensive school.

I think that if I had to characterize the stimulus bill…..which has been a war of words…the Republicans have won the “framing” argument…they frame it as a spending bill….they frame it as a pork bill… so I think that Obama and the Democrats have lost the framing battle and aren’t able to portray it as a jobs bill or a recovery bill.

Please click HERE for the rest of the Interview