Wealth & Money Quote by David Axelrod

“Obviously” is doing a lot of work here: it’s a preemptive eye-roll, a rhetorical nudge that frames openness to “all good ideas” as basic competence rather than political concession. Axelrod, a message craftsman as much as a public servant, is laundering a hard fiscal argument through the language of reasonableness. The phrase “all good ideas” sounds inclusive, but it quietly narrows the field to proposals that can be branded as sober and responsible, while casting opponents as either ideological or unserious by default.

The engine of the quote is temporal pressure. “Long-term” signals both maturity and inevitability: debt isn’t an emergency siren so much as a slow leak that will, eventually, rot the floorboards. That matters in U.S. budget politics, where voters are asked to feel urgency about problems designed to be boring. Axelrod tries to make the abstract visceral by moving from macro to intimate: “our economy” to “our kids.” It’s a classic inoculation against the charge that deficit talk is just elite bookkeeping. By invoking children, he smuggles in moral stakes without naming specific sacrifices.

Notice what’s missing: numbers, culprits, tradeoffs. The quote isn’t a plan; it’s a permission structure. “We need to deal with it” sounds like determination, but it also buys time, suggesting consensus before conflict. In Washington, that’s often the point: establish seriousness, signal flexibility, and prepare the audience for compromises that will later be sold as the only “good ideas” on the table.