WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Greek Election Solves… Nothing. “Greece is in this mess partly because its political leadership is both weak and addicted to patron-client politics. A Greek politician is or at least tries to be like Don Corleone to those around him: he does people favors and they kiss the ring. If the Don has no more favors to give, he loses his power. Think of Fredo instead of Michael, and think of him trying to run the family without any money. That is more or less where Greece is right now.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Study: Long-term deficits are linked to 24 percent lower growth.

What’s the real harm of a massive government deficit? Carmen Reinhart, Vincent Reinhart, and Kenneth Rogoff find that high public debt is associated with a significantly lower level of GDP in the long run.

In a new paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the researchers examined the historical incidence of high government debt levels in advanced economies since 1800, examining 26 different “debt overhang episodes” when public debt levels were above 90 percent for at least five years.

Yeah, the pie’s smaller. But the folks with “juice” get a bigger piece, and that’s what’s important.

FRANK J. FLEMING: WHAT, ME WORRY? “Everyone is so gloomy about the future these days.”

IS MERITOCRACY failing America? I’m not sure that what we’ve got is a meritocracy. Our people seem to be credentialed, more than educated. But I don’t think that affirmative action and higher taxes are likely to make things better.

I’d say shrink the playground of the “elites” — government — so that they can do less harm. Notice that that’s never the answer to any of their failings, though?

UPDATE: From the comments: “It strikes me that, in no small part, modern American meritocracy has been so watered down and stylized that ‘smart’ now amounts to little more than mastery of a few subcultural norms and presuppositions. The norms and presuppositions themselves have little, if any, predictive power of native intelligence and generally serve to designate its participants as one of ‘us’ versus one of ‘them’. It has much less to do with the identification and nurturing of native intelligence than it does with the perpetuation of status.”

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Cooking, Food & Wine.

Also, today only: LG 22-Inch LED LCD Monitor, $134.99.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): The Hill Poll: Voters Fear US Could Slip Into A Double-Dip Recession. “A massive majority of likely voters fear America could be slipping into a second economic downturn just four years after the Great Recession, according to a new poll for The Hill. . . . Amid worrisome jobs numbers and the looming threat of a eurozone crisis, the survey found 75 percent of people were either very or somewhat worried the country is headed toward another recession.”

MICKEY KAUS:

Ezra Klein posts a graph of modestly declining public sector employment that “says it all,” according to some. Maybe not! 1) First, as Keith Hennessey points out, while the graph shows a decline in public sector employment, at the federal level (outside the Post Office) public sector jobs have grown since Obama took office. The loss has been in state and local governments, whose workforces has been steadily bloating since around 1980. 2) And even that loss of public jobs pales besides the loss of private jobs (by a ratio of 11 to 1). 3) More important, there’s the issue of causality: the chart seems to show public jobs declining, unlike in other recessions. But is that because this recession has been more stubborn and persistent than previous recessions (as Paul Krugman, in other contexts, insists that he predicted)? In those prior recessions, when growth rapidly recovered, so did tax revenues–and the ability to employ government workers! (Here’s a graph showing that the recovery in output from the two prior recessions was faster than recovery from the current recession–while the recovery from basically all recessions before the last three was much faster.) In this recession, Democrats voted a temporary subsidy for state and local governments to keep up their hiring–and when it expired, those governments found they couldn’t afford to keep on as many employees–especially given the unsustainable pensions and benefits Democrats and others had granted oft-unionized public workers in good times (and that the Dem stimulus subsidized).

Maybe the chart just says it all about Ezra Klein.

BACKSTORY: Rielle Hunter Reveals John Edwards’ Multiple Mistresses in Tell-All.

How many journalists knew about this stuff and kept quiet? Keep rockin!

STILL WAITING FOR THAT “RECOVERY SUMMER:”

Two years ago today, the White House announced the start of what it called the “Recovery Summer.” This initiative was supposed to prove to the American people that stimulus projects were creating jobs.

If the administration had spent less time trying to justify the failed stimulus and more time on policies that work, the summer of 2012 might be the real recovery summer.

Instead, millions of Americans are still waiting for the economic rebound they were promised.

We’ve had 40 straight months with unemployment over 8 percent. More than 23 million Americans are unemployed or working less than they would like. Unemployed Americans now spend an average of nearly 40 weeks looking for work. That’s the equivalent of losing your job on New Year’s Day and not working again until October.

Meanwhile, President Obama recently offered his opinion that the private sector is doing fine.

Not so much.

JAMES DELONG: It’s Not A Welfare State, It’s A Special-Interest State.

GEORGE WILL curbs Katrina van den Heuvel’s enthusiasm.

DEAR TSA: “I am not your customer.”

I am a “customer” of the airlines I fly. The TSA stands between me and the airline with a credible threat that they will not let us conduct business unless I go through a ludicrous song-and-dance routine that involves partially disrobing and then either being subjected to nude imaging or a full-on groping that involves hand-to-genital contact. . . .

The TSA should not be streamlined. Administrators should not “review screening procedures.” Screeners don’t need additional training. The TSA doesn’t need to be tweaked. It didn’t “go too far” in these specific instances. Its very existence goes too far. The TSA never should have been created in the first place, and it should be abolished now. Immediately. Without hesitation.

The TSA’s existence is an assault on American liberty and simple human dignity, as anyone who has had his or her genitals touched during an “enhanced pat-down” can tell you. Some still say we should be willing to trade off a little bit of liberty in order to get security, but this is a false trade-off. The TSA does not provide security. It provides what security expert Bruce Schneier calls “security theater.” The TSA only exists in order to give people the illusion of safety. Someone in an airport somewhere in the U.S. is being subjected to an unreasonable search by a gloved TSA screener right this minute. The cruel irony is that he or she is being stripped of liberty and dignity and is being made no safer for it.

Some people like stripping citizens of liberty and dignity.

CAMPAIGN DONATIONS via text message. “In an election increasingly defined by big money, the Federal Election Commission’s recent move to permit campaign contributions via text message strikes many as the perfect antidote.”

Hmm. I hope they’re more secure than Obama’s unverified credit-card donations.

THEY TRIED TO STRIKE HIM DOWN, BUT HE BECAME MORE POWERFUL THAN THEY COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE: Scott Walker Raises Washington Profile. “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker continued his ascendancy to top GOP surrogate this week, capping off a two-day trip to Washington, D.C., by delivering today’s Republican weekly address. Walker’s Washington trip, undertaken in the wake of his victory in the June 5 recall election, featured media appearances and a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). . . . Fresh off his win, Walker felt comfortable taking time during his visit to publicly advise presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney on how he should modify his message. The Badger State governor repeated several times that Romney should move beyond his party identification in his effort to distinguish himself from President Barack Obama.”

Good advice.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on Obama’s National-Security Leaks. “These disclosures will endanger our national security, especially in the case of a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. They will probably get people killed or tortured, and they will weaken America’s ability for years to work covertly with allies. Our state-to-state relations will be altered, and perhaps even the techniques and technology of our cyber and special operations wars dispersed into the wrong hands.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: ‘Deep down all girls want to be like me’: The woman who’s slept with 200 men, but insists she’s not a slut.

THIS DOESN’T COME AS A BIG SURPRISE: Oil executive: ‘Very stressed relationship’ between industry, Obama White House.

PROF. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Five Media Myths of Watergate.

And it’s worth pointing out Edward Jay Epstein’s classic essay on Watergate and the press from 1974.

NIALL FERGUSON: If the young knew what was good for them they’d join the Tea Party. That’s absolutely right.

TIM LYNCH: Rodney King, George Holliday, and Police Misconduct. “King received much of the attention, but we ought to remember the role played by the lesser known George Holliday, the white bystander who was appalled by what he was witnessing and had the presence of mind to videotape the event.”

FILTHY-RICH COMEDIAN mocks poorer Mitt Romney.