As hoped and predicted, TARP was quite a success, as this NYT story today recounts, and the government will break even, or even make a bit on the deals, which despite various flaws helped rescue the economy and save jobs and alleviate greater suffering.Yet, as the WaPo story shows, the program is wildly unpopular with the public and pols are running away from it. What kind of upside-down world is this? I suppose a large part of this, as with health care reform and Obama's "Muslim" faith, is about right-wing propaganda tainting something or someone so completely they can never recover, no matter what the facts.But it doesn't bode well for the long-term health of political discourse, it seems to me.

David Gibson is the director of Fordham’s Center on Religion & Culture.

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