Maybe that’s because he is one of a generation of thrifty Americans who elected politicians unwilling to fund many of the benefits they promised. Or maybe it’s because he has spent so much of his adult life in the belly of government—from the House of Representatives to the White House to, now, the top job at the Pentagon. “This country cannot continue to run trillion-dollar deficits and expect that we can remain a powerful nation,” Panetta has said, meshing a little old-time deficit religion with his current job. “When you run those size deficits … the borrowing we have to do around the world … makes us more dependent on those countries that are purchasing our securities. It deprives the country of the resources we need regardless of your priorities. Worst of all, it raises the most regressive tax of all: the tax on our children who have to ultimately pay the interest on that debt.” In textbooks, the chief governmental actors are the president, along with an amorphous institution called Congress, represented by the familiar profile of the Capitol.
