When Democrats put forward the stimulus bill, it included some stuff that was more good ideas than pure job-creation. Republicans objected to many of these but two programs stand out now. One was volcano monitoring, which Bobby Jindal dismissed as unnecessary, saying that “Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington.” Geologists disagreed. One month later, Alaska’s Mount Redoubt erupted with five massive explosions, threatening people nearby, putting not too fine a point on how such monitoring can save lives, and in an extreme case, help avoid having to spend far more money in the long run.

At the same time, Republicans were attacking Democrats for including nearly a billion dollars for pandemic flu preparedness in the spending bill. Republican Senator Susan Collins from Maine argued that the funding should be cut, and was successful in doing so. Now, two and a half months later, a swine flu epidemic seems to be on the verge of outbreak, with the possibility of turning into a pandemic–something that could cost the country trillions of dollars. Unless we’re prepared. Oops.

True, neither were particularly great for job creation–but they would have created jobs, and would also be highly practical, with great benefits for the country.

Republican politicians seem to be rather famously short-sighted on stuff like this, thinking about the immediate bottom line rather than long-term complications and potential hazards. In the meantime, when a Democrat is far-sighted, he gets pilloried. Just look at Al Gore. He was very strongly involved in the 1980’s to not only keep the then-embryonic Internet funded when it was going to be discarded by the Reagan Administration, but worked to build and expand it. Later, it became a multi-trillion-dollar boon to the nation’s economy. The Republican reaction: to falsely ridicule him by saying that he claimed to have single-handedly invented the Internet. Well, guffaw.