The Washington Post is a left-wing newspaper, so I’m never surprised to find examples of biased reporting.
Last month, for instance, I made fun of the Post for asserting that Germany was “fiscally conservative.”
I also mocked the Post last March, when a reporter hysterically claimed that a proposal to trim $6 billion from a $3,600 billion budget would “slash” government.
Today, I want to analyze a column by Jonathan Alter.
Entitled “Five Myths about Barack Obama,” it’s in the opinion section, where people are supposed to present a point of view.
So I’m not going to complain about bias, but I am going to disagree about some of his judgments. Here are the five supposed myths, along with my two cents on whether Alter is correct.
Myth 1. Obama is a socialist.
I basically agree with Alter. As I explained two years ago, a true socialist wants “government ownership of the means of production.” To be sure, most self-avowed socialists today have given up on that goal and instead focus on redistribution. And since Obama also is a redistributionist, I understand why people call him a socialist. Nonetheless, it is much more accurate to call him a statist or corporatist.
Myth 2. Obama is a tool of Wall Street.
Alter is right and wrong. Obama is pursuing policies that Wall Street doesn’t like, such as class-warfare tax hikes. On the other hand, he supported the TARP bailout and pushed for the Dodd-Frank bailout legislation that was supported by Goldman-Sachs and the other big players on Wall Street.
Myth 3. Obama is an effective public speaker.
I’m not sure what to say about this assertion. I don’t find his pedantic ramblings effective or persuasive, but I’m not the target audience.
Myth 4. Obama’s stimulus failed.
This is Alter’s most absurd assertion. To bolster his claim, he cites a handful of institutions that have Keynesian models, including the laughably inaccurate crowd at the Congressional Budget Office. Wow, what a revelation. Keynesians support Keynesianism. What’s next, a poll of Obama campaign staff showing that people support the President’s reelection? Read this post for a good explanation of how Keynesianism has failed.
Myth 5. Obama is a weak leader.
This isn’t my area of expertise, but I mostly agree with Alter’s assessment. For better or worse (and you know how I feel), the President put everything on the line to enact Obamacare. That was bad for the nation, but I suppose it required effective leadership.
In closing, the Washington Post does deserve some credit for having diversity on the opinion page. Yes, Alter’s column has a leftist perspective, but the paper routinely carries people like George Will, Robert Samuelson, and Charles Krauthammer.
That doesn’t excuse the Post for displaying bias in news articles, as I mentioned above, but I think it’s better than the New York Times (damning with faint praise).
Lastly, it’s worth noting that the Post’s editorials are dogmatically statist (though it does support Postal Service privatization, perhaps because that affects the paper’s bottom line).
Very good. How could we ecexpt otherwise with income growth going to the top cohorts and incomes stagnating for the rest of the population? With consumers already saturated in debt, it is hard to see where the purchaser in the purchase-sales transaction is going to come from.
On the Drudge Report: Obama 50%, Newt 48%; Obama 50%, Romney 48%. I sincerely fear that we are going to have Obama for 4 more years.
Myth number 5 is the easiest to refute. There was no leadership involved in passing Obamacare. It was strong arming, bribing, and browbeating the fence sitters in the democratic party, and also invoking constitutionally dubious tactics to get the bill passed. Sure he authorized the raid on Bin laden. What president wouldn’t? Is that leadership? I hardly think so.
Yet when true leadership is called for, such as budget impasses (or even submitting an actual budget), or other issues like debt ceiling increases, he retreats on vacation, or resorts to demagoguery at the last minute to get short-term fixes, instead of real and lasting budgets and fiscal planning.
@Zorba, your word pictures are awe-inspiring.
BTW, I like the term statist, but it is not used in America (it’s a new concept to Americans really). The term has been widely used in Europe, a term born at a time when a minority of screaming Europeans were dragged down the road to … well, statism, a term coined when (unlike now) there was still time for Europe to turn around, a time before the vicious embrace of flat effort-reward curves. Much like today’s screaming Tea Party in the land of “Hope that Euro-change will not lead to decline”.
But I prefer the term Mandatory Collectivism. It is more encompassing of all that is un-American. A two word term that will be one day used by historians to describe the unparalleled speed of America’s decline in the early decades of the 21st century. Things move fast in this early 21st century, and all trendlines of human development indicate that they will keep moving ever faster as humanity reaches new and unimaginable levels of prosperity in the next several decades. Empires will rise and fall in a mere couple of generations. Stay tuned! Just because the less than one billion people of the western world are declining in the delusion of flat effort-reward curves, does not mean that humanity as a whole does not have its most fabulous days still ahead (barring WMD war). It will though feel very different for Americans to be world citizens of average prosperity.
Obama is a European style politician. Master at selling the people the well oiled delusion of prosperity through the shortcuts of redistribution and central planning. He will drive willing Americans towards the same decline that is now maturing in Europe.
Like most social movements, Socialists evolve, and so do Useful Idiots. They used to say “follow the Soviets to prosperity and well-being” now they say “follow Europe to prosperity and well being”.
Now, I know that leftists, and perhaps statists in general, don’t conflate prosperity with well-being. However, this is because they don’t understand the simple arithmetic of compounding. Two countries starting at the same prosperity level, with stable populations, one on a 1% annual growth trendline, the other on a 5%. After 5 years the prosperity gap grows to 26%. No big deal the statist could flaunt, if the well-being of redistribution outweighs the prosperity handicap (…and loss of liberty really, but let’s face it, statists assign little value to accommodating distaste for mandatory collectivism) . But after 10 years, the prosperity gap has grown to 53%. Still benefits outweigh the cost? At 20 years 126%, at 30 years 233% at 50 years 625%. Still hanging in there hippies? How long before you’ve fallen so far behind that you cry uncle?
But as you see, it still takes a few years to take a permanent hit on prosperity, and consuming accumulated prosperity for a few years can be fun. Decline is fun. Greeks have enjoyed every bit of it for a few decades.
This decline is exactly what the American voter’s recent statist shortcut to prosperity is about:
“We’ve grown rich through the motivation of a natural effort-reward curve. Now, let’s relax, have a party and eat up all the accumulated wealth in a much flatter, more relaxed Euro-style effort-reward curve”.
You only have to buy that dream once, and a vicious cycle of decline takes care of the rest. You cannot exit the vortex. You “may always be one single generation away from loosing freedom” but Zorba thinks that, once lost, “you are many generations away from regaining it”. He has seen the movie you Americans just rented from Europe. Keep watching. The ominous music has started playing, but the scary part is still some time away. Just like Europeans, you will be frozen in your seats, unable to even reach for the remote and turn off the DVD. You will watch the movie to the end. That is what happened to every single culture who rented that film. Why should you escape? Prove me wrong Americans, and I’ll once again believe that there is indeed an American exceptionalism that can survive.
Sorry, Dan, but I don’t understand #4:
Myth 4. Obama’s stimulus failed.
This is Alter’s most absurd assertion
Do you really mean to say that Obama’s stimulus worked? Or did you edit it and it no longer says what you want it to say?
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I liked this post; it gave me some things to think about. When you are good you are very, very good and when you are bad – I ignore you.
Regulating everything out the wazoo while private industry still takes the fall for failure isn’t socialism. It’s fascism. So add in the mix of the special favors and giving away of taxpayer dollars to the favored few big industries and wall street and you have a fascist-corporatist?