The message we've been hearing from
the mainstream media about Obama's push for a renewed brand of liberalism is
flagrantly false.
Here’s
a thought: Maybe, just maybe, Barack Obama isn’t a socialist.
I
know, if you’ve tuned into even a little bit of right-wing talk radio, or
watched some Fox News shows over the past four years, this might come as a
surprise.
Obama,
in the imagination of so many of his right-wing opponents, is a debt-loving,
big-spending, Wall Street-bashing enemy of the free market. A popular far-right
documentary spun out a theory that Obama’s second term would finally reveal his
plan to undermine American power. It treated this plot as a tragedy, but it’s
actually a comedy.
After
all, what’s the reality of Obama’s political agenda? The far right believes
it’s socialism, sure. But the message we’ve been hearing from the mainstream
media — that Obama is pushing a renewed brand of liberalism — is flagrantly
false in many ways.
Right
after his second inaugural address, conservatives fumed that we were seeing the
“real” Obama — a radical left-wing ideologue. The message from the “objective”
media was not as strident, of course, but sounded similar notes. “Obama Offers
Liberal Vision,” said The New York Times.
He declared an “ambitious liberal agenda,” said CBS. After Obama’s State of the Union address, one veteran CNN pundit called it an “audacious speech,” one that saw Obama touting “old-fashioned liberalism” and big government.
He declared an “ambitious liberal agenda,” said CBS. After Obama’s State of the Union address, one veteran CNN pundit called it an “audacious speech,” one that saw Obama touting “old-fashioned liberalism” and big government.
But
let’s consider reality for a moment. The highest-profile clash raging in
Washington is over Obama’s selection of a Republican senator as his Pentagon
chief. He’s nominated a Treasury secretary who was making big
bucks on Wall Street at
the height of the financial meltdown.
His nominee to head up the Securities & Exchange Commission spent the past decade as a lawyer defending the banks she’ll now be keeping an eye on.
His nominee to head up the Securities & Exchange Commission spent the past decade as a lawyer defending the banks she’ll now be keeping an eye on.
If
Obama is intent on carrying out his secret socialist agenda — or even a
muscular liberal one — he has a funny way of showing it.
But
what about all that big government spending? If you listen to the White House,
they’re often proudest of the spending cuts they’ve embraced. Yes, government
spending spiked due to the economic catastrophe that began in 2008, but since
then it’s been falling, as a share of the economy and relative to the size of
the population. Federal
government spending is rising at the slowest pace since the Eisenhower administration.
To
many of Obama’s critics on the left, the government should be spending more to
help boost employment because cutting government spending just makes things
worse. (This is precisely what is happening across Europe.)
What’s
Obama’s bold liberal vision we hear about in the papers? It’s not as daring as
the papers and the pundits would have you think. There’s a middle-of-the-road
proposal on immigration. His rhetoric on climate change is overshadowed by the way he
cheers for natural gas fracking. Yes, Obama is proposing a modest increase in
the minimum wage to $9 per hour. But that’s actually 50 cents lower than the
proposal he made 5 years ago.
So
why all the media misperceptions? One explanation is that ultra-conservatives
have whipped their powerful media machine into a frenzy over Obama’s supposed
radicalism. That message spills over into the larger media discussion, where
“Obama is some kind of socialist” gets to be one side of a falsely “balanced”
two-sided debate.
Another
explanation: A truly progressive agenda to address the problems America faces
right now — such as taxing Wall Street speculation, embracing a serious climate
policy, and supporting vigorous jobs programs — would threaten the upper-crust
interests that corporate media and the political system serve to protect.
Casting
Obama’s mostly middle-of-the-road vision as unusually progressive helps to
narrow the political debate. It’s keeping many truly progressive ideas off the
table.
Peter Hart is the activism director of
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. www.fair.org
Distributed via OtherWords. (OtherWords.org)
Distributed via OtherWords. (OtherWords.org)
