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BROOKS (6/28/11): The Obama style has advantages, but it has served his party poorly in the current budget fight. He has not educated the country about the debt challenge. He has not laid out a plan, aside from one vague, hyperpoliticized speech. He has ceded the initiative to the Republicans, who have dominated the debate by establishing facts on the ground.
For ourselves, we’re surprised to read that the GOP has “established (some) facts on the ground.” For ourselves, we have no idea what “facts” Brooks has in mind. But many liberals will tend to agree with Brooks’ semi-complaint about Obama.
Obama hasn’t educated the country about the debt challenge? Almost surely, that claim is correct.
In fairness, it’s very hard to “educate the country” about any topic these days. We live in a highly tribalized world; no public figure, not even a president, can be expected to overcome the various tribal lunacies which are found all around. If memory serves, Obama did attempt to “educate the country” about the national health care challenge. But no matter how many speeches he gave; no matter how many press conferences he held; no matter how long his “answers” were, very little “education of the country” emerged.
Instead, a Facebook post discussed “death panels.” In millions of minds, that post at Facebook stuck.
Could Obama have done a better job “educating the country about the debt crisis?” Everything is possible. But for today, let’s ask a different question: How good a job have our biggest news orgs done when it comes to this task? Consider one example:
In the news pages of today’s New York Times, Carl Hulse does a news report about the ongoing debt limit talks. At one point, he quotes Bernie Sanders:
HULSE (6/28/11): As the debt talks resumed at the White House, Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent, took the floor to urge the president to resist Republican pressure to wring most of the savings out of federal programs rather than impose any new taxes on the nation’s most affluent.
“It is time for the president to stand with the millions who have lost their jobs, homes, and life savings, instead of the millionaires, who in many cases, have never had it so good,” he said.
Sanders would favor a tax increase on the nation’s millionaires. “In many cases,” those folk “have never had it so good,” he declared.
By instinct, most liberals will be inclined to agree with that declaration. But how good a job has the New York Times done at explaining this matter? The New York Times is our most famous newspaper. How hard has it tried to “educate the country” about the facts which lie behind that declaration?
For ourselves, we’d be inclined to say this: The Times hasn’t tried at all. Neither has the Washington Post, the Times’ partner in avoidance. Our American civic religion is based on a familiar notion: As citizens, we have a need to know.
But our greatest news orgs no longer seem to subscribe to that basic notion.
“What, us know things?” Would such a motto be out of place on our great newspapers’ mastheads?
By most accounts, our nation is facing a major crisis as those debt talks proceed. Over the course of the next few days, we’ll look at the ways our biggest news orgs have walked away from a basic task.
Obama has failed to “educate the country?” It isn’t that Brooks is wrong in that claim. But our idealistic young analysts rose from their chairs when they read the savant’s complaint.
Looking who’s talking, our analysts cried! Heal thyself, several said.
Tomorrow: What Bruce Bartlett said
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