Responding to my post yesterday, Open Left’s tremayne says:
Short iPhone post: there’s a simplistic meme circulating parts of left blogistan that says you’re either with President Obama or you’re against him. It’s just as stupid as when Bush said “you’re either with us or with the terrorists.” You know, it’s possible to take a number of other positions which, in the case of President Obama, include pushing him into more productive directions.
This has been another edition of “things that should be obvious.”
tremayne was also responding to recent posts in the same vein, by Nate Silver and Al Giordano. To read all of our posts collectively and come to the conclusion that we’re arguing that you are either with Obama or against him is to demonstrate a striking lack of reading comprehension. The natural defensive response that critics of Obama have to being criticized themselves is to defend their right to criticize. They resort to this defense time and time again, and rarely address the substance of the criticism they are receiving.
I used the specific example of David Sirota saying that the Obama administration is deliberately looting the treasury for the purpose of creating new millionaires on Wall Street. In a more general sense, I argued that it was unhelpful to deliberately send the AIG bonuses story into orbit (and Nate Silver demonstrated how this was done) using simplistic and faux-populist arguments. Al Giordano raised the point that this group has been gunning for the heads of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers since the day they were appointed, and that they aren’t too scrupulous about the facts as they go about their business. Giordano argues that it is unreasonable to fire someone after two months and that critics are ignoring the damage such firings would do to Obama’s efforts to pass his budget. Nate Silver has focused more on the truth about the AIG bonuses (as opposed to the hysterical hype about them) and argued that the populist furor on the left is both misplaced and self-defeating. The three of us don’t agree about everything. I am less forgiving of AIG than Silver and I am more willing to attribute good-will than Giordano, but we share a concern about the effect, accuracy, and fairness of the editorial output of much of left blogistan. None of us are saying that people should not criticize Obama or that you are either with him or against him.
As for tremayne’s point about ‘pushing Obama in a more positive direction’, I dedicated a good portion of my post to examining that argument. I talked about how Huey Long, for all his faults, helped to push FDR in a more populist direction. I also talked about Huey Long’s dishonesty and impracticality and lack of fairness and unsuitability as a political analyst. You can be wrong and still have a positive influence. Is that what tremayne is trying to say? I don’t think so.
