Ron Fournier is editorial director of the National Journal and a veteran Washington reporter. All the more reason why this recent column of his is an altogether depressing example of false equivalence journalism. Let us count the ways.
The Headline:
“You May Be Right, Mr. President, But This Is Crazy” is actually a pretty good description of reality. Congressional Republicans are determined to cut federal spending across the board (except for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) when most of them a) know that it will hurt the economy, and b) don’t want many of the cuts (particularly defense spending). That is crazy. Fournier’s problem is in trying to make the case that this is somehow President Obama’s fault, too.
The Sub-Headline:
“As the nation’s chief executive, Obama is ultimately accountable for the budget fiasco, even if he is right on the merits and politics.” Well, actually, no. As the U. S. Constitution has said from the beginning, Congress controls the federal government’s purse strings.
Quoting Billy Joel:
“But knowing who’s at fault doesn’t fix the problem. To loosely quote Billy Joel: ‘You may be right, Mr. President, but this is crazy’.” First, for as talented a tunesmith as Billy Joel is, his lyrics tend not to be fonts of great political wisdom. Second, to directly quote Billy Joel, “You may be right, I may be crazy” more accurately describes today’s Republican party than it does any other actor in this drama. So Fournier not only mangles Joel’s lyrics, but the lyrics cited actually undermine Fournier’s point.
Quoting Reid Ribble:
Fournier then uses the device of excerpting at length an op-ed piece the Green Bay Press-Gazette published two months ago by Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI). Ribble, a backbencher know for his opposition to the deficit-reducing Affordable Care Act and his staunch support for deficit-increasing agricultural subsidies, creates a classic example of “false equivalence“—arguing both parties are equally responsible for whatever fiscal problems the federal government has. This allows Fournier to make all sorts of false and slippery statements without having to take ownership of the words. (The old “I didn’t say that; I just quoted what he said” dodge.)
Denying Reality:
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but Fournier: denies President Obama is willing to compromise with Republicans, denies liberals take federal debt seriously, and denies Obama is willing to negotiate on entitlement cuts. In fact, the president has put forward a proposal that includes “adoption of chained CPI for Social Security and $400 billion in various cuts to healthcare spending, along with further cuts to mandatory programs as well as to both defense and domestic discretionary programs. Altogether, it clocks in at $1.1 trillion in spending cuts and $700 billion in revenue increases, mostly gained from limiting tax deductions for high-end earners.” This is on top of the $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction from the last Congress that President Obama signed into law.
Ending Badly:
After surfing along with Ribble’s boilerplate column through the heart of his own essay, Fournier ends thus: “I wonder what would happen if Obama were to deliver such an address. Would voters reward him for the honesty of the argument and the courage of challenging his liberal base? Would he change the tone of the debate from mindless sniping to an environment in which leaders are publicly shamed if they offer no solutions?“
President Obama has delivered numerous such addresses throughout his presidency and during last year’s election campaign. Whether voters decided to “reward him for the honesty of the argument and the courage of challenging his liberal base” is open to question, but they did re-elect him by a 4 million vote margin in November. Whether giving a version of that speech one more time would “change the tone of the debate from mindless sniping” is also open to question. As is whether it would “change the tone of the debate…to an environment in which leaders are publicly shamed if they offer no solutions“. As to the latter, since Fournier and other purveyors of BipartisanThink continue to avoid public shaming of Republicans who offer no solutions, I seriously doubt it. In fact, the longer Fournier and friends continue in this vein, the longer Republicans will continue avoiding any serious consequences for their intransigence.
Fournier concludes “I may be wrong. I may be crazy. But I suspect we’ll never know.” Absent a clinical diagnosis, we’re unlikely to know whether Fournier is crazy. On the evidence of his own writing and the facts easily available to any citizen with online access (let alone a veteran Washington reporter) I think it’s fair to say we do know that—in this case at least—he is wrong.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/