When a Politico article gets an approving link, with no additional comment, from Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review, you know something’s wrong.
The only substantive difference between Lopez’s take on the president’s budget and that of Politico reporter and ostensibly objective observer Jeanne Cummings is that the former calls it “class war” while the latter calls it “class warfare.”
How is it objective to say that “Obama’s creative juices seemed to run dry” because he is proposing tax increases on the highest earners? This is exactly what he said he was going to do, the voters knew that, and they elected him. The only surprised people out there (and I think they’re just faking) are journalists.
And listen to what Cummings thinks constitutes “class warfare”: Said Obama, “I know that this will not always sit well with the special interests and their lobbyists here in Washington, who think our budget and tax system is just fine as it is. No wonder— it works for them…. I work for the American people, and I’m determined to bring the change that the people voted for last November.”
That’s warfare?
Cummings goes on to complain that Obama’s budget is just too, you know, Democratic. She does this by way of a back-handed compliment, saying that Obama has so far, up until the unveiling of his budget, repackaged “an old Democratic agenda” in a “more compelling and relevant way.” So, expanded healthcare coverage was framed as a cost-cutting measure, and global warming prevention was framed as job creation.
This is probably a fair analysis of Obama’s messaging strategy. But note the bias with which Cummings treats the subject: “the well-worn Democratic mantra of reducing global warming” is only a byproduct of the “more tangible and urgent objective” of creating jobs. First off, mantra doesn’t mean what you think it means, Ms. Cummings. The Democrats don’t have a “repeated word or phrase of reducing global warming.” Second, did it occur to you that reducing global warming might actually be tangible and urgent? Of course not. It’s just part of “an old Democratic agenda.” (Politico has a good deal of trouble with the global warming issue. Apparently it is good journalism, not to mention science, to note that Al Gore has made public appearances, including one at Harvard, on unusually cold days.)
Cummings goes on to state that “no amount of spin or recalibration” could hide the fact that, yes, Obama was serious about raising taxes on the very richest Americans. Cummings notes that this is, mystifyingly, what Democrats always seem to want to do. What is it with those Democrats? Always trying to reverse 30 years of skyrocketing incomes for the top earners, and stagnant incomes for the rest!
It’s somehow not legitimate in the political alternate universe to do what your party always wanted to do when your party gains power, at least not if you’re a Democrat. Did anyone act surprised and offended when Bush, a Republican, decided to spend our huge surplus on tax cuts for the incredibly wealthy, just like Republicans always want to do? Of course not. That would be inane.
Then we get to the meat of the article. The “class warfare” stuff and the analysis of Obama’s messaging strategy were the money-makers. That’s what the D.C. Blackberry crowd wants to read, and it’s probably all that they did read. That’s where Politico finds its niche. Let the serious papers talk about serious things, like what the actual consequences of a plan might be, or what experts think. At Politico, such snoozers get relegated to the second page, if mentioned at all.
And what happens when you get to the second page? Surprise! More bias!
“Some economists” think that the mere specter of a future tax increase will “thwart critical investments and purchases.” No rebuttal from, say, other economists. No analysis of whether or not that is true.
Then, we get an unsubstantiated assertion that the only people spending money today are those “who will be subject to the Obama tax hike.” I don’t know if Cummings is a fan of the New York Times Style section, as I am, but perhaps she has heard that the pitiable uber-rich are having to cut back too. Furthermore, Cummings is seemingly aware that Obama has created new tax breaks for low- and middle-income earners, but she doesn’t connect the dots. Those tax breaks are designed to get people spending again. The middle classes spend a higher portion of their income than the rich do because, as Robert Reich puts it, the rich “already have most of what they want.”
Cummings soons tires of this somewhat-substantive discussion, and returns to her analysis of the process. She quotes an economist from the Chamber of Commerce saying that he feels like he’s been invited to dinner, as the main course. No similarly witty metaphor from a liberal observer.
But wait! Cummings then notes that, if the higher tax revenues combine with the rebounding of the economy, “it could significantly improve the nation’s economic and budget outlook.” You don’t say! Might this have been worth mentioning during the “class warfare” bit? During the explanation of how this is all part of an “old Democratic agenda”? During the part where Cummings, unaided by expert opinion except occasionally by conservative economists, predicts the failure of the plan?
In fact, but for a little slip-up where she laughably asserts that Americans “didn’t reject out of hand” the privatization of Social Security (as if that were relevant), the last few paragraphs of Cummings’ article are devoted to nothing but the defense of the Democratic position. Is this a valiant attempt to give the Democrats the last word? I somehow doubt it. Cummings knows that 90% of her readers will never get there.
Let me repeat what I said in the title: This Is Not Journalism. This is pandering to a political class that only wants to read about process, process, process. That only wants to know about messaging, spin, and the chances of some bill’s passing or not passing.
And this is the problem with Politico. Its niche market, its base, is killing our country. Politico is just the disease-carrier. And it is quickly becoming infected itself.
