Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama’s Second-Term Troubles

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…have already begun:

According to the Washington Post-ABC News poll, half of independents express a negative opinion of the president’s performance; just 44 percent approve.
 A majority of Americans give Obama negative marks on handling the economy. And the president has only a four-percentage-point lead over Republicans when it comes to whom the public trusts more to deal with the economy.

This is clearly not where a president who is less than two months into his second term wants to be. But in some respects, it’s not all that surprising. Mr. Obama, while he won his contest with Governor Romney fairly handily, was not a particularly popular president for most of his first term–and the key elements of his agenda are decidedly unpopular.

He didn’t win in November because people voted for him — he managed to scare them into voting against Romney, or not bothering to vote.

Economics, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary

Paul Ryan’s “Unusual Ideology”

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Charles Cooke dismantles Ezra Klein’s latest pretense at pragmatism:

Tellingly, Klein refers to “Ryan’s unusual ideology.” Unusual? Does Klein mean to suggest that not spending trillions that we don’t have is “unusual”? Does he mean that how America has worked for most of its history — and pretty well, thank you — is “unusual” now that it’s 2013? That notions of community doing things that government should not are “unusual”? I wonder. And what should we make of that “ideology” word? This dismissal is particularly telling, not because Ryan isn’t ideological — he is — but because so is Ezra Klein. So is everyone. Anyone who privileges one value over another (liberty over security, or growth over redistribution, for example) is an ideologue. Anybody who believes in any individual right whatsoever is an ideologue. Anyone who believes in any form of equality is an ideologue. Klein’s reaction betrays an arrogant, rotten worldview — widely shared among his ilk. Are we really expected to buy that doing the opposite of Ryan’s plan isn’t “ideological”? That there’s no ideology behind the status quo? That there’s nothing but reason behind what Klein and his acolytes wish would happen? That Klein’s desired path for America is based on pure analysis?

This conceit of the Left should be based at every opportunity. If there was a non-ideological pragmatic candidate in the last election, it sure wasn’t Barack Obama. Mitt Romney filled that bill much more, which was one of his problems, in fact.