Obama Contributes to the Noise (Part II - The Not So Good)

This is the second half of the review of President Obama's commencement address at the University of Michigan this past Saturday. The first half is here, and the text of the speech is here.

Ok, so I still think that on the whole Obama's speech was fantastic, but there are two glaring flaws, one of which I'd like to just note - his hypocrisy on our democracy, and the other of which this post is primarily about - the false equivalence between right and left. After that, there's one more side point I'd like to address - the lack of even a mention of other problems with the media - particularly with respect to race.


First, let's get the almost laughable moment of hypocrisy out of the way:

On the last day of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was famously asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got -– a republic or a monarchy?” And Franklin gave an answer that’s been quoted for ages: He said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” If you can keep it.

Well, for more than 200 years, we have kept it.

When Benjamin Franklin uttered those words, I'm sure he was proudest of the structure of our government, with horizontal and vertical separation of powers, and with limited power vested in the federal government (but much more than under the Articles of Confederation). However, as Obama has embraced Bush's idea of the unitary executive time and time again (those links are nearly a year old - it's only gotten worse since on exec power, but because it's not the main point here and it's obvious, I'm not spending the time to find more links), the idea of contrasting our "republic" with a monarchy is basically a joke.

After Bush, and now Obama, there are almost no limits on what a sitting President may claim the authority to do (even in secret) in the name of national security and inherent Article II powers.. Thus, we have a lightly disguised practical monarchy if a President cares to use our government that way. Obama so far, as best we can tell, has not used signing statements to legislate, and thus in that arena has been better than Bush, but he has also not disavowed the power to do so.

Anyway, like I said, that's not what I want to talk about. The false equivalence problem is a little more subtle, but it goes to the heart of his speech because it infects pretty much our entire journalist class. When talking about not using incendiary speech, Obama said

Throwing around phrases like “socialists” and “Soviet-style takeover” and “fascist” and “right-wing nut” that may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, our political opponents, to authoritarian, even murderous regimes.

And on media:

Still, if you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website.

This is a pretty mild form of false equivalence to be sure. He didn't really just throw out there that Fox News = MSNBC, for example, but the understanding of it is the same, and the response predictable.

In the days following the speech, President Obama used the word tea-bagger to describe members of the Tea Party. Calls came for his head for using such inflammatory speech. "It's like using the n-word!" Yeah, they really said that, despite the fact that party started out by calling themselves that until the left ridiculed it. Notably, even the article claiming the equivalence would print one word and not the other. The point here is not that he was or wasn't using incendiary speech in this instance, but that the false equivalence allows people from all sides to take umbrage at "incendiary" speech, regardless of degree.

Two days later, at Slate, William Saletan wrote about "how to escape the partisan echo chamber." In that piece, he busts out his own great false equivalence: "If you watch only Fox News or read only angry left-wing blogs, you become closed to contrary information. You lose touch with reality." By the way, that link goes to Atrios' blog. If you can find the point where he continually lies and spews propaganda on behalf of a political party, please show me. If you can in any way demonstrate that Atrios only mentions one side of many debates, please let me know. (He often links to criticisms of the crazier statements instead of the statements themselves to avoid giving them hits, but he points them out nonetheless.)

Saletan makes this false equivalence after stating that Obama's speech was an echo of the discussion about epistemic closure, or the right's habit of only listening to themselves and never exposing themselves to ideas of facts they don't agree with. The funny thing is that though the entire debate was limited to the conservative movement Saletan feels the need to accuse both sides disingenuously. In this way, this piece is an echo of Obama's speech. This is the nature of false equivalence that journalists feel the need to put forth all the time. It's their own form of epistemic closure that can only be achieved by worshipping at the altar of "balance." I don't know if they actually believe that something bad is automatically one by both sides, or that they'll be accused of liberal bias if they don't make shit to say so, but either way, it's misrepresenting the facts, and it's incredibly damaging. It's also absurdly common.

So back to Obama. Being the "post-partisan" President, he sort of sticks himself in a bind every time he does this. Clearly one side in Congress and one side in the media is much crazier than the other. But if he then does the politically easy thing and says both sides are doing it, he levels the crazy playing field, and gives license tot he craziest to not only be crazier, but to level accusation for the same mild behavior that Obama equivalently called out on their side. He also gives equivalent weight to the right's lies as the left's criticisms, and hurts his own ability to make policy that way.

There's value to being fair, but that has to mean that when the reality is not balanced, the coverage reflect that. These days, our media should be almost uniformly calling out the crazies on the right, mostly because aside from the occasionally over-the-line statement from Rep. Grayson, there's no equivalent on the left. But that wouldn't be "balanced," according to them. This whole mentality hides and thus perpetuates the polarization that Obama asked us to stop in the same speech. Until we start calling out the people causing it, it will not end.

As far as my additional side point I mentioned about three novels ago in the beginning of this post, I didn't really expect to see it addressed, but one day I'd like someone to start talking about racial access to the media and resulting coverage. I can guarantee that the coverage of the Tea Party's explicit and implicit racism would be quite different if most of the mainstream media were not still owned by white guys. I think this would help the false equivalence problem, which by calling out the perpetrators, would get on us the fact to fixing the craziness problem. But again, I had no illusions Obama would go there.