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BY SOREN LARSON

In print | Published October 29, 2009

Demo-crats definitely are a talented bunch of people. They can be “trying to get a handle on balancing the budget,” as New York Senator Chuck Schumer did Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” only days after Democrats added another $250 billion to the deficit to finance doctor payments without making any counterbalancing spending cuts. They can also be effective disruptors and critics. Really, it’s a good thing: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is “a fan of disruptors.”

Democrats should really be less modest about their talents. I know it’s been nothing but light and sunshine since President Obama took office, but doesn’t anyone remember the Bush years?

In January 2005, soon-to-be Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean explained on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Republicans are “evil” and said “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.” After all, according to Dean, “It’s a struggle of good and evil, and we’re the good.”
But progressives’ disrespect doesn’t stop there. In 2004, everyone’s National Public Radio favorite, Garrison Keillor, called Republicans “freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks [and] fakirs.” Betty Williams, an Irish Nobel Peace Prize recipient, said in 2006, “I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence’ [because] right now, I would love to kill George Bush.” (Here I was thinking all recipients deserved this prestigious award!)

And to top it all off, then-CBS talk-show host Craig Kilborn showed then-Texas Governor George W. Bush delivering his acceptance speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention with the words “SNIPERS WANTED” twinkling at the bottom of the screen.

Although it’s understandable why Democrats might want to forget the Bush years, they surely cannot forget the “ugly campaigns” they waged during the Bush years, when protestors threw Molotov cocktails in the streets, dressed as suicide bombers and waved signs that read “Death to America!” and “Bush is a psychotic murderer.” This summer’s rowdy town hall meetings on health care don’t seem so bad in comparison.

To many, Obama’s presidency seems entirely distinct from the Bush administration, but there is some resemblance. Similar to the Bush years, moderate Americans and some on the fringe, for many reasons, are concerned about and often frightened by legislation being debated in Washington. They want to get in on the national conversation.

But unlike the Bush administration, which by the end ignored nearly all criticism, the Obama administration, in classic Chicago style, is doing nearly the opposite by taking a much more aggressive tone against critics.

President Obama’s pledge to “bring in a new era of bipartisanship and mutual respect” has evaporated. Early this month, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn ridiculed Fox News Corporation on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” claiming that it is “opinion journalism masquerading as news” and “operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.” White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel echoed Dunn’s comments on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying that “[Fox] is not … a legitimate news organization.”

Although hosts like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly have been very critical of the new administration, the White House’s efforts aren’t really against Fox News, but rather all public media. By tying Fox News to the Republican Party, the White House has put a popularly despised face to its political opposition and separated it from “real” media, like CNN. The more members of “legitimate media” distance themselves from Fox News’ dissenting opinions, the more access the White House will invariably grant them. But as opposing voices get less access, the clearer it will become to critics that the administration’s ideas can’t hold up in debate.

The administration doesn’t want compromise; it wants control.

Of course, this isn’t the first time an administration has limited access to those who hold unfavorable viewpoints. In 2004, the New York Times complained that Vice President Dick Cheney limited their access to his private plane because of the administration’s dissatisfaction with their news coverage.
With significant legislation being debated on the Hill, dissent is more important than ever. (I can’t believe I’m defending political dissent at Swarthmore College.)

Obama’s stimulus package, which is supposed to create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year, misses the mark by over five million jobs based on unemployment statistics released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Thursday. This error is substantial. Don’t worry, though: White House economic advisor Jared Bernstein says that “early indications are quite positive” and “exceed expectations.”

This week, Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration released a report explaining how a provision of the stimulus package, which entitles first-time homebuyers to an $8,000 tax credit, may have allowed 70,000 Americans or illegal aliens to dupe the IRS into sending out over $480 million worth of rebates to non-first-time homebuyers.

Health care reform isn’t doing much better. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) announced Monday he will sponsor a health reform bill that includes a public option. This is despite Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, testifying that the summer legislation containing a public option didn’t contain “the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.” (The CBO was still analyzing the current proposal as we went to press.) And the Baucus bill’s $81 billion in deficit reduction actually comes from increasing Social Security taxes and making big cuts in Medicare that probably won’t materialize.

Even CBS is skeptical of government-run health care. Last Sunday, “60 Minutes” reported on the Medicare fraud industry that cheats taxpayers out of $60 billion a year because Medicare’s oversight budget is “extremely limited,” according to Kim Brandt, Medicare’s director of program integrity. Given that Fox News covered this story in early October, was the “60 Minutes’” report not news, but commentary?

Either way, with 57 percent of voters saying health care reform will increase costs and 53 percent saying it will reduce quality of care, according to Monday’s Rasmussen poll, the administration’s attacks against Fox aren’t so surprising.

The list goes on. President Obama is far from finished with Iran, a country that still professes interest in international cooperation so as to buy more time to secretly enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon. The new Obama era of transparency has left the EPA, the organization that models Congressional climate proposals, without details on the Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade plan it’s supposed to evaluate.

Recall the tight campaign Ms. Dunn helped President Obama run last fall. In reference to the media coverage of the campaign, Ms. Dunn explained, “We controlled it as opposed to the press controlled [sic] it.”

Fox News seems like a worthy target, but Americans cannot allow the administration to disguise what’s really going on. The cable media market, especially in the age of the Internet, makes propagating lies more difficult. If a news organization files an erroneous and particularly notorious report, it’s likely competing news organizations will try to profit from their competitor’s error. Even in 2000, before the Internet played a large role, the media’s response to Kilborn’s inappropriate editorial on CBS prompted CBS to issue an apology the next day.

The answer isn’t to silence critics. While claims that national health reform mandates “death panels” and conspiracy theories that the US government engineered the 9/11 attacks are unproductive, it’s important that we hear criticism so we may try to objectively judge and respond to it. If Fox News or any other news organization consistently makes extreme attacks against the Obama administration, then most consumers will turn to a different news source, of which there are many.

Like Democrats, Republicans want to pass meaningful reform, but they want to do so with a “post-partisan” party that’s genuinely interested in people’s ideas. Given how much health care reform and climate change policy alone will affect the economy, the vigorous debate we’ve seen is unsurprising. But we’ll get nowhere by shutting out the critics. Call me quixotic.

Soren is a junior. You can reach him at slarson1@swarthmore.edu.

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