New York Times Hammers Obama

All the President's Sanctimony 
Ross Douhat
New York Times, Op Ed

Here is how President Obama introduced his plan for deficit reduction in Wednesday’s speech:

… because all this spending is popular with both Republicans and Democrats alike, and because nobody wants to pay higher taxes, politicians are often eager to feed the impression that solving the problem is just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse. You’ll hear that phrase a lot. “We just need to eliminate waste and abuse.” The implication is that tackling the deficit issue won’t require tough choices.

… So here’s the truth. Around two-thirds of our budget — two-thirds — is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security. Two-thirds.

…. So any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table …

And here are some choice excerpts from the plan itself:

It’s an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table — but one that protects the middle class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future …

We will reduce wasteful subsidies and erroneous payments. We will cut spending on prescription drugs by using Medicare’s purchasing power to drive greater efficiency and speed generic brands of medicine onto the market. We will work with governors of both parties to demand more efficiency and accountability from Medicaid … we will slow the growth of Medicare costs by strengthening an independent commission of doctors, nurses, medical experts and consumers who will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending while protecting access to the services that seniors need …

… both parties should work together now to strengthen Social Security for future generations. But we have to do it without putting at risk current retirees, or the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.

So, to be clear: We need to put “everything on the table” … except for policies that benefit the middle class and senior citizens. We can’t pretend that we can close the budget deficit by just cutting waste, fraud and abuse … but we can pretend that reining in Medicaid and Medicare spending is just a matter of cutting “wasteful subsidies” and “erroneous payments,” finding “efficiencies” and eliminating “unnecessary care.” We need to make “tough choices” and (did I mention this?) put “everything on the table” … but we can’t change Social Security benefits for current or future retirees.

This was what bothered me the most about the president’s speech. It wasn’t the partisanship and polemicism. Politics ain’t beanbag: President Obama wants to be re-elected, the House Republicans gave him a nice fat target, and I wasn’t surprised that he decided to come out swinging rather than letting the opportunity pass by. Nor was it his refusal to match Paul Ryan’s honesty about what it takes to balance the budget without tax increases with a similar honesty about what it takes to balance the budget while leaving Medicare and Social Security more or less as-is. Evading unpleasant realities is a grand bipartisan tradition: Someday, a Democratic leader will have to admit that he supports tax increases on the middle class, but I’m not at all shocked that President Obama still hopes to save that admission for his second term — or the first term of Joe Biden’s administration, perhaps.

No, it was the sanctimony that got to me. If you’re going to propose reforming entitlements by primarily cutting “wasteful subsidies” and “unnecessary care,” is it really appropriate to shake your finger at politicians who propose to cut “waste, fraud and abuse”? If you’re intent on pretending that tax increases on the rich are the only tax increases required, is it really appropriate to lecture your audience about the need to make “tough choices” and put “everything on the table”? This is a recurring tic in President Obama’s speeches, of course: He likes to frame his partisan thrusts with professorial summaries of the policy landscape, alternating between honest high-mindedness and slash-and-burn polemics. But Wednesday’s address was a particularly frustrating variation on that theme. Rarely has a politician talked so piously (and accurately) about the necessity of hard choices while proposing to make so few of them.

In a sense, I know, even a gesture toward inconvenient realities is better than no gesture at all. It’s the tribute that big-government liberalism pays to fiscal reality, you might say, and it’s a sign of the growing constraints on the progressive vision that President Obama felt compelled to acknowledge that reality at all. (Matt Yglesias and Yuval Levin, from the left and right, made versions of his point following the speech.)

But the sanctimony is still hard to swallow. This president doesn’t pander any more egregiously than his predecessors. But he spends more time trying to pretend that his pandering is really tough-minded, post-partisan truthtelling. And that two-step grows more grating with every passing day.

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/all-the-presidents-sanctimony/

Common Sense Commentary:

When you have lost the New York Times, you are no longer relevant in liberal circles. 

Obama has lost his POTUS Bully Pulpit, which is the most powerful speaking position in the world. He now has to reel in the New York Times and many others in order to win the primaries and be re-elected. 

Of course, he will get them back. But at extreme costs. And, at this moment a seated president is now standing outside the White House and has to fight his way back in.

If we Patriots keep our heads down, focus on the larger war, and stay away from fundamental internal arguments over nuanced policies, we will have a new president in 2012, and he will be a Republican. We must choose wisely!

Blessings, fellow Patriots!