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Monday 22 June 2009

The President is offering the public a series of stories that are all missing half the plot and half the characters—namely, the part of the plot that says how we got where we are (e.g., 50 million without health insurance, half a million losing their jobs every month, 1 in 8 homes foreclosed or in danger of foreclosure, 70% of our energy coming from regimes hostile to us and gas prices on the rise again even as demand has fallen)—and the characters responsible for those gaps in the stories. He is trying to sell health care reform without calling out the drug and insurance industries, whose profits have soared at our expense. He is trying to sell financial reform without pointing his finger squarely at the banks and speculators who bankrupted us. He is trying to sell energy reform without blaming the oil companies who racked up record profits as Americans racked up record debts paying for their gas. And he is trying to sell all of these essential reforms without mentioning that there’s been a party—not just nameless “naysayers”—that has been fighting every one of these reforms for decades. When the President does feel compelled on occasion to mention the people who not only put their interests above the public interest but are now funding the lobbyists and attack ads aimed at derailing his agenda, he speaks in passive voice about how “mistakes were made,” or refers to unnamed “naysayers.” The President’s hero is Abraham Lincoln, but it is the Lincoln who penned the Gettysburg Address, not the Lincoln who ordered Union troops to fire. Drew Westen

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