A media environment that tilts to the right is obscuring what President Obama stands for and closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion.
That's the first line of his June 4 column. And he's absolutely right. But the title of that column is "Rush and Newt Are Winning" and that's absolutely wrong. That's not the root of what's wrong in his column, though. It's just the tip-off.
Dionne continues:
Yes, you read that correctly: If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don't. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.
The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He's the guy who nominates a "racist" to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America's defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. Steve Forbes, writing for his magazine, recently went so far as to compare Obama's economic policies to those of Juan Peron's Argentina.
The mention of Steve Forbes provides the opening for seeing what's wrong with Dionne's headline formulation: It's not "the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis". It's our entire political class that's out of whack. Not just Rush-Newt and Steve Forbes and Dick-Liz Cheney and Sarah Palin and Rick Perry and Pat Buchanan and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and etc., etc., etc. Not just the rightwing crazies, in other words, but the "sensible" Democratic establishment as well. In short, all of Versailles.
The first draft of my diary, "Obama's 'Mandate' To Slash Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security" was written through the prism of a column by E.J. Dionne this past Thursday, "Audacity Without Ideology". Regardless of whether or not my fears expressed in that earlier diary prove well-founded, I believe that Dionne's article can help us unpack some of the misgivings I have about Obama's approach that I think many others share as well, albeit to varying degress.
In his column Dionne cited "at least three keys to understanding Obama's approach to (and avoidance of) ideology." First, "his simple joy in testing himself against those who disagree with him. Someone who knows the president-elect well says that he likes talking with philosophical adversaries more than with allies." Second, "Right now, being empirical is in the progressive interest," since rightwing policies since Reagan "have been based more on faith in their worldview than on empirical tests." But third, Obama believes in a non-ideological approach. that a "pragmatic" "non-ideological" path--a "grand bargain" with conservatives involving "sacrifice" for all will result in political "sustainability"--a solution that Republicans won't want to undo, when they return to power someday.
This last point was particularly salient in putting me deeply on guard about cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Indeed, I had an early draft done before I even saw the short notice in the Post that I eventually used instead of Dionne's piece. This is why I found it faintly humorous that several commentators jumped on my interpretation of the replacement piece from The Fix that I used instead. Whether or not my fears prove justified, Dionne's interpretation of what Obama is up to does reflect a widely perceived reality. And in politics, perceived realities all too often trump actual realities. So it's best to take them very seriously, no matter how silly they seem, or for that matter, no matter how silly you seem by doing so.
I parse my way through Dionne's "three keys" on the flip.
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