OR
TOO HARSH A CRITIC?
The Media is a very interesting thing. In it you have a conglomerate of people who get together, have mostly the same interests (much like you would if you got a lot of doctors together), who create a rabid mob mentality. As humans they have tendencies to miss the big picture and focus on whatever pop culture item everyone else is talking about. I have the same tendency, as does everyone I know. The only difference is I'm not shaping public opinion.
The Bush Legacy is a matter of perspective. I was having dinner with a friend of mine the other night when he made a remark that President Bush is going to go down in history as the worst U.S. President ever. So I posed a question to him, "What policies of President Hoover's do you disagree with? What is your impression of President Harrison's term? Where would you rate President James Polk?" There aren't a lot of people who have a really thorough knowledge of every single president. I certainly don't want to make that claim. Yet my friend made the assertion that even without a working knowledge of every other president, he knew that President George W. Bush will no doubt be the worst. Where did he get that impression from?
No doubt some of that comes from politicians. President-elect Obama has spent the better part of two years traveling the country and blaming President Bush for everything from terrorism, high food prices, high oil costs, to the troubled economy while promising "Help is on the way." While certainly partisan, the President-elect isn't a moron, so the case he makes isn't tantamount to saying Bigfoot exists. It can actually make sense. How long can someone listen to that before it starts to sound true?
Add the media, in love with the candidate and giving very favorable coverage of him, and you have quite a formidable opponent if you are trying to keep things in perspective. You have to go out of your way research how the President is really doing.
FARM BILL: 2008
Who has heard of the farm bill that was passed in May of this year? Do you know the details of it? Take this into consideration:
- The average U.S. farm family income is $90,000.
- The Farm Bill provided for a total of $300 Billion in funding. Two thirds went to food stamps, $40 Billion in U.S. Farm subsidies, $30 billion in 'environmental initiatives.'
- President Bush wanted the per-farm subsidy cap at $250,000. The bill called for a pre-farm subsidy of
$750,000.
An important reminder: do you remember what food prices have been like the last year? Extremely high. We witnessed some of the highest inflation in food prices this nation has ever seen. American farms have been experiencing record profits as a result of the spike in cost of corn and other products. A major reason was ethanol production, as the U.S. tried to more towards bio-fuels and away from oil. All that movement did was create another, more financially beneficial, market for farmers to sell their goods in. Think about it this way: our government directly funded and helped create a market in direct competition for our food. In practice that means a farmer could either sell their product as food, or to bio-fuel producers to convert into ethanol. Because of the competition, food prices skyrocketed.
Because President Bush wanted lower per-farm subsidies, he vetoed the bill. And because you can always count on cross-party cooperation when it comes to supporting each other's pork projects, the Senate got together and voted 83-15 to override the President's veto. In an odd piece of historical irony, then-Senator Obama didn't show up to vote that day. However, he was still campaigning against President Bush and had this to say about the process: "By opposing the bill, President Bush and John McCain are saying no to America's farmers and ranchers, no to energy independence, no to the environment, and no to millions of hungry people (emphasis mine)."
So who remembers the farm bill? I guarantee my friend doesn't, even though he is more conservatively minded than he'd like to admit and might actually support the President on this move. The point is, when the candidate isn't afraid to throw around such wildly hyperbolic accusations against the sitting President (and yes, all politicians do this), and the media doesn't offer any perspective but instead focuses on pro-Obama stories, how is the general perception going to be formed? People are going to come to the exact same conclusion that my friend did.
SO WHAT DOES THE PUBLIC ACTUALLY KNOW?
Zogby International just completed recent poll about the knowledge of people who voted for Obama. They asked 512 Obama voters 12 different questions. Here are some interesting findings.
- only 17% of Obama supporters knew that he won his first election by getting all his opponents removed from the ballot.
- only 12% knew that Obama said his economic policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry.
- only 28% knew that Biden quit a previous Presidential campaign because he plagiarized a speech.
- only 43% knew which party controlled Congress leading up the the election.
- only 54% of those polled were able to answer at least 1/2 of the 12 questions correctly.
On the flip side, while they weren't generally knowledgeable about Obama, they were aware of the GOP:
- 94% knew that Governor Palin's daughter was pregnant.
- 86% knew that the GOP spent $150,000 on clothes for Palin.
- 81% knew that McCain was unable to identify how many houses he owns.
- 87% identified Governor Palin as saying she "could see Russia from her house", even though she never said that (it was a SNL skit)
This poll does not expose Obama voters as moronic. I think what it reports is where Obama supporters get their information. In previous blogs I have asserted that the media representation of the campaigns was a little off-kilter, something now being echoed in places like Newsweek. If people are so aware of the negatives surrounding the GOP candidate, and oblivious to the negatives surrounding the Democrat candidate, the natural conclusion would be to vote for one you view more favorably. Carrying that over, how would that impact the perception of the sitting Republican President?
GOING DOWN IN HISTORY
History has its own judges, and it isn't really possible to say how they'll interpret things. Napoleon was fond of saying "What is History but a myth agreed upon." Historians have the maddening tendency to report things the way they want to, and they won't stop now. The War in Iraq has suffered quite a few set backs to be sure, but so did WWII. People are generally taught that FDR's New Deal helped the country recover from the Great Depression, but economist at UCLA have said it lengthened it by 7 years. Who knows how historians will decide to sum up the current Administration.
President Bush is by no means perfect, but I don't think he has gotten a fair shake either. Historians can write whatever they want, and they will. And then some bureaucrat in Washington will read the different books and decide what he/she thinks should be taught. And our kids will grow up believing it. What needs to be avoided is teaching opinions. For instance: instead of teaching "FDR's New Deal saved our nation," teach "FRD introduced the New Deal, which did this and that" along with "FDR was president for almost 10 years before the Great Depression ended." Let people make up their own minds about how effective the New Deal was. Currently we teach too much opinion, not enough fact. The Zobgy poll exposes that, if it does nothing else.
In the end, I don't know what the Bush Legacy will be. Certainly it hasn't been realized yet. It takes a long time to know how each policy decision will impact the future (It took over 30 years for Carter's decision not to support the Shah in the Iranian Revolution to produce an Islamic government creating nuclear weapons). The fact that people are already forming their opinions demonstrates our own hubris, our partisan nature, and our lack of perspective.
Farm Bill - Washington Post
Farm Bill - LA Times
Farm Bill - The Nation
Farm Bill - The Nation
No comments:
Post a Comment