Soccer Dad

The washington post endorses hope ahead of substance

For a short time I was taken by this argument in NRO:

In the eyes of the Post, Obama has been wrong about the biggest and most pressing foreign policy decision facing the country, and continues to double down on a wrong position. Can they endorse a man who they have concluded is "ultimately indifferent to the war's outcome"?

Subsequent editorials, have disabused me of the notion that the editors were anything but cheerleaders for Sen. Obama. In fact just a few days ago, I interpreted a Fred Hiatt column as saying that he'd rather that McCain lose without pointing out the weaknesses of Sen. Obama. I predicted then that he was laying the groundwork for his paper's eventual endorsement of the junior senator from Illinois. (And yes Maryland Conservatarian is vindicated.)

The Post's endorsement of Sen. Obama reeks of hypocrisy. There was no way they could make this endorsement and continue to claim any level of intellectual honesty. So it begins.

THE NOMINATING process this year produced two unusually talented and qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.

(via memeorandum)

If they respected John McCain, this endorsement would not be made "without ambivalence." They only respected him as (VDH put it as) a "maverick loser."

This endorsement includes the following phrases about the endorsee "Mr. Obama's economic plan contains its share of unaffordable promises ... he has been less definitive than we would like ... Mr. Obama has disparaged the McCain proposal in deceptive ways ... we question whether his plan is affordable or does enough to contain costs ... His team overstates the likelihood that either of those can produce dramatically better results ... Mr. Obama's greatest deviation from current policy is also our biggest worry ... We also can only hope that the alarming anti-trade rhetoric we have heard from Mr. Obama during the campaign would give way to the understanding ... a cause that Mr. Obama injured when he broke his promise to accept public financing in the general election campaign ... Mr. Obama's résumé is undoubtedly thin ... We had hoped, throughout this long campaign, to see more evidence that Mr. Obama might stand up to Democratic orthodoxy."

In other words, there's plenty of ambivalence. Of course I've cherry picked these comments, but they are substantial. The editors of the Post just don't have the intellectual honesty to say that these doubts alongside a thin resume add up to a disqualification to serve in the most powerful position in the world.

As Max Boot and Beldar have pointed out, the editors of the Washington Post have the audacity to place their bet on Sen. Obama based on nothing more than hope. They're hoping that on a number critical issues he will act differently from his announced positions.

Going back to the endorsement of Senator Obama, look at the positives the Post writes about Senator McCain.

Over the years, he has been a force for principle and bipartisanship. He fought to recognize Vietnam, though some of his fellow ex-POWs vilified him for it. He stood up for humane immigration reform, though he knew Republican primary voters would punish him for it. He opposed torture and promoted campaign finance reform, a cause that Mr. Obama injured when he broke his promise to accept public financing in the general election campaign. Mr. McCain staked his career on finding a strategy for success in Iraq when just about everyone else in Washington was ready to give up. We think that he, too, might make a pretty good president.

There's a "but" coming, obviously. Still these are instances that in any other circumstance would the Post would hail as "courageous" and likely be the basis of an endorsement. Here's a guy who stood on principle to do the right thing and bring about a good conclusion to a bad situation.

As noted above, the Post, which considers Iraq one of the most important foreign policy issues, has criticized Sen. Obama more than once for his stance on Iraq. The current domestic crisis that is in the spotlight is financial. So why does the Post think that Sen. Obama will handle it better?

Overshadowing all of these policy choices may be the financial crisis and the recession it is likely to spawn. It is almost impossible to predict what policies will be called for by January, but certainly the country will want in its president a combination of nimbleness and steadfastness -- precisely the qualities Mr. Obama has displayed during the past few weeks. When he might have been scoring political points against the incumbent, he instead responsibly urged fellow Democrats in Congress to back Mr. Bush's financial rescue plan. He has surrounded himself with top-notch, experienced, centrist economic advisers -- perhaps the best warranty that, unlike some past presidents of modest experience, Mr. Obama will not ride into town determined to reinvent every policy wheel. Some have disparaged Mr. Obama as too cool, but his unflappability over the past few weeks -- indeed, over two years of campaigning -- strikes us as exactly what Americans might want in their president at a time of great uncertainty.

First of all, whatever the degree the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played in the crisis, their collapses were largely the result of Democratic actions (and inactions.) Here's Stuart Taylor, no Republican:

A leading illustration of this Democrat-GSE symbiosis came in summer 2005. The Senate Banking Committee adopted a bill to impose tighter regulation on Fannie and Freddie, with all Republicans voting for it. But the Democrats voted against it in committee and killed it on the floor.

Also in 2005, Fannie and Freddie began buying vast amounts of subprime and "alt-A" mortgages with, in many cases, virtually no down payments, that had been taken out by people with low credit scores and low incomes relative to their monthly payments. To finance more and more affordable housing, as leading Democrats, and some Republicans, had urged, the GSEs dramatically lowered their traditional underwriting standards.

Between 2005 and 2007, Fannie and Freddie "sold out the taxpayers" by financing almost $1 trillion in such highly risky mortgages, according to "The Last Trillion Dollar Commitment: The Destruction of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," a carefully researched essay posted on the conservative American Enterprise Institute's website by Peter Wallison of AEI and Charles Calomiris of Columbia Business School.

So while the Post praises Sen. Obama for his role in addressing the problem, it ignores his role in the exacerbation of the problem. In endorsing him, the Post is not only telling us to trust him to do the right thing now, but is effectively advocating putting the government in control of the political party that made sure that problems in the financial sector would become a crisis.

And in praising Sen. Obama, the endorsement also ignores Sen. McCain's more substantial effort to pass the bailout bill. It was an effort that the Post derided. Sen. McCain didn't just ask Republicans to vote for the President's bill, he helped shape the bill and secure Republican support. (I'm not addressing the merits or faults of the bailout bill, but if Obama's tepid support of the bill is a reason to endorse him, how is McCain's more substantial work on behalf of the bill ignored?) "Unflappability" is neither substance nor an accomplishment.

I'd like to point out two other endorsements of the Post's that contrast with the logic its editors showed in endorsing Sen. Obama.

Two years ago an experienced white legislator took on a less experienced black politician in the Senate race in Maryland. Here's what the Post's editorial had to write about the challenger:

The other candidate, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, deploys platitudes and gauzy rhetoric to disguise a tissue-thin grasp of policy.

What's interesting is that on a couple of issues, that I'm aware of, Mr. Steele showed some knowledge that his opponent (and current Senator) Benjamin Cardin did not. For example, On Meet the Press, Cardin insisted on bringing troops home from Iraq and that there was no way to fix the situation. If the administration had followed Cardin's plan, there would have been no surge. On the other hand Steele said that the current strategy (two years ago) needed to change. So who was right on Iraq?

And even as the Post endorsement of Cardin two years ago mentions that he occasionally deviated from the Democratic party line, it's very clear that Cardin is no independent.

Still the Post's easy dismissal of Steele contrasts with its indulgence of Sen. Obama. If they didn't fundamentally agree with Sen. Obama, the Post's editors would have had to have dealt with the statements of his that they don't agree with instead of simply hoping that he doesn't mean what he says.

It's interesting that the Post faults John McCain for:

And we find no way to square his professed passion for America's national security with his choice of a running mate who, no matter what her other strengths, is not prepared to be commander in chief.

Never mind, for a moment as Don Surber put it:

Democrats nominated an inexperienced but cute senator who won't just be a heartbeat from the presidency; he will be the heartbeat.

or as Thomas Sowell put it, a bit less sarcastically

The issue that is raised most often is her relative lack of experience and the fact that she would be "a heartbeat away from the presidency" if Senator John McCain were elected. But Barack Obama has even less experience-- none in an executive capacity-- and his would itself be the heartbeat of the presidency if he were elected.

Let's go back four years to the Post's Kerry for President:

None of these issues would bring us to vote for Mr. Kerry if he were less likely than Mr. Bush to keep the nation safe. But we believe the challenger is well equipped to guide the country in a time of danger. Mr. Kerry brings a résumé that unarguably has prepared him for high office.

I have seen no mention that Sen. Kerry's pick of Sen. Edwards, in any way, detracted from his ability to "keep the nation safe." Either the vice-presidential pick matters or it doesn't. The Post's editors benefit from the fact that most people aren't going to remember what they wrote four years ago. But the inconsistency is glaring.

The Kerry endorsement also disproves Max Boot's belief in the good faith of Fred Hiatt. This endorsement might have been written six months ago, with the blanks left in for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and a few other details. The Post, despite, its substantive disagreements with the Democrats on major issues, is, at heart, a pro-Democratic paper. Despite its protestations implying otherwise, the Post was never going to endorse the Republican nominee this year even one it claims to respects as much John McCain.

The Post, in endorsing Barack Obama, makes a fairly good case for Sen. McCain, as Beldar wrote.

However, the Washington Post's dishonesty in endorsing Sen. Obama - which required its editors to ignore their differences with Obama over Iraq and ignore McCain's efforts on behalf of the bailout - betrays not just its readership but also its claim to being an "independent" newspaper.

Posted by SoccerDad at October 19, 2008 11:53 AM