On June 18, 2002, President Bush said, \I just want you to know that when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."" The President, addressing the Department of Housing and Urban Development, neglected to mention if ignorance was ""really"" strength or slavery ""really"" freedom.
This led many to wonder if there was any point to political commentary in the face of such a stupendously Orwellian assertion. I like to think that some value remains, and it has been my pleasure to bring you my commentary for the past year. So, in the spirit of the cumulative finals we all love, let's review 2004-'05 and get an update on continuing trends.
I mentioned last October how mainstream media, eager to avoid claims of bias, tend to present ""both sides"" of an issue even when one side is clearly correct. At the time, I noted that this tendency obscures the clear scientific consensus that global warming is dangerously real. I'm sad to report that this trend continues apace. One recent example is the spate of stories covering the recent bankruptcy bill. Most people forced to declare bankruptcy are middle class, if measured by long-term markers such as education, employment, or home ownership.
Every empirical investigation finds that only about 10 percent declare bankruptcy due to overconsumption of consumer credit. Most just hit a hard patch due to layoffs, downsizing, uninsured medical expenses or divorce. Very few use bankruptcy as a financial planning device or abuse the system to get out of debts they can actually pay.
Yet backers of the bill routinely claimed that debtors were mostly immoral cheats who needed to be stopped. Leading papers such as the Washington Post quoted these claims uncritically, ""balanced"" against what they labeled the ""views of critics""-that is, the actual truth. The only story I saw that presented critics' views with the proof of their correctness was an op-ed piece in The New York Times. Apparently you can only present facts when you label them opinions.
It's not surprising that the mainstream media should be more concerned with the appearance of bias than with actual bias, since they're constantly-and falsely-charged with leaning to the left. According to the nonpartisan group Media Tenor, 75 percent of partisan sources on the evening news were Republicans. I debunked the notion that Dan Rather's shoddy reporting on Bush's National Guard service was indicative of bias. Even the ""Independent Review Panel,"" composed of Bush's political allies, found no evidence of partisan sentiment. Since the media have been falsely accused of veering left for so long, it's not surprising that they might overcorrect in search of a false ""balance.""
One area where mainstream media gave Bush far too much deference was his charges of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Some outlets have since admitted that they were too credulous on these mendacious charges, but only after the American people had been dragged to war. That most Americans now say the war is not worth the cost is an indictment of that credulity.
Perhaps as a result, coverage of Bush's Social Security plans has been far more skeptical. Thus, I am not the only commentator to note that privatizing Social Security would cost more than the current system while reducing its safety. Others have noted that Bush's claims of a crisis depend on ignoring the trillions stored in the Social Security Trust Fund, and assuming that the economy will do extraordinarily poorly-so poorly that private accounts couldn't offer the greater return on investment that would be their biggest selling point. Perhaps as a result of these public disclosures, the majority of Americans are firmly opposed to altering Social Security.
Of course, Republicans still attempted to control media reports on Social Security. When ""private accounts"" didn't poll well, they tried to change the name to ""personal accounts."" Though some media outlets accepted this change, ignoring the fact that the current Social Security system already has personalized accounts, not all of them did. More recently, Republicans have tried to change the name of the ""nuclear option""-ending the traditional Senate filibuster-to the ""constitutional option.""
This ignores that the current system is constitutional, and discards a name picked by Republicans to make this radical proposal seem more reasonable. Democrats have failed to take similar control of public discourse in debates around the tort system or the estate tax, perhaps better labeled the ""tort justice system"" and ""billionaire's tax,"" respectively.
Like Bush's Orwellian pronouncement about war, this attempt to change the name of their radical plan is intended to mislead the public, which tilts the playing field in their favor. No doubt it will involve privately lobbying media outlets and publicly accusing them of the dreaded liberal media bias. This suggests that, at the end of the year, we're right back where we were at the beginning. Bush and Co. try hard to control public perception so that they can lead us where they want. Sadly, their plans would lead only to disaster, in the Senate, in Social Security, and elsewhere, just as they lead to our current morass in Iraq.
opinion@dailycardinal.com.
