Drinking the Obama Kool-Aid, With a Twist of Hayek

The press has been hyping Obama’s recent economic proposals as part of a “21^st century liberalism” while simultaneously using a decidedly 20^th century conservative framework to explain them.  President Obama made rhetorical nods to an expanded role for government and substantial proposals around raising the minimum wage, but the New York Times channeled Hayek and Boehner in their analysis.  This ideological bias, inherent to even the most “liberal” of mainstream newspapers, does far more damage to progressive policies than it makes up for in fawning coverage of the president.

Richard Stevenson writes that Obama “made a case Tuesday night for closing out the politics of austerity.”  Stevenson almost immediately contradicts the point by saying that Obama’s anti-austerity plan involves cutting Medicare and raising taxes, representing an alleged shift away from “shrinking the government.”  Call me econ-impaired, but I believe G down, T up = austerity and shrinking government.  In fact, the goalpost has been moved so far to the right, that a president whose worldview, by Stevenson’s own admission, is defined by its “willingness to acknowledge and absorb… some of the very underpinnings of the modern conservative movement” including cuts to Medicare, is said to define 21^st century liberalism.

The NYT’s Annie Lowrey adopts a similarly conservative framework for her analysis of President Obama’s laudable plan to raise the minimum wage.  Lowrey labels the move “politically divisive” because of the “weakness of the recovery,” even though the overwhelming majority of Americans support raising the minimum wage and the increase in the total wage bill would almost certainly grow the economy despite potential declines in investment or expenditures from high income earners.  She continues by quoting an unknown UC Irvine economist who says raising the minimum wage might increase poverty (what!?) and then finishes it off by regurgitating the conservative propaganda term “job creator” (© 2009) without qualification.  The only man or woman who creates a job is the one who goes out and busts their ass every day to earn one.

The Times’ subtle but clear use of a conservative economic framework – deficits being more important than jobs, cuts to Medicare as “anti-austerity,” citations of fringe conservative scholars and the parroting of conservative language – undermines the ability of progressives to make real change for working people.  As long as right-wingers dominate the ideological terms of debate, no amount of Democrats elected to congress or soothing speeches from our 21^st century “liberal” president will be able to roll back the platinum-tinted tide of plutocracy.