The Clueless Pundits: Rewarding Obstruction

Not quite fitting, but in the spirit....

From Paul Krugman:

Matt Yglesias finds Ron Fournier saying this about health reform:

On health care, we needed a market-driven plan that decreases the percentage of uninsured Americans without convoluting the U.S. health care system. Just such a plan sprang out of conservative think tanks and was tested by a GOP governor in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney.

Instead of a bipartisan agreement to bring that plan to scale, we got more partisan warfare. The GOP resisted, Obama surrendered his mantle of bipartisanship, and Democrats muscled through a one-sided law that has never been popular with a majority of the public.

The mind reels. How is it possible for anyone who has been following politics and, presumably, policy for the past six years not to know that Obamacare is, in all important respects, identical to Romneycare? It has the same three key provisions — nondiscrimination by insurers, a mandate for individuals, and subsidies to make the mandate workable. It was developed by the same people. I and many others have frequently referred to ObamaRomneycare.

Some time ago, balance overtook journalism ethics, or even just basic leg-work in research. Now, if one group tries to do something of value, and pass a law, the reporters will report on the basics of that, then they will report whatever the hell the other side said back. In this case, they actually covered talking points like "government takeover" and "socialism" as though they had any grounding in reality.

Our punditry is generally clueless, and they suck. They care about fake "bi-partisanship" than they do about the actual stuff getting done. While the President passed a law that gave ten-million new people health insurance this year, they are concerned he didn't have Mitch McConnell over for dinner, or that he didn't get to talk to McConnell on election night. They've spent the last six years covering everything but the reality- if the President proposed a law making people breathe air, they'd have voted no. These pundits who know nothing about anything, allowed six years of obstruction to be rewarded by not covering what actually went on in Washington.

Now there are lots of theories on why this happen, and I generally reject the theory that it's their "corporate masters." I think two things matter here. First, journalists are now taught to be "balanced" in their coverage. Second, journalists who cover politics aren't necessarily political scientists. On the issues and the process, they actually don't realize what the two sides are doing well enough to call them out on it. Both of these things should concern you. The result of the incompetence within our pundit class is a Congress that will now have taken six years off.