There's no one in the modern news media I admire more than Fareed Zakaria. He somehow manages at the somniferous outpost of CNN a lively, weekly battle of dignified intellectualism ("GPS"), and again in his Washington Post commentary he is almost unfailingly rigorous in his thinking and scrupulously fair.
On a variety of complex issues he presents "real facts and a strong case"--pillars of solid argumentation he also attributes to President Obama's reelection campaign, which, however, Zakaria also finds lacking. To be more precise, he finds it "depressing," because Obama, argues Zakaria, "has focused on half-truths and weak arguments"--just like Mitt Romney.
Let's take a look at the depressing equivalence, per Zakaria this morning:
The [mutual] attacks are, I suppose, inevitable. But let’s be honest: They’re largely untrue or irrelevant. Whatever the paperwork shows, Mitt Romney was not running Bain Capital after February 1999. Even if he had been, outsourcing jobs to lower a company’s costs — and ensure its survival — is not sleazy; it’s how you run a business efficiently. (Is President Obama suggesting that we put up tariff barriers to prevent outsourcing in the future?) On the other side, Romney’s recent claim accusing the president of shoveling government grants to his political supporters was so twisted it earned the Fact Checker’s highest score for distortion — "Four Pinocchios."
Hence Romney's "Four Pinocchios" are situated rather symmetrically "on the other side"; they are nestled in all their hideousness right next to Obama's misapprehension of capitalism's "efficiency" (that would be the destruction of American working-class families so that some shareholders can funnel their profits into foreign tax havens and multiple summer homes), as well as Obama's utterly unstated suggestion of "tariff barriers." (What Obama has suggested is ending tax breaks for domestic firms that ship jobs overseas.)
This--this appalling "sameness" business--in the black-and-white absence of substantiating evidence is unworthy of Zakaria's intellect.
Yes, politics is rough, its participants do tend to careen from exactitude, its charges and countercharges are often stretched beyond the permissible boundaries of a high school debate club. But to compare and contrast (another of secondary education's old bugaboos) the Obama and Romney campaigns' veracity, or rather lack thereof, and conclude, essentially, a standing equilibrium? And after you just sketched a jarring disequilibrium? That's just conformity, Beltway conformity, a journalistic misproof of impressive objectivity by merry equivalence-making--and Zakaria is better than that.
i usedta think he's better than this; but i don't now and haven't for some time. taibbi calls him our best propagandist (he definitely enjoys the staus quo); i'd say that's probably right, considering his platforms. he's both for and against The Drug War
Posted by: jarrod myrick | July 19, 2012 at 09:12 AM
I don't think Obama is trying to suggest that Mitt Rommey has done anything illegal. I think he's trying to say that Mitt Romney is bragging on his business experience and the fact that he has made a lot of money as his main qualification to be president because that makes him a job creator. What Obama is trying to say to the American people is that if they want a businessman for president then they should see how business really works before making that decision.
Posted by: AnneJ | July 19, 2012 at 10:53 AM
As analysts and television hosts go I too respect Zacharia but I think Ezra Klein is better. Your latest post confirms why.
Posted by: Peter G | July 19, 2012 at 11:20 AM
Even Fareed is basically saying that SEC filings signed under penalty of perjury are irrelevant to Obama's claims? Sigh.
Posted by: Turgidson | July 19, 2012 at 11:53 AM
I face this concept in all walks of life that truth somehow lies "in the middle" - as in "can we agree to meet in the middle?". The people who espouse this doctrine think it is self-evident that their mastery of this doctrine enables them to see and embrace the truth in all things.
Bull shit!
The truth or the right thing or whatever is no more statistically likely to be in the middle than at either end or anywhere in between. Would righteousness be found in the midle between me and Al Capone? Well, maybe - but not likely.
The more difficult and apprpriate objective in life in finding "The Truth" - or more usually "my truth" wherever it happens to be.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | July 19, 2012 at 01:16 PM
Zakaria has joined the journalistic hack brigade with this one. He has now officially submitted his entry fee.
Posted by: majii | July 19, 2012 at 05:03 PM
I may be wrong, but I think there's pressure coming from higher-ups for people like Zakaria and Klein to go easy on Mitt Romney. President Obama's team must have been very effective in exposing Mitt Romney. The Corporate media overlords wanted none of that. Willard "Mitt" Romney is their guy. They are going to do whatever it takes to make sure that he is elected. No more pretenses at objectivity. If Zakaria and Klein want to keep their jobs they have to fall in line.
Posted by: nk007 | July 21, 2012 at 04:21 AM