The Civic Failure of the Detroit News Editorial Board

by: Jeffrey Feldman

Thu Oct 23, 2008 at 09:16:22 AM EDT

When historians look back at the 2008 Presidential election, they will recount with disgust the GOP attempts to convince the public that the Democratic candidate--a sitting Senator--was a 'terrorist' and a 'socialist.'   It is with great dismay, therefore, that I wake up this morning to find the editorial board of the Detroit News parrotting this offensive GOP campaign under the guise of an 'endorsement' of John McCain for President.  The editorial has the right to endorse whichever candidates it chooses, but their decision to pluck langauge and arguments directly from the GOP box of rotten rhetoric is cowardly and cynical in the extreme.  When a newspaper echoes political propaganda in the form of an 'endorsement,' it represents more than the failure of journalism.  It is the failure of civic responsibility itself. 

To begin, the Detroit News proudly proclaims that they decided to endorse John McCain by ignoring everything that has happened in the 2008 Presidential campaign:

We readily acknowledge that McCain has run a distressingly ineffective presidential campaign. He has failed to find his voice on the campaign trail, rarely revealing the appealing personal characteristics and refreshing political views that caused us to endorse him in Michigan's Republican primary in January.

His selection of Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin as his running-mate also gives us pause. Palin is a promising governor and has excited the Republican base, but she is clearly not prepared for the role she was chosen to play and is costing McCain support he might have expected from undecided voters who harbor doubts about the seasoning of Democrat Barack Obama.

But America's knowledge of John McCain goes well beyond the presidential candidate. We've known the Arizona senator for 26 years of stellar service in Congress, and before that as a war hero who endured with courage the unspeakable horrors of a North Vietnamese prison camp.

One wonders, after reading this convoluted rationale from the Detroit News, why they waited so long to endorse John McCain for President? It may be true that they endorse McCain back in January, during the heat of the GOP primary, but even that seem late given the 'knowledge of John McCain' they claim to have had for so long.  Since they proclaim McCain's actual campaign irrelevant, why not endorse him on a permanent basis, say, in 1999? 

And this is where the Detroit News' endorsement of McCain raises questions about civics.  Here we have a newspaper--an instrument of American civic life whose primary function is to report actual events to the public so that citizens can make decisions on actual fact--telling its public to ignore events and facts as they evaluate the two candidates.  What do we call a newspaper when, rather than reporting facts, it tells its readers to ignore facts--do away with them?  We call it: propaganda. 

That 'not-the-facts-ma'am' argument is enough to make the Detroit News endorsement rotten, but what makes it fester is the board's use of language directly out of GOP smear campaigns to describe McCain's and Obama's economic policies.

Americans watched, for example, as John McCain showed his total lack of understanding of the economic crisis as it was happening.  As the financial markets went over the point of no return, John McCain proudly and ignorantly declared  that 'the fundamentals of the economy are strong.'  Meanwhile, in the world of facts apparently unbeknownst to John McCain, Americans began to worry that their savings would evaporate--that the crisis was so severe it had already threatened the safest of fiunancial instruments: ordinary savings accounts.  

The Detroit News ignores this fact about McCain and chooses instead to laud the cynical GOP campaign language about McCain being a the original prophet of  the impending collapse:

Had Congress listened to McCain's warning in 2005 about the dangers of the exploding sub-prime mortgage market, the financial crisis choking the nation today might be less severe.

And if money grew on trees, we would not have had a crisis in the commercial paper market in the first place. But alas, it does not.  Nor did John McCain come close to warning the country about an implosion in the commercial paper market caused by unregulated credit default derivatives.  

And yet, despite the fantasy and cowardice in their arguments about McCain, the Detroit News reserves its most cynical propaganda for their descriptions of Sen. Obama's economic policy, which they reduce down to a GOP mantra.  First they acknowledge that Sen. Obama is a 'man of tremendous ability,' but then they revert to the antithesis of thought--to the predictable talking points of the GOP propaganda machine:

But if he wins this election, he will enter the White House as the most inexperienced president since Herbert Hoover in 1928. His proposals reflect the Democratic Party's big-spending orthodoxy. Conservative estimates place the price tag for his new programs at nearly $350 billion a year, and yet he vows even more middle class tax cuts.

Obama would raise taxes on investors and costs for job creators at a time when America needs more investment and jobs.

By contrast, McCain vows to freeze spending while he scours the budget for areas where it can be cut. Though his opponents deride a spending freeze as a simplistic response, we must take a breather from the Bush-era spending spree that has increased the size of government by 50 percent during the past eight years.

Again, to make sense of this logic that the Democratic Party has a 'big-spending orthodoxy,' we must follow the lead of the Detroit News and completely ignore facts, events--reality. Just a few short weeks ago, for example, the head of the Republican Party stood up before the congress and demanded that $700 billion dollars be given carte blanche to the treasury secretary to distribute at his sole discretion to a small handfull of investment banks who otherwrise refused to take on the risk of the once-sterling commerical paper market. Prior to that, the GOP was already spending billions per month on an optional war that did nothing but increase our national security risks, increase the price of oil, and increase the ammount of U.S. debt held by China.  And before that, the Republican Party--driven by blind adherance to an 'orthodoxy' of cutting taxes for the investor class on long-since-proven-wrong pseudo-economic theories about tax cuts leading to economic growth.  Those GOP policies had produced--up to the $700 billion layout--the biggest national debt in history, and the deepest national recession since the Great Depression.  

And when was the last time the finances of the U.S. federal governemnt were run well?  It may be hard for the Detroit News to recall--since they so boldly ignore facts and embrace propagandistic fantasies--but the American public remembers:  during the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, who together with his Vice President, Al Gore, pulled this nation out of debt, accumulated a surpluss to start solving the financial problems presented by the aging of the baby-boomers, and to begin setting in motion the kind of structural changes required to face the challenges of globalization, healthcare, and rising energy costs. 

But that is not all.  During that same period, Democratic leader after Democratic leader at the State level rejected the 'trickle-down' orthodoxy of the Republican Party and implemented sound, often stern, fiscal  policies that resulted in balanced budgets and thriving economic conditions.

Meanwhile, the Detroit News ignores facts and events, and tells its readers to evaluate the economic policies of Barack Obama based on talking points from the Republican National Committee.   

And what is the economic policy of John McCain's that the Detroit News proudly endorses?  What is the vision for America's economy that draws the support from this board of so-callled journalists?  It is McCain's impulsive proposal of a federal 'spending freeze'--a concept blurted out in the heat of a moment.  Where the Detroit News Editorial Board staffed by people with intellectual curiousity or even an ounce of honesty, they might discuss for their readers exactly what a federal spending freeze would mean and why a candidate married to a billionaire heiress would propose such a disastrous move.  A 'spending freeze' is not an economic policy, it is the absence of policy.  It is tantamount to John McCain saying, 'Until we can figure out how to unfreeze the commercial debt markets, I am going to use my power to freeze up every other aspect of our economy.'  It is idiocy pure and simple.  A spending freeze would sent wave after wave of panic through the economy, transforming the economic ignorance of a U.S. Senator into the instant financial suffering of millions of Americans who depend on such things as school lunches, disability payments, and social security checks.

Finally, in closing, the Detroit News Editorial Board leaves the propaganda behind and straight-up insults the intelligence of half the state of Michigan:

McCain may lack the inspirational qualities of his opponent, but if this were a blind audition judged solely on the resumes of the two candidates, he would win decisively.

Forget the nearly 60 televised debates you have watched of the two candidates over the past 18 months, the editorial board tells their readers.  Forget the efforts of the Obama campaign to discuss solving real problems and the endless attempts by the McCain campaign to destroy that conversation by accusing Obama of being a 'terrorist' and a 'socialist.'  Forget all that you have seen, learned, heard, watched, discussed, and argued about during the last two years of the most important Presidential campaign in history.  None of it matters.  None of it is real.  All that matters is the fictional claim--the campaign slogan--that based on some hypothetical 'resume,' John McCain 'has what it takes,' to be President and Barack Obama does not.  

Yeahright.  And the moon is made of green cheese. 

When a major American newspaper tells its readers  to ignore facts and events and make choices based on rhetoric coming out of a political campaign, they are no longer a credible source of information.  They are a wing of a political party. 

Given all this, Michigan voters will likely ignore the Detroit News endorsement. And so they should.