Do these people even talk to each other?

The NYT editorial folk, I mean.

Bill Keller, who lately stepped down from his leadership position (his bio touts his successor as a "first female", which I guess is supposed to be some kind of summary success for Bill?), still doesn't seem to get it about President Obama's critics.

Instead of judging the man for how he's done with what he's inherited -- that's a fresh perspective, not pinning his performance on his predecessor -- some simply can't.

The closest we get is this good-news cheerleading, which -- no offense Bill -- the paper proved itself so good at doing under the past 8 years under President Bush too. ( "Mr. Keller, who ran the newsroom during eight years of great journalistic distinction but also declining revenue and cutbacks throughout the industry..." Really -- I guess, despite nods of acceptance, he's still not up to apologizing for not probing hard enough the claims that got us into Iraq in the first place... Judith Miller anyone? More time needed for fully owning up, I guess.)

Krugman talks about the current economic state as a "Little Depression", which just might grow into something worse, should we continue this same bloodletting course, given the Euro-pean fallout. But Keller? Here's his positive spin on Obama's performance: Lost in the shouting is the fact that Obama pulled the country back from the brink of depression; signed a health care reform law that expands coverage, preserves choice and creates a mechanism for controlling costs; engineered a fairly stringent financial regulatory reform; and authorized the risky mission that got Osama bin Laden.

We could take these one by one, but why bother? Better than me have done so already, and if Keller is still so tone-deaf as to be selling the (unfinanced, did nothing to rein in the skyrocketing healthcare costs that are crippling the economy) healthcare mandate as a complete "success", he's either clueless or has fingers inserted tightly in his ears. "Preserves choice" leads me to believe it is the latter, unless he is just discounting the concerns of all those not within the Times' socioeconomic customer base. (Hint: increased premiums, dropped coverages, mandates = less choice for so many insurance customers.)

Ditto the "engineered a fairly stringent financial regulatory reform". Doesn't he read his own book reviews section, or consider the financial critics of the Obama administration? It's not that they're coming down hard on candidate Obama (and the media) for overselling his promises; it's that, many folks on both sides of the aisle think as soon as he got into office, the president jumped into bed with the Wall Street economic team (Geithner, Summers) leftover from the Clinton administration that helped lay the groundwork for the crisis in the first place.

Nothing changed.

Trust me,
had the president's men honestly delivered on the "financial overhaul" and justice meting out, where we all were convinced that the crisis won't happen again -- much like a financial second World War, where the initial causes were never properly addressed but papered over -- people would be applauding. It's not "Obama hate" keeping them from delivering credit, it's a strong suspicion that there's nothing here in the administration's performance honestly worth clapping over.

Finally, this seems to be a meme the NYT will be pushing in the upcoming election: "authorized the risky mission that got Osama bin Laden". Please people? Get over it already. Yesterday's news, not ongoing like those other issues.

Maureen Dowd had a similar line a few columns back, and it jumped out at me in Michiko Kakutani's weekend review of Confidence Men, how awkwardly inserted the praise was. (As if, she herself perhaps hadn't initially included it in the review of the way the ongoing financial crisis was/is being handled...)

Because the book essentially begins with Mr. Obama’s crash course in economics as a candidate and ends in early 2011, Mr. Suskind does not place the mismanagement and indecisiveness he describes in these pages in perspective with the tough-minded decision by Mr. Obama to sign off on the high-risk mission that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in May. Given the country’s continuing economic woes, high unemployment and worries among Democrats about Mr. Obama’s re-election prospects, the book makes for timely reading, though its truncated scope means that it does not deal with the debt ceiling fight or Mr. Obama’s more recent efforts to address the jobs crisis.

First,
I don't think any "tough minded decision" to employ the SEALS to take out Osama would be tempered, or offset, "kept in perspective", by any economic policy decisions like healthcare, or financial regulation, but by a similar foreign-policy decision -- this one made very shakily and hesitatingly, in contrast -- endorsing the Libyan NATO action. That's a more fair comparable. Those two seem pretty offsetting...

Something tells me, the Osama bin Laden "risky decision" will be stale news by electiontime, as if it's not already. Just like, hey we applauded back when he made the "risky decision" to authorize military action, if needed, to take out the Somali pirates. Really, you're going to run on that, "Bush didn't get him. I did", when so many other issues are pulsing at the forefront? (It's the economy, stupid.)

I wonder if they'll try to spin Libya as a complete success too, despite the uncertainty of destabilizing yet another country, the uncertainty ahead, and the willingness to take out a dictator that seemingly had been responding to incentives and diplomacy, as America prompted. Personally, I know Obama lost me, for good, when he chose to emulate Bush, in taking on another pre-emptive war of choice, sold on the "but if we don't, think of all the innocent civilians that will be massacred!" familiar line. Nevermind the timetable, the cost, or the innocent civilians that were killed when we stepped up with our Western technology, into what clearly was/is a civil war, with no threat to American interests.

Trust me: hyping the bin Laden kill, and the Libyan "victory" won't gain you much, among true-blue Democrats, or the "what part of 'we don't like you' don't you understand? Republican wing.

Sadly, elite Democrats like Mr. Keller seem to think they are helping the president, and the country, by softening the criticism, by blaming what he inherited, instead of how he measured up, knowing full well going in what he faced. Just as men like that, with wives and daughters of their own, often think they are helping women by ... whatever it is they do. Like gays living in the equal states think they are helping those living in places that paid for the over-publicity with state Constitutional amendments that leave some less liberated than ever...

It's like, they really can't -- from those high perches -- see what is happening down here, on the ground. It's ok to fully retire, Mr. Keller. To let go, admit that perhaps you don't have all the answers, and your spin is lesser than an honest truth-telling.

If a new person has taken over the leadership, don't saddle her with your ways of the past, that failed to work and helped lead us into this mess. Fresh ways, making changes when change is honestly needed -- not building up the past, risky little things worth applauding, sure, in the short term, but not trumpeting again and again at the expense of the present...

It really is a mindset change needed, an attitude adjustment, if we're going to start looking forward and addressing what is to come. Here's just one: if no Social Security cuts are made to the Baby Boom generation with their overwhelming cost demographics, and it's not a Ponzi scheme so much as the honest truth that forthcoming generations probably -- unless they get on the disability now -- won't see anything close what's coming out of their checks in their own retirements, where's the confidence there? Are we trusting Ross Douthat alone at the Times to cover this very-important concern of many?

Tell the truth, Times writers, even if it hurts. We don't need entertainment so much now, as honest truth telling.

Think of all your potential readers, and make a break from the past ways of doing business now, while there's still time...


ADDED:
And stop blaming others already:

To be disillusioned you must first have illusions. Some of those who projected their own agendas onto the slogans and symbols of the Obama campaign were victims of wishful thinking — fed by Obama’s oratory of change. Anyone who paid attention while candidate Obama was helping President Bush pass the 2008 bank bailout should have understood that beneath the rhetorical flourishes Obama has always been at heart a cautious, cool, art-of-the-possible pragmatist. When he sees that he lacks the power to get what he wants, he settles for what he can get.

Truth be told, you oversold Obama the man yourselves.
He made promises that were impossible to live up to, given his junior-senator experience and college/career records, where anyone who is honest can see the road was fully paved to his ascendancy -- he was groomed from way back when to be "the first black president". That accomplished, did it never occur to you that some would look past the superficialities with an honest standard to measure job performance once in office? Stop making excuses, for whatever reason. Shame on you, and the elitist environment that still seems to insulate you from the rest of the working country.


(My 2cents. Take it and run...)


ADDED: Would it be cynical of me to wonder if the reason Keller seems to cling to superficialities -- instead of an honestly critical competition -- in this color-blended new America of the 21st century, is because he himself perhaps got where he is today based on his chiseled good looks, baby blue eyes, and liberal-leaning demeanor? Yes, I think it would.

(Remember: if we don't advantage some people based on superficialities, we don't have to -- later -- compensate and penalize/reward others down the line to somehow "make up for" those elite advantages doled out earlier.)