It is a great thing that Americans are so interested in their Presidential election. According to Pew, there is record engagement levels in this election. However, I will not miss the writing in the form of “opinion columns” that we have to endure in election years, which somehow seem extra senseless when campaigns are at fever pitch. Take, for example, EJ Dionne’s opinion piece in The Washington Post. I have no idea what he is on about for the entire article, but his last paragraph reads conclusively.
In the campaign so far, John McCain has been clinging to the old economic orthodoxy while Barack Obama has proposed a modestly more active role for government. But the economic assumptions are changing faster than the rhetoric of the campaign. “Reality has broken in,” says Frank. And none too soon.
How do we get to this amazing conclusion? To support such a statement, we would need some sort of analysis of the policies and attitudes of Obama and McCain about their likely economic policies as President. We would also need some sort of very cogent analysis on why these differences represent something truly different and why something truly different is necessary. We don’t get that in this article. What we get instead, is a pretty benign claim that lending has been under-regulated, something which everyone agrees about and Dionne points this out, citing multiple sources. Then, Dionne makes the assertion that since lending is under-regulated, therefore all (or if we are being charitable, a preponderance of) public-private relationships since the 1980’s have suffered from deregulation. This is an extremely tenuous claim that is simply asserted and supported by a statement from one member of the House of Representatives. But we’re not done, from there, Dionne asserts that somehow it follows that GLOBAL FREE TRADE has also been bad for America due to lack of regulation -also only supported by a quote from the same House Member. Don’t get me started on how the title radically over-blows the statements in the editorial, which in and of themselves, outrun the analysis to support them by a country mile.
Why does columns like this upset me? Because there are interested young people, who, like myself at that age, read this stuff and cannot pick out the problems with the argument. These young ones are rewarded for at least reading the Washington Post op-ed section, go join a political party, are patted on the back for being an active citizen, and have no idea that they in fact are laying a very difficult ideological foundation for themselves to escape from and rejoin the ranks of reasonable human beings. They are taken in by arguments do not follow one another, appear in the form of assertion, are woefully imprecise to the point of being beyond useless, and pass as journalism that our citizens should take their cues for practicing political judgment from.
Also a tip, if you are going to write something, make sure you have something worth saying. When you write an article where it seems like you want to get to the conclusion: Obama=awesome and McCain=dinosaur, the you don’t really have a great subject to write a five paragraph essay about. First, you are taking your premise as given, and second, you are likely to just sort of say “here’s some stuff… therefore I’m right in my opinion.” Write about SOMETHING, think it through, and then come to a conclusion. THEN, go back and rewrite the article so that you can structure to be more about informing the reader about the topic rather than what your first draft is likely to be, which is informing YOURSELF about your conclusion (which no one but yourself cares about). I’m not trying to imply that EJ Dionne doesn’t care about writing, I’m trying to imply that EJ Dionne doesn’t care about the economy. He cares about Barack Obama becoming President. The very structure of his essay lays out his priorities in way that is substantially more clear than his structured(or should I say “structured?”) arguments about “Capitalism’s reality check.”
Posted by stevenmaloney 
