A new meme from the traditional media, abetted, of course by the right wing talking heads, is that Obama is trying to scare Americans. Reuters does it today. Note that the two experts the reporter, Tabassum Zakaria, uses to trash Obama are from the CATO Institute and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), two right wing think tanks who have been working against the stimulus package (AEI actually relies on some of Bush's economic advisers, like Mankiw, which is rich, considering they got us into this mess):
President Barack Obama may think words like "catastrophe," "crisis" and "disaster" help sell his economic rescue plans, but U.S. history has shown that scare tactics can backfire.Obama isn't stoking fear. He doesn't have to. For most Americans, the economic fear is real and palpable. The American people are scared. Do the people who write and say these things live in some kind of secure economic bubble? Do they not have 401-ks? Do they not have family or friends who've lost jobs or are worried about losing their jobs? Do they not see their own contributions to health care rising? Everyone I know is worried on some level. But, not the pundits. Nope. Life is good in the bubble.
Having campaigned on a promise of hope and run against what he called President George W. Bush's "politics of fear," Obama may be taking a big political risk -- for himself and his policies -- by resorting to the same tactic.
In pressing Congress and the public to back expensive proposals, Obama has used the well-worn political rhetoric of fear to paint dire scenarios, hoping to persuade skeptics of the need for quick action. It may work, and it may not.
"That end-of-the-world type of rhetoric is not good for business confidence," said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute.
John always says that the Republicans accuse Democrats of doing the very things that the Republicans always do. This is just another example. When Senator Jim DeMint stands on the Senate floor and says the stimulus will actually "cripple our economy," he's not trying to scare people?
