My work in the Wall Street Journal
It’s not exactly a thought piece, but the Wall Street Journal published my letter to the editor today.
The letter is a radical moderate’s response to a particularly offensive op-ed by the Hoover Institution’s Shelby Steele (”Obama and Our Post-Modern Race Problem“) last week. His thesis was that those who supported Obama’s candidacy in 2008 (and 2007) were gullible victims of a race-redemption narrative, and since the election Obama has proved his cluelessness and worthlessness by enacting policies that are not consistent with the Hoover Institution’s preferences.
Here’s the edited and abridged version of my letter as they published it:
It’s appropriate that Mr. Steele focuses on the old scourge of political correctness, as his op-ed offends me deeply. Simply, I don’t like being called stupid. On behalf of the tens of millions of independents and moderates who supported Barack Obama for president in 2008, may I invite Mr. Steele to demonstrate a little respect for our judgment? We knew what we were doing.
The 2000s were a lost decade of underplanned, unbudgeted, and disastrously executed wars that may never end, and debt-fueled economic activity that proved illusory when the bills came due. Median wages declined, health-care costs soared, and trade and budget deficits became unsustainably large. We Obama voters understood that the next decade would require a radical change of direction. No other candidate for president demonstrated such a predilection for change. We had two years of non-stop exposure to make up our minds about this.
Mr. Steele laments that Mr. Obama is not Ronald Reagan, whose “principled” and “individuated” legacy includes massive government expansion, an unpaid for military buildup, and cementing a culture of spending far above what taxes brought in. George W. Bush, whether he followed President Reagan’s principles or not, got similar results without any meaningful economic progress.
Certainly, those of us who voted for and continue to support President Obama disagree with some of his policy choices to date. But I don’t suppose that Mr, Steele accepts that we’re capable of such nuanced thought.
Eric Meyerson
San Francisco