Paul Krugman - "The Big Deal" - Amazing How The Media Missed All This [View all]

[TomCADem]

The corporate media, which pushed a false equivalency that elevated climate change deniars, birthers, death panel propagandists into the mainstream news, surprisingly missed or minimized the accomplishments of President Obama. This same corporate media shielded Republicans from scrutiny for their threats to default on the Nation's debt by blaming both sides. Thus, it is refreshing when stories that put the President's accomplishments into context are published.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/opinion/krugman-the-big-deal.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&

On the day President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, an exuberant Vice President Biden famously pronounced the reform a “big something deal” — except that he didn’t use the word “something.” And he was right.

In fact, I’d suggest using this phrase to describe the Obama administration as a whole. F.D.R. had his New Deal; well, Mr. Obama has his Big Deal. He hasn’t delivered everything his supporters wanted, and at times the survival of his achievements seemed very much in doubt. But if progressives look at where we are as the second term begins, they’ll find grounds for a lot of (qualified) satisfaction.

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Mr. Obama overcame the biggest threat to his legacy simply by winning re-election. But George W. Bush also won re-election, a victory widely heralded as signaling the coming of a permanent conservative majority. So will Mr. Obama’s moment of glory prove equally fleeting? I don’t think so.

For one thing, the Big Deal’s main policy initiatives are already law. This is a contrast with Mr. Bush, who didn’t try to privatize Social Security until his second term — and it turned out that a “khaki” election won by posing as the nation’s defender against terrorists didn’t give him a mandate to dismantle a highly popular program.