Dean Baker: The President as Storyteller-in-Chief

[chill_wind]

The President as Storyteller-in-Chief
Dean Baker
Truthout, February 14, 2011


The celebrations surrounding the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth overlooked an important part of Reagan’s success: his ability to craft an image to serve as the focus of his political argument. When he was running for president in 1980 Reagan invented two great tales that highlighted the worldview he was selling to his supporters.

One of these tales was the story of the welfare queen. She drove to the welfare office in a Cadillac every month to pick up her welfare check. The other story involved a man who bought an orange with food stamps and then used the change to buy a bottle of vodka. Never mind that these stories were almost certainly not true: They crystallized an image of the world that Reagan campaigned against.

Unfortunately, in this respect President Obama is no Ronald Reagan. He has persistently refused to give the country a story of the economic downturn. As a result, the center and right have eagerly filled the void.

(snip)

Then we have the universal programs, like Social Security and Medicare. These programs cost a lot of money, but people are willing to pay for them. Furthermore, the story of exploding growth in these “entitlements” stems entirely from our broken health care system.

If per person health care costs in the United States were the same as in any other wealthy country, we would be looking at enormous budget surpluses, not deficits. Everyone in Washington knows this, but they are scared of the drug companies, the insurance companies, the doctors’ lobbies and other powerful interest groups, so instead they push for cutting these essential programs.

In short, the center-right story’s can easily be shown to be nonsense. However, President Obama has put up nothing to counter it. He has backed away from telling the public the truth: The country faces an enormous economic hole right now because the financial industry ran wild over the last decade and the Fed and other government regulators let them.

more at the link:

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/the-president-as-storyteller-in-chief