OxBlog

# Posted 6:26 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

~~LEFT-~~ RIGHT-WING MEDIA MACHINE BASHES PRESIDENT: What is the significance of bad reviews from George Will and Robert Novak? According to Novak,

The consensus on the Right was that President Bush's fifth State of the Union Address was his worst...

The president proposed that the government preside over a wide array of non-petroleum energy options. That has all the characteristics of an ''industrial policy,'' with the federal government picking winners and losers. While violating the Republican Party's free market philosophy, this is a course with a lengthy pedigree of failure all over the world.

The same State of the Union address that neglected the Republican goal of reforming the tax system called for an American Competitiveness Initiative that also promises an extension of growing, intrusive government. That would expand still more the federal role in education. Instead of shrinking the federal government, Bush wants to grow it.

George Will adds that:

The president's headline-grabbing assertion that America is "addicted" to oil is wonderfully useless. If it means only -- and what else can it mean? -- that in the near term we will urgently need a lot of oil, it is banal. The amusingly discordant word "addicted" couched censoriousness -- the president as national scold; our use of oil as somehow irresponsible -- in the vocabulary of addiction, which is the therapeutic language of Oprah Nation.

So, is this evidence that even conservatives in the media won't shill for the president?

Or is the real truth that something much more clever is going on? Coming at this from a Kos perspective, one might say that Will and Novak's criticism from the right accomplishes the dual objective of making conservatives seem principled while making the president seem moderate.

Meanwhile, it is the supposedly non-partisan journalists responsible for reporting the facts whose mindless pursuit of "balance" instead of truth favors the GOP. Think Deborah Howell.

So, which theory makes more sense? You decide.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion