There is a diary on the rec list right now which uncritically promotes a meme of right wing Republican propaganda. As context, the diarist was at one time an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton and wrote his first diary criticizing the economic policies of President Obama in February 2009 barely a month after he was inaugurated. But more importantly, we need to be aware of the ways in which the disinformation technique utilized by media propagandists influences news sources. Vague identities and vague claims are a hallmark of disinformation pieces as is is the practice of making loose connections between people absent direct and unequivocal statements. Other techniques that should make us wary include the star power and the bandwagon techniques which encourage us to get on the bandwagon of opinion about a particular situation or policy because many influential and intelligent people are in agreement about it. The diary on the rec list and the HuffPo article on which that diary is based use a combination of the disinformation, bandwagon and star power propaganda techniques to promote the right wing meme that the Obama administration is confused, conflicted and inept in handling the financial crisis. Their springboard for this disinformation is the departure of Austan Goolsbee from the Obama administration to return to academia.
At the outset it is important to note that the HuffPo article completely ignores the fact that the Republicans and Wall Street caused the financial crisis in which America finds itself and ignores as well the willing and enthusiastic collaboration of the corporate media in promoting the regulation-free environment that enabled Wall Street Bankers to create financial disaster. The diarist also fails to emphasize this point. A different view of the HuffPo piece which deconstructs the disinformation upon which the diarist relies is therefore in order.
The HuffPo piece suggests that Austan Goolsbee’s departure is not the result of his conscious choice to return to academia but rather the result of infighting in an administration that is confused, conflicted and incapable. The diarist agrees and suggests suggest that another diary on DKos about Goolsbee’s departure is "shallow and superficial," because it relies “solely on a White House Press release.” However, the diarist engages in exactly the same behavior about which he complains by relying on the HuffPo article as a springboard to suggest that Goolsbee is leaving the Obama administration because of the administration's confusion, conflicts and ineptitude in handling the current crisis.
The HuffPo piece includes the reasons Goolsbee himself gave for his departure:
Goolsbee cited the pull of the academy as the driving force. He says he wants to go back to Chicago, where he teaches at the business school…In an email, a senior administration official told HuffPost that "going back to teach in the fall" was always Goolsbee's plan, dismissing any suggestion of drama around the announcement… An administration official said that he kept Obama informed of his talks to return to academia and pledged to both be involved in his 2012 reelection campaign and remain an outside adviser to the White House. Goolsbee also has a far better standing among other members of the Obama economic team than, for example, former top adviser Summers. "He has been working for the president between campaign and White House for four plus years," said the administration official. "The typical time for a leave at University of Chicago is two years." Indeed, Goolsbee always appeared to be a transient in Washington. He rented his house in the capital, choosing to keep his home in Chicago...
Note that Goolsbee’s statements are consistent with his actions but the HuffPo staff (and the diarist apparently) totally disregard both his statements and his actions promoting instead their own narrative (and implicitly suggesting that Goolsbee is lying). The HuffPo piece suggests that the reasons for Goolsbee’s departure are related to his being been beaten up during arguments over policy within the Obama administration. They make this allegation based on “some [anonymous] accounts” which contain no specifics and despite the fact that Goolsbee won important victories:
By some accounts, Goolsbee is among those inside the administration who bear scars from their scrapes with Summers, whose take-charge mentality does not always leave room for polite differences of opinion. .. Goolsbee reportedly tangled with Summers and his protege, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, over how stringently to regulate Wall Street investment banks in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Goolsbee advocated aggressively for rules that would limit the rights of Wall Street firms to trade for the benefit of their own accounts, a measure that Summers and Geithner opposed. Their stance solidified their images among their critics as protectors of Wall Street, to the detriment of the public interest. On this front, Goolsbee extracted a satisfying victory, persuading Obama to include the so-called "Volcker rule" (named after its chief architect, the former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker) in the final version of the regulatory reform law adopted last summer…
Note the vagueness here. Who are the authors of “some accounts?” and who reported that Goolsbee tangled with Summers and Geitner. Who specifically were their critics and why were their names not mentioned in the HuffPo piece? And why are these "sources" more worthy of belief than Goolsbee?
The HuffPo article also uses the comments/criticisms of a former administration official to suggest that Goolsbee secretly agrees with the views of former colleagues who are critical of the administration—naming only one. Again, note the vagueness …Who are the other critics and what do they have to say and how do we know that Goolsbee agrees with them? Note that there is no evidence to support the connection between Goolsbee and these shadowy “former colleagues” —another classic disinformation technique:
But his former colleagues, freed of public relations constraints, have testified with increasing stridence about the missed opportunities and internal squabbling that have largely defined economic policy in the Obama White House…In a speech last month at Stanford University, Romer described an atmosphere in which compromise and and perpetual concern over the limits of political possibility reliably trumped consideration of the facts on the ground, and the need for a muscular governmental role in seeking to put Americans back to work."Like the Federal Reserve, the Administration and Congress should have done more in the fall of 2009 and early 2010 to aid the recovery. I remember that fall of 2009 as a very frustrating one. It was very clear to me that the economy was still struggling, but the will to do more to help it had died." Romer pointedly rued the administration's failure to enact a more potent package of so-called stimulus spending measures even after Obama announced a fresh package in late 2009, featuring a tax credit aimed at encouraging employers to hire. "Unfortunately, only a few of the additional measures were adopted," Romer said. "We got a version of our new jobs tax credit in the HIRE act. But, it was much smaller than what we had proposed."…
Moreover, the HuffPo article connects Goolsbee to Romer’s criticisms by using a quote from Goolsbee taken out of chronological context (Romer's statement made in May, the following quote from Goolsbee was made in January) that is completely unrelated to Romer's comment (Romer was discussing the stimulus package--Goolsbee was discussing the Republicans' opposition to raising the debt ceiling) to suggest that somehow Goolsbee agrees with Romer:
“I don’t see why anybody’s playing chicken with the debt ceiling,” Goolsbee said in January during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week." “If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.”
The HuffPo article also implies that the opposition to additional stimulus measures came solely from within the administration while ignoring the reality that Republicans control the House of Representatives, are united in their opposition to further stimulus, and committed to playing a game of "chicken" to force the administration into draconian spending cuts or default on the debt:
More than ever, the atmosphere in Washington seems so laced with toxicity that policymakers have largely given up merely debating how to spur the economy, cognizant that any approach will be deemed politically impossible...Someone new will step in and inherit those issues, but the sense has deepened among some observers that the political system is so consumed with partisan bickering that it is not up to delivering a fix, setting up Goolsbee's successor for what may well be another period of stress and unfulfilled reach.
The Huff Po article ends with another vague assertion that "those inclined to accuse the administration of failing to marshall an adequate response to the strains of the great recession" agree that the Obama administration has failed." agree with Goolsbee. Given that Republicans are the primary promoters of the meme that the Obama administration has failed to handle the financial crisis appropriately, it is highly unlikely that Republicans agree with Goolsbee on anything. At this point we are not even sure what Goolsbee agrees with himself about because the disinformation in the HuffPo article has so obscured Goolsbee’s views on things.
The diarist also uses the “bandwagon” technique to suggest that this community ought to ascribe to the views expressed in the HuffPo disinformation piece by relying on his own diary history. He claims that he has been correct in his criticisms of President Obama’s policies all along and relies on the star power of Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz, was entrenched in the Clinton administration and was the Chairman of Economic Advisers in Clinton’s 2nd term. Stiglitz has had a notoriously poor relationship with Larry Summers, President Obama’s former Secretary of the Treasury, who successfully petitioned in 2000 for Stiglitz’s removal as Chief Economist of the World Bank.
Perhaps the diarist’s most blatant use of the bandwagon technique is the diarist’s claim that Austan Goolsbee is a Stiglitz fan. This claim is based on a “two sentence e-mail” sent by Goolsbee to the diarist suggesting that he check out a Newsweek Article about Stiglitz. Interestingly, the Newsweek article claims that “a source close to Stiglitz” describes Stiglitz’s disappointment at being “left out in the cold even though he was expecting at least an offer” from the Obama administration. The article goes on to mention the ongoing feud between Summers and Stiglitz. The Newsweek article is critical of the administration for not including Stiglitz but also notes that Summers suggested that Stiglitz be invited to a meeting with then President-elect Obama to discuss the financial crisis. Significantly, the Newsweek article does not suggest that Goolsbee is a fan of Stiglitz. That suggestion is made only by the diarist.
It is one thing to disagree with the President’s choices of people to work on economic policy and the President’s decision to leave Joseph Stiglitz out of his core of economic advisers. It is quite another to use a disinformation hit piece by the beltway gossip mongers on the HuffPo to suggest without proof that Goolsbee is leaving because the Obama administration policies are incompetent and in disarray. Given the dominant meme of the Republican attacks on the President’s economic policies, I can see no reason why such a piece is helpful to our interests.
In my opinion, Republicans are the only ones served by contributions of the left to the campaign to discredit the President’s economic policies. Does the diarist believe that electing a Republican would increase the influence of Joseph Stiglitz on America’s financial policies? Surely not. Stiglitz is the last economist who would be consulted in any Republican administration. So once again, I have to ask how does the diarist’s promotion of the disinformation in the HuffPo hit piece help us to elect more and better Democrats? Perhaps a more productive use of the theories of Joseph Stiglitz would be to demonstrate how they undermine Republican and Libertarian/Tea Party economic policies.
We all need to be aware of the propaganda techniques which promote the right wing meme that the President is incompetent. They are designed to allow Republicans to frame the debate and to disorient and disillusion Democrats. The Republican disinformation campaign has found some (unwitting) allies among the left who uncritically perpetuate the propaganda of the right embedded in such questionable outlets as HuffPo and the Wall Street Journal or Forbes, sources frequently used as springboards by the diarist.