The Gray Lady could have asked the socialism question differently.
On Friday afternoon, The New York Times conducted an exclusive interview with the president aboard Air Force One. One of the questions NYT reporters asked Obama—“Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?”—has some commentators riled up, with The Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins quipping, “The New York Times was THAT CLOSE to a journalistic coup!” Ezra Klein is more pointed: “Why is the New York Times wasting Obama’s day — and their 35 minutes of interview time — with these gotchas? Did they really think he would slip and admit that his stimulus plan was cadged from a footnote in Das Kapital?”
NYT reporter Peter Baker defended the question to Greg Sargent: “We were…interested in exploring how a new president defines his political philosophy, something that has been the subject of intense debate.” That would explain, to some extent, why the Times also chose to ask Obama: “Is there one word name for your philosophy? If you’re not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One word?”
If it’s one-word, yes/no answers that we’re looking for, I’ve got a question that might elicit one: Is the discussion of whether Obama’s economic policies signify a shift in our country’s guiding political framework at all advanced by a simplistic “So, are ya?” query from The New York Times?
The interview, on the whole, is a good one (you can read it here). Still, given the representative quality of its other questions, it’s a shame that the Times chose to employ the Are you this? Are you that? questioning technique. Yes, being direct can be effective sometimes, but in this case, it wasn’t. The questions weren’t nuanced enough to lift the discussion up and away from political ass-covering (Obama called the Times back shortly after landing to respond further to the socialism question; he wanted to iterate that “we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles”).
What’s the better question? In his response to Sargent, Baker himself fleshed out and rephrased the socialism question: “In a moment of taxpayer bank bailouts and shifting tax burden proposals and exploding deficits and expansive health care and energy plans, what is the future of American-style capitalism?” The Times could easily have asked the question that way. It could also have asked the president his opinion of Newsweek’s recent cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now,” which argued that the U.S. is moving toward European-style socialism, or asked him to respond to the hesitation the word “socialism” still engenders in the public sphere (which it started to get at with the follow-up question, “Is there anything wrong with saying yes?”).
Ultimately, the questions “Are you a socialist?” or “Are you a liberal? Are you progressive?” aren’t problematic because of the responses they provoke from Obama. They’re problematic because they feed the cycle of charged rhetoric without adding much substance. Or, as Cokie Roberts put it on This Week with George Stephanopoulos:
But Obama must be concerned about it, because he — about socialism as a term — because his interview with The New York Times yesterday, and then calling the reporter back to say, you know, I — basically, I am not a socialist.
Sure, Obama seemed to want to clarify his words. But the Obama calls back to say he’s not a socialist! line of interpretation is an unfortunate dumbing-down of the conversation. And while the Times can’t entirely be blamed for this, its political reporters are no rookies. They shouldn’t be surprised that sound-bite queries will elicit sound-bite responses from the rest of the media. And that’s an outcome that could have been avoided with a different mode of questioning.
I for one would like to see more public dialog about what it means to be "a socialist" in the U.S. today.
Is it unacceptable? Among whom? Are perceptions changing? And most importantly, is there a commonly-held definition of the term?
On the latter I think the answer is "absolutely not," which to me strongly implies the press has a responsibility to tackle this issue - the sooner and more fully, the better.
Posted by Dave Wheelock on Mon 9 Mar 2009 at 05:14 PM
I guess I'm in the minority. I thought the question was within bounds given the "socialist" rhetoric being slung around by Newsweek and other mainstream outlets like NBC and ABC, and by the Republicans. I thought it gave Obama the chance to directly address the charges, which he did, both in his answer and his followup. Questions like that can be useful to allow the accused person to address the accusation and to get them on the record.
There's nothing "wrong" with being socialist, but Newsweek and the mainstream journalists like those on CNBC and Scarborough are making it an alarmist smear, so asking Obama to address his critics is a valuable exercise, in my opinion. I thought the structure of the question -- “Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?” -- reflected the idiocy of the accusers and the idiocy of the accusation. In other words, "do you want to address this preposterous accusation?"
I also appreciated their posting the complete transcript. We Americans are not accustomed to having a president who can articulate his thoughts in enough complete sentences to make actual paragraphs.
Posted by Tom Traubert on Mon 9 Mar 2009 at 06:07 PM
@Dave: I think you're spot on in saying that. This gets away from the NYT interview with Obama, but it's true, defining socialism with nuance begs historical and geographic considerations. And sometimes the press alternative to that seems to be to simplify the discussion into a he-said, he-said kind of coverage, rather than engaging with the validity of a claim or digging into the distinctions between what a label implies and what it means. (We discussed this here last July.)
@Tom: I thought the structure of the question -- “Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?” -- reflected the idiocy of the accusers and the idiocy of the accusation. In other words, "do you want to address this preposterous accusation?" You make an interesting point about the Times' rhetorical choices. And I agree, I don't think it was engaging in any form of gotcha-journalism. But I do argue, as I did above, that while that sort of adopt the rhetoric mode of questioning has its theoretical pluses (addressing labels-gone-wild, etc.), it also has a tendency to feed the kind of sound-bite echo chamber that you mention, rather than quieting it. (And part of the problem, I think too, going back to Dave's point, is that a question like that doesn't really encourage examination of the term "socialism" itself.)
Posted by Jane Kim on Tue 10 Mar 2009 at 11:48 AM
@Jane-
Thanks for responding.
I agree that questions like this can feed the echo-chamber, and Baker is taking a lot of heat for "pushing rightwing talking points" in some quarters. The examination of the specifics of the economic system of socialism maybe should be done, but certainly not in the context of an interview like this. Pace Baker's followup, I thought the question was more along the lines of "The Republicans have accused you of killing kittens in the West Wing. How do you respond to that?" It's perfectly within bounds, and to the accused pol's advantage, to be asked the question and given an opportunity to respond to unfair accusations like that. And they SHOULD respond, on the record and at every opportunity. In America, being called a socialist is an ugly smear and largely a career-killer, aside from the merits of the actual political/economic system.
I'm all for educating the public on capitalism vs. socialism vs communism as economic systems, but it is irrelevant to discussion of Obama's economic plan, which is plainly a capitalism-based plan. Wouldn't one be muddying the waters even further by juxtaposing a lesson on socialism with discussion of this capitalism-based economic recovery plan?
The problem I see is not Baker's question but the carnival barkers at CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC who are only too happy to run with this Republican-generated smear and repeat it endlessly and excitedly in rounds and rounds of panel discussions without rebuttal. They are the bad journalists here, not Baker. I give him credit for asking the question and printing the answer in full.
Posted by Tom Traubert on Tue 10 Mar 2009 at 03:18 PM