The Media's Center: A Place of Fog and Spin

A Democrat hasn't moved into the White House for 16 years, and — between the fog of memory and the spin of media — no wonder so much nonsense is being promulgated by news outlets about how Barack Obama must hew to "the center" if he knows what's good for his presidency.

In a typical media object lesson on the consequences of overreach by a new Democratic arrival in the Oval Office, a news article in the Nov. 14 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle reported in a matter-of-fact tone: "many political observers" say that Obama "must tack toward the political mainstream to avoid miscalculations made by President Bill Clinton, who veered left and fired up the 1994 Republican backlash."

This is a popular media fable — a kind of political morality play. Clinton moved left as he took office in January 1993, the story goes, and he thus doomed the Democrats to lose control of Congress just two years later.

But — aside from the fact that warning Democratic politicians against being "liberal" is a time-honored compulsive media ritual — the narrative is a real head-scratcher. In fact, President Clinton soon abandoned the few initial positions that he took as a new president that qualified as left-leaning.

Under pressure, Clinton quickly deserted his brief stance favorable to the rights of gays in the military. Likewise, when opposition grew against his nomination of progressive law professor Lani Guinier to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, Clinton tossed her overboard.

In June of 1993, less than five months into his presidency, Newsweek lauded Clinton's "shift to the right" and urged him to show "the backbone" to stay away from the left.

Early on, President Clinton made clear his commitments to the centers of economic power. From Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen to trade representative Mickey Kantor to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, corporatist Cabinet members and envoys propelled the administration.

During the 1992 election year, Clinton had campaigned for the White House under the mantra "Putting People First." But as economic analyst Doug Henwood was to remark, Clinton swiftly morphed into a deficit hawk with an austerity plan that could have been called "Putting Bondholders First."

President Clinton quickly settled into a groove of strongly backing centrist economic policies — from scant spending for social programs to international trade deals like NAFTA — in sync with the interests of huge corporations.

But none of that stopped the mass media from routinely referring to Clinton's purported "lurch to the left" during early portions of his presidency.

One of the most astute debunkers at the time was writer Barbara Ehrenreich. Conspicuous as the only genuine leftist with a regular column in a U.S. newsweekly (she later got the boot), Ehrenreich wrote a Time piece in mid-June 1993 that directly addressed the mythology. The incoming president's widely reported lurch to the left was "a neat parable," she noted, "but it never happened."

Ehrenreich added: "The lurch to the left is like the 'stab in the back' invented by right-wing Germans after World War One: an instant myth designed to discredit all one's political enemies in one fell swoop. … Maybe it's been so long that we've forgotten what 'left' is and how to tell it from right. At the simplest, most ecumenical level, to be on the left means to take the side of the underdog, whoever that may be: the meek, the poor and, generally speaking, the 'least among us,' as a well-known representative of the left position put it a couple of millenniums ago."

More than 15 years after Barbara Ehrenreich wrote those words, the fantasy of President Clinton's leftward tilt is still alive and well in news media. And now, it's being wielded as a club over the head of Barack Obama lest he get any bright ideas about departing from the well-trod presidential path of deference to corporate conformity.

Norman Solomon is author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." The book has been adapted into a documentary film of the same name. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org.

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