Over at the London Economist: May Zanny Minton Beddoes Do as Well Relative to John Micklethwait as Barack Obama Has Done Relative to George W. Bush
the first female to land the role in the publication’s 170-year history...
From my perspective, likely to be a very good hire. However, two things seem to me to require rapid repair and a quick turn away from the Micklethwait era:
First, the basics: if within 30 seconds, your webserver can tell me both that I do and that I do not have a currently-valid subscription, you have problems:
Second, under Micklethwait too often the Economist seemed to be crafting its articles and even more its editorials to please and comfort the prejudices of some member of the 0.1%.
Just one example:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21565623-america-could-do-better-barack-obama-sadly-mitt-romney-does-not-fit-bill-which-one: Americans will trudge to the polls far less hopefully. So (in spirit at least) will this London-based newspaper.... That is in large part because of the woeful nature of Mr Obama’s campaign. A man who once personified hope and centrism set a new low by unleashing attacks on Mitt Romney even before the first Republican primary....
Mr Obama’s first term has been patchy. On the economy, the most powerful argument in his favour is simply that he stopped it all being a lot worse. America was in a downward economic spiral.... His responses... helped avert a Depression.... It will win Mr Obama some plaudits from history, and it does from us too. Two other things count, on balance, in his favour. One is foreign policy.... Obama has refocused George Bush’s “war on terror” more squarely on terrorists, killing Osama bin Laden, stepping up drone strikes (perhaps too liberally, see article) and retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan (in both cases too quickly for our taste).... With both the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and his “reset” with Russia, he overreached and underdelivered. Iran has continued its worrying crawl towards nuclear weapons. All these problems could have been anticipated....
The other qualified achievement is health reform.... But Mr Obama did very little to deal with the system’s other flaw--its huge and unaffordable costs. He surrendered too much control to left-wing Democrats in Congress. As with the gargantuan Dodd-Frank reform of Wall Street, Obamacare has generated a tangle of red tape—and left business to deal with it all.
It is here that our doubts about Mr Obama set in. No administration in many decades has had such a poor appreciation of commerce.... Bashing business seems second nature to many of the people around Mr Obama. If he has appointed some decent people to his cabinet--Hillary Clinton at the State Department, Arne Duncan at education and Tim Geithner at the Treasury--the White House itself has too often seemed insular and left-leaning.... Mr Obama spends regrettably little time buttering up people who disagree with him; of the 104 rounds of golf the president has played in office, only one was with a Republican congressman.... Mr Obama has shown no readiness to tackle the main domestic issue confronting the next president: America cannot continue to tax like a small government but spend like a big one. Mr Obama came into office promising to end “our chronic avoidance of tough decisions” on reforming its finances—and then retreated fast, as he did on climate change and on immigration. Disgracefully, he ignored the suggestions of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that he himself set up....
A re-elected President Obama might learn from his mistakes, clean up the White House, listen to the odd businessman and secure a legacy happier than the one he would leave after a single term.... This election offers American voters an unedifying choice. Many of The Economist’s readers, especially those who run businesses in America, may well conclude that nothing could be worse than another four years of Mr Obama. We beg to differ. For all his businesslike intentions, Mr Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says...
At the time, looking through the bill of particulars in this editorial, I could not but believe that Micklethwait and company wrote them largely with fingers crossed behind their backs:
"...unleashing attacks on Mitt Romney even before the first Republican primary..."
"On the economy... helped avert a Depression.... It will win Mr Obama some plaudits from history..." <-- one positive accomplishment.
"Obama has refocused George Bush’s 'war on terror' more squarely on terrorists, killing Osama bin Laden, stepping up drone strikes (perhaps too liberally, see article) and retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan (in both cases too quickly for our taste)..." <--so both too interventionist and not interventionist enough
"With both the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and his “reset” with Russia, he overreached and underdelivered..."
"Iran has continued its worrying crawl towards nuclear weapons. All these problems could have been anticipated..."
"Health reform.... Mr Obama did very little to deal with the system’s other flaw--its huge and unaffordable costs..."
"[Obama] surrendered too much control to left-wing Democrats in Congress..."
"[ObamaCare,] as with the gargantuan Dodd-Frank reform... generated a tangle of red tape—and left business to deal with it all..."
"No administration in many decades has had such a poor appreciation of commerce.... Bashing business seems second nature to many of the people around Mr Obama. If he has appointed some decent people to his cabinet--Hillary Clinton at the State Department, Arne Duncan at education and Tim Geithner at the Treasury--the White House itself has too often seemed insular and left-leaning..."
"Mr Obama spends regrettably little time buttering up people who disagree with him; of the 104 rounds of golf the president has played in office, only one was with a Republican congressman..."
"Mr Obama has shown no readiness to tackle the main domestic issue confronting the next president: America cannot continue to tax like a small government but spend like a big one. Mr Obama came into office promising to end 'our chronic avoidance of tough decisions' on reforming its finances—and then retreated fast..."
"Obama... retreated fast... on climate change..."
""Obama... retreated fast... on immigration..."
"Disgracefully, he ignored the suggestions of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that he himself set up..."
Of all these, perhaps dealing with (13) can serve for all: Micklethwaite and company knew as well as I did--and that was very well indeed--that Obama in 2010-2012 was willing, nay anxious, to sign into law a big budget deal to the right of the Bowles-Simpson Commission Chairmen's Mark--not, note, the Bowles-Simpson Commission suggestions, because it made none. What Obama was unwilling to do was to start the negotiations with his position being B-S and then move far and fast to the right.
Micklethwaite and company did their readers no good service here.
(12) and (11) are worse--Obama did not "quickly retreat" on global warming and immigration. He was, rather, as Micklethwait and company knew well, blocked by the fact that Republicans almost always held 40 votes in the Senate. And, as Micklethwait and company knew well, the Senate Republicans wanted, as a matter of deliberate political strategy, to make Obama's presidency a failure.
Once again Micklethwait and company did their readers no good service here here.
They thus heavily eroded the Economist's reputation as a trustworthy information intermediary.
Zanny Minton Beddoes needs, first and most of all, to work hard to get that reputation back.
