The Lazy No Change Stories

[ProSense]

The Lazy No Change Stories

Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

One obviously easy and intellectually lazy thing to do when a new President is elected is to start complaining about how difficult things are and how there won't actually be any real change. It's much easier to imagine the status quo world than it is to think about the dramatic changes a President might make, and thus pretty easy for reporters to write stories about how nothing is going to change. The other option is to speculate about how everything will be turned topsy turvy on day one, which is equally unrealistic. Thus, we end up with two articles declaring simultaneously that Obama will instantaneously close Guantanamo and not really change the Bush administration's torture policies.

Let's take a deep breath and figure out what we actually know:

A. Until the past week Obama has been fully focused on the campaign. Obviously robust preparations were being made for a transition and that is good news for all of us. But it's hard to imagine that as a candidate President-elect Obama was making any major policy decisions. He hasn't even picked his cabinet yet. After all, you'd think he'd want to get recommendations from the people he is bringing on to run things before making final determinations on major policy questions.

B. The best predictor of the new President's policy priorities are the plans and agenda he laid out on the campaign trail. They aren't a perfect reflection of where things will end up. Agendas change, reality changes, and governing is different than campaigning. But when you see a candidate lay out some pretty clear differences on issues like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, proliferation, torture, energy policy, etc... Well, you expect that there will be some pretty clear changes from how things are being run right now.

C. The world is a messy and complicated place. Government moves slowly and you can't change everything in a day. Obama said as much during his speech at Grant Park. Major initiatives take time. They don't breezingly pass through congress. Complicated diplomatic negotiations with a country like Iran might take some time to develop and there will undoubtedly be hiccups along the way. Misunderstandings and stalemates but hopefully also points of agreement and progress.

So please no more uber lame stories about how absolutely nothing is going to change or everything will. Reality doesn't work that way.

The WSJ, especially, is pushing a lot of these stories.

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