Lessons from the past

What bothers me about what is going on in our country is not so much that bad policies are being implemented.  No government can be expected to be free of error.  It is that we don't appear to be taking steps to correct our errors.  It is often said those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  What we should see is that if we fail to appreciate what is going on in the present, then we can never hope to remember it in the future.

One example of this failure and its effect was found in our president's state of the union address, where he implied that the previous administration spent little or nothing on social spending.  In fact he spent a record amount in any way that this could be measured, in real or nominal terms or as a proportion of GDP.  I'm tempted to send our president a detailed set of instructions on how he can find these numbers and compare them, but I think there is a deeper problem here.  The reason why our president can get away with such an outrageous misrepresentation of the facts is that a large proportion of the public actually believe what he is saying.  I suspect that it is a result of an unappreciated bias on the part of the press.

The press is expected to give an unbiased presentation of the two prominent points of view on public policy issues.  The narrative that the Democrats present is that Republicans slash social spending because they don't care about the poor.  The narrative that the Republicans present is that they favor reasonable cuts as an alternative to the tax and spend liberals, who show no restraint in social spending.  When Republicans actually increase social spending neither side is particularly inclined to point this out.  It doesn't fit in with either narrative.