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by Christopher Huston
I’m not going to tussle with the fact that many in the media are cheerleading for an Obama economic recovery. They should cheer any recovery under any President–if it is actually happening. I certainly recall that in 1991-1992, the media willfully ignored the strong recovery that was underway under the first President Bush and in fact often gave legs to the Clintonian notion that it was ‘the worst economy in 50 years’. Every time ol’ Bushie said things weren’t so bad during the early stages of that recovery, he was decried as ‘out of touch’. But Obama brings up ‘glimmers of hope’ in the middle of what really is our worst downturn in 50 years and most of the media takes it at face value.
Nonetheless, it is worthy to note that the 1st quarter GDP was just revised from a decline of 6.3 percent to 5.7 percent, at an annualized rate. This is not cause for much optimism, as the expected revision was to 5.5 percent. Still, this report on the revision contained some rather optimistic notions (Less than first thought!, beamed the headline regarding the revision), mainly that the recession has bottomed out and that the economy should ‘only’ shrink at a 1.8 percent rate in the second quarter.
Again, I think it’s great that the press is willing to be optimistic. I hope they cheerlead the country to a massive recovery. Much of what ails us economically is related to our overall perception of what’s happening out there, so the press has some influence in this department. But it would be nice if they applied this standard evenly across the board, no matter who is President.
