Jon Chait has already had a say on this post by Dan Balz, which encourages reporters to focus all of their abilities on asking stupid questions of Barack Obama, but it deserves widespread recognition for being almost as out-of-left field as Dean Reynolds' complaint.
It's silly on a lot of levels, the first and most obvious being that Balz is a Washington Post reporter and should probably just go ask these questions if they concern him so. Then there's the idea that one candidate needs more scrutiny than another -- where was this column when McCain was ahead in September? I didn't see any call for scrutiny then. Also, has anyone stopped asking the Obama campaign questions? Of Balz's list of questions, I could think off-hand of a few times Obama has answered most of them in some way. Finally, there's the fiscal failure fallacy, which Chait touches on. It makes me wish that all reporters could be hand-delivered a letter that says: There isn't any consensus that the recession means we should stop spending programs, in fact, many economists say the opposite.
I think perhaps this whole piece was written by Balz as a complicated joke. He just wants a junior correspondent to ask Obama, "Will you be cautious or bold if elected president?" and get laughed out of the media availability.
My favorite question, though, is this one: "Will he do anything before the election to signal what he thinks?"
Well, yesterday Obama announced four new economic proposals. John McCain gave a speech where he said fight eighteen times and didn't talk about new policies, or even give details on old ones. Which one do you think does a better job of signaling what will happen if each candidate wins, readers? (For bonus points, guess which speech Balz references approvingly in his post.)
-- Tim Fernholz
