In the New York Times magazine this last Sunday with the unintentionally hilarious headline "What the Left Doesn’t Understand About Obama," editor of The New Republic, Jonathan Chait has a whopper in the very first paragraph (emphasis is mine):
This has been the summer that liberal discontent with Obama has finally crystallized. The frustration has been simmering for a while — through centrist appointments, bank bailouts and the defeat of the public option, to name a few examples. But it has taken the debt-ceiling standoff and the threat of a double-dip recession to create a leftist critique of the president that stuck.
Obama passed the stimulus. The stimulus that worked. Bush bailed out the banks and the auto industry. Now the American auto industry is slightly booming at the moment. Hiring and everything. And the banksters are rich and under-taxed. As much as I hate to admit it - something horrible Bush did actually worked.
Get that? Bush bailed out the banks and the auto industry in '08. Guess who wasn't President until January '09? Someone who couldn't have bailed out anything yet. Obama got stuck with its implementation but he didn't start it. Bush is the Bailout President. Remember: "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."
This is revisionist at best. Otherwise false.
This deserves a correction. That's what we do in journalism - whether is at a blog or at the Grey Lady.
The New York Times needs to correct this error.
