The Roundup: Failed Criticisms of Obama Edition

A Full Fact-Check of Niall Ferguson's Very Bad Argument Against Obama
A MUST READ:
Matthew O'Brien's EPIC takedown on Niall Ferguson's fact-challenged criticisms of Obama, as well as Fergusen's doubling down of those same fact-challenged criticisms.

"In the world as Ferguson describes it, Obama is a big-spending, weak-kneed liberal who can't get the economy turned around. Think Jimmy Carter on steroids. But the world is not as Ferguson describes it. A fact-checked version of the world Ferguson describes reveals a completely different narrative -- a muddy picture of the past four years, where Obama has sometimes cast himself as a stimulator, a deficit hawk, a health care liberal and conservative reformer all at once. And it's a world where the economy is getting better, albeit slowly.

It would have been worthwhile for Ferguson to explain why Obama doesn't deserve re-election in this real world we actually live in. Instead, we got an exercise in Ferguson's specialty -- counterfactual history."

More on this article here, here, here, and here.

Paul Krugman: Kinds Of Wrong
Within this analysis lies an important point about different types of wrongness in terms of discourse. The diagnosis may be related to subjective claims. It may be related to objective claims too far above the head of the average person. Finally, it could be the kind of easily verifiable wrongness common in Niall Ferguson's column. It is this last one that is the most troubling. It is also where Paul Krugman directs his attention in this post.

Ezra Klein: The worst case against the Obama administration
A MUST READ on the failure of predictions made by Ferguson/WSJ/Ryan:

"Whatever you believe about Obama’s policies, the Ferguson/WSJ/Ryan theory has clearly failed in its main predictions, and it’s worrying to see that this hasn’t led to a more serious effort to rethink its premises. After all, Romney and Ryan might well win this election, and it would be nice if the people they were listening to were pushing them to fix what’s actually gone wrong rather than what they wish had gone wrong." (emphasis mine)

Debates don’t lead to deals
The sad truth about this election is that this big "debate" is trivial. This election will come down to a small number of minimally informed swing voters in a few battleground states. If Obama wins, we will look forward to two years of nothing happening since congress will be GOP controlled. If Romney wins, we may face disaster as the GOP pushes its ideology through and makes many of this country's worst problems even worse. An Obama win is about avoiding that kind of catastrophe and avoiding a dangerous change to the supreme court.

Paul Krugman: Saving Serious Ryan

"So Ryan gamed the system: he got CBO to produce a report which looks to those who don’t actually read it like a validation of his numbers, when in fact he prevented any actual scoring of his proposals. If you think otherwise, you’ve been snookered."

What Would Romney-Ryan Mean for FEMA?

"Just as Ryan's proposed Medicare expenditure would fail to keep up with rising medical costs, the GOP ticket's likely cuts to disaster management and weather forecasting budgets would come at a time in which, fueled by climate change, natu ral disasters are becoming increasingly more potent and expensive. There were 14 billion-dollar disasters in the United States in 2011—the most on record. For the GOP in Tampa, Hurricane Isaac isn't just a nuisance; it's the elephant in the room."

Update 8/27/12:

The Age of Niallism: Ferguson and the Post-Fact World
Nial Ferguson continues to defend his reality-free article criticizing Obama:

"Let's try a counterfactual. Say Ferguson hadn't made his big errors about Obamacare. Then his smaller errors of omission would not seem quite so serious -- or deliberate. But Ferguson did make his big errors. And he defends these omissions with more elisions. It makes it impossible not to read his entire piece as an effort to deceive. Ferguson should consider what kind of grade he would give an undergraduate who turned in a paper that treated facts and counter-arguments so cavalierly." (emphasis mine)