Why Obama Must Go

Newsweek is in trouble. As American media continues its dramatic slide from print to electronic distribution, the second ranked news magazine seems on the verge of disappearing. So it hired Tina Brown, updated its format and added provocative stories to try to keep itself relevant, Now we hear that the magazine may go completely electronic. This week's attempt at relevance is the cover story "Hit the Road, Barack" by Harvard historian Niall Ferguson. You can read the article here (God forbid you actually pay for the magazine!). I think it's basic premise is that President Obama lacked experience in governance, had a steep learning curve, left a lot of decisions to more experienced staffers and still lacks a coherent program. The controversy arises when Ferguson  backs things up with lots of figures and charts which may or may not be accurate and includes a last page that is a rather breathless love note to Paul Ryan.

Did Ferguson adequately support his premise? His article spurred the kind of in-depth analysis  that has been lacking from political discourse for some time. You can read "A Full Fact Check" of Ferguson's numbers at The Atlantic. A broader attack on the article also comes from The Atlantic's James Fellowes. Then you can watch Ferguson rebut the rebutters here. A summary of the thrusts and counter-thrusts can be found at the Guardian, a generally solid British newspaper.

Lots to read and think about and probably after a while your head, like mine, will start to ache. The worst thing about the whole debate is that both sides talk about economics and foreign policy as if the biggest underlying threat to humanity-our impact on the environment-doesn't exist. One would hope that now in 2012 the  basis for any coherent domestic or foreign policy needs to take the environment into primary consideration. The fact that neither candidate nor their surrogates are doing so is troubling.