The good news about a Democrat being in the White House is that there is never any bad news, and when there is bad news...

...it's always "unexpected."

According to Austin Hill at Townhall:

Have you noticed that economic data seems to almost always be reported as a surprise these days? As bad news emerges, it’s being portrayed as though nobody could have possibly seen it coming!


Michael Barone, the esteemed editorialist and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, along with the “Instapundit” blogger Glenn Reynolds, have both noted that the word “unexpectedly” has often accompanied media descriptions of our economy as of late. Sentences like "Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall," and "New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed," are pretty standard stuff right now, as President Obama ramps-up his re-election bid.

Barone pointed out that to some degree, this is symptomatic of the political bias of many journalists. “It's obviously going to be hard to achieve the unacknowledged goal of many mainstream journalists -- the president's re-election -- if the economic slump continues” he wrote late last month. “So they characterize economic setbacks as unexpected, with the implication that there's still every reason to believe that, in Herbert Hoover's phrase, prosperity is just around the corner.”

But Barone also noted that many media professionals really believe President Obama’s economic policies – massive government regulation of business, and lots and lots of deficit spending – are actually conducive to economic growth. “A less cynical explanation,” Barone noted about the surprised reporters, “is that many journalists really believe that the Obama administration's policies are likely to improve the economy. Certainly that has been the expectation as well as the hope of administration policymakers.”

I think that Barone is correct on both accounts. But I also believe that journalists and members of the Obama Administration are not the only people who are surprised. Lots of “Obama faithful,” who were quick to embrace his economic rhetoric as the 2008 crisis unfolded, are now genuinely shocked that things haven’t worked out.