Murdoch and the National Debt

Before the tragedy in Norway, two events had captured the world’s attention: one very important but boring, and the other less important but fascinating. Although it does not appear that way, both are related. The first — the tedious event — was the negotiations to allow the U.S. government to continue its borrowing. The second, less important but more entertaining, was the appearance of Rupert Murdoch and his son James before a committee of the British Parliament. As we know, Murdoch’s tabloids have been accused of having illegally listened to telephone conversations of political leaders, princes, movie stars and a murdered girl, as well as having paid police to obtain scandalous information to fill their front pages.

Murdoch’s appearance was prime-time television. How could you not keep watching one of the world’s most powerful men asking for forgiveness, explaining that he did not know anything about the misdeeds committed by his businesses and blaming his employees? How could you unglue yourself from the screen after Wendi Deng (43 years old), the attractive Chinese wife of Murdoch (80 years old), dove over a man who tried to throw a plate of shaving cream in her husband’s face? Unforgettable!

While this melodrama was unfolding in London, in Washington Democrats and Republicans proceeded with their boring negotiations in order to avoid the government not having sufficient funds to pay the bills on Aug. 3. The only way to achieve it is for Congress to increase the legal limit of the federal debt. Some representatives and senators from the Republican Party saw an opportunity in these negotiations to cut public expenditures and reduce the enormous U.S. fiscal deficit. The Democrats share this objective and accept that it is necessary to make certain cuts. Both are right, and the reforms they propose are necessary.

Those in the wrong are the tea party representatives, who attempted to utilize their influence in these negotiations to impose radical changes in the area of taxes and spending. Their proposals were so extreme that they surprised their own colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle. The new tea party representatives, who vehemently represent in Congress the frustrations of the middle class affected by the recession, were also searching to hand Barack Obama a humiliating defeat.

The tea party — indignant, strident, radical and intransigent — is not another wing of the Republican Party. According to a poll by The Washington Post in October 2010, 87 percent of the movement’s organizers indicated that the support they received was due to dissatisfaction with Republican Party leadership. Their problem was not the Democratic Party but rather — paradoxically — their close ideological allies, the Republicans.

The tea party represents a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, including a longing to unseat its traditional leaders. They reproach, among other things, the [leaders’] willingness to reach agreements with their Democratic rivals. Admitting that in a democracy, politics implies making compromises does not figure into the ideology of the numerous tea party congressmen. It is not important to them, for example, to cause failure of the debt-limit negotiations, forcing the government into default, or that this could unleash a financial crisis.

What does all this have to do with Rupert Murdoch? Well, it is because the tea party owes its speedy ascent and present influence to Fox News, his television channel. Fox News promoted the tea party when, in 2009, it arose as a microscopic gathering of middle class conservatives deeply discontented with their personal situation and with the nation’s. The coverage, the encouragement and the promotion that Murdoch’s channel gave to these groups — whose populist message obviously found support in the country — caused their rapid growth, and finally they won a surprising number of seats in the 2010 congressional elections. Without Fox News, the tea party in all likelihood would still have existed, but certainly not with the weight it currently has. It is its representatives who have endangered an agreement that is indispensable for the financial stability of the world, and they are also a good example of how a single individual, Rupert Murdoch, can influence the course of the global economy — which is not at all boring.