The title of the essay <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21565623-america-could-do-better-barack-obama-sadly-mitt-romney-does-not-fit-bill-which-one" source="Economist">Which one? America could do better than Barack Obama; sadly, Mitt Romney does not fit the bill</a> sums up its contents, to some degree. The conclusion to which they came is justified given <i>some</i> of their arguments. But some of their other arguments are just not supported by any tangible evidence. That is, the Economist shows in a short and eminently readable essay why you can't really trust them for cogent analysis. Not only does their ideology gets in the way, but they believe some quite fantastical and obviously false things in order to support their tattered definition of what they think a free market is. In net effect, the Economist dislikes Obama for the wrong reasons---much as so many benighted and woefully mis-educated voters in the States. They attack him for things that never happened or that happened in the completely opposite way. Among those voters with whom they agree will be those who give up on the Economist for endorsing Barack Hussein Obama instead of the one whom they consider to be the clear free-market candidate, Willard Mitt Romney. For those who still thought they could glean <i>something</i> from the Economist, though, this English rag has definitely jumped the shark. They start off attacking Obama for having run a singularly negative campaign. Being offshore and not having paid attention to American television commercials, I'm not in a position to say whether this is right or wrong. They spend two paragraphs on it, though, which seems a little excessive in a campaign so awash with cash and where Romney has also been reported to have been extremely negative in his campaign---and was extremely rude and negative in the debates. They continue, though, giving credit where credit is due, but soon devolve into a fantasy world. <bq>No administration in many decades has had such a poor appreciation of commerce. Previous Democrats, notably Bill Clinton, raised taxes, but still understood capitalism. Bashing business seems second nature to many of the people around Mr Obama. If he has appointed some decent people to his cabinet—Hillary Clinton at the State Department, Arne Duncan at education and Tim Geithner at the Treasury—the White House itself has too often seemed insular and left-leaning.</bq> This is highly disingenuous, as any administration compared to what Republicans---and clearly the Economist---would like to see would appear to be left-leaning, even if it is clearly to the right of center, as is the Obama administration. The endorsement continued to hammer Obama for his bloody-minded left-wingedness: <bq>He surrendered too much control to left-wing Democrats in Congress. As with the gargantuan Dodd-Frank reform of Wall Street, Obamacare has generated a tangle of red tape—and left business to deal with it all.</bq> Indeed. Poor beleaguered business. Never catch a break under the Obama administration. This is just pure bullshit. Insanity. It's Fox News talking points repeated in a British accent. I'm sure the few remaining left-wing Democrats would love to know on which planet this all transpired. Because that paltry handful of left-wing Democrats would likely have chosen a single-payer system, which Obama ditched almost before starting (presumably with hearty supportive cheers from the Economist editorial staff, who would likely love to deep-six the NHS in their own home country). <bq>Disgracefully, he ignored the suggestions of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that he himself set up</bq> Why is this disgraceful? Because Erskine Bowles---paid about half a million bucks per year by Goldman Sachs---delivered such unbiased recommendations? The committee never actually made an official recommendation, making it difficult for Obama to have refused to take its advice. The Economist doesn't care as it prefers its own reality. There are more slams on the president---for not having played enough golf with Republicans, who I'm sure were lined up to round out his foursome. The only reason they ended up endorsing what they clearly think is a socialist automaton bent on destroying business all over the world in order to establish free stuff for all moochers is, well, because Mitt Romney is an unsupportable cipher, an unprincipled, mendacious man of whom few good things can be said with certainty. The Economist rightly finds his fiscal policy a joke, which is a small saving grace for their capacity for rational thought. <bq>Mr Romney is still in the cloud-cuckoo-land of thinking you can do it entirely through spending cuts: the Republican even rejected a ratio of ten parts spending cuts to one part tax rises. <b>Backing business is important</b>, but getting the macroeconomics right matters far more. (Emphasis added.)</bq> The emphasized part is just to point out that the Economist doesn't miss a single opportunity to point out that poor businesses are left so far out in the cold by the Obama administration, having reaped only 90% of the gains as the economy slowly got back to its feet. In fairness, and despite their conspiracy-theories above, the Economist endorsement does finish strongly. The final paragraph is included in its entirety below. <bq>For all his businesslike intentions, Mr Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says. That is not a convincing pitch for a chief executive. And for all his shortcomings, Mr Obama has dragged America’s economy back from the brink of disaster, and has made a decent fist of foreign policy. So this newspaper would stick with the devil it knows, and re-elect him.</bq>