Goldberg: Seduced by the cult of experts

Goldberg: Seduced by the cult of experts:

It isn't surprising that Obama and his economic advisors' predictions have been so wrong.

Obama and his advisors predicted the economy would do better — much better — than it has, and those predictions were wrong. The president blames events: the European debt crisis, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the political tsunami of the 2010 elections. Some of that is plausible, but the two years of anemic job and economic growth that preceded those events can hardly be blamed on them. And it's that economic performance that has scuttled Obama's plans for an easy reelection in 2012.

That sluggish growth seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise.

The media get hooked on a story line — hurricanes are getting worse because of climate change, Obama's a pragmatist doing the smartest things to fix the economy — and when the facts contradict the story line, it's, well, unexpected.

No president since Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt has been more enamored with the cult of expertise than Obama. That none of his economic predictions have panned out is not surprising. What is surprising is that so many people are surprised.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...