Timothy Egan has emerged as yet another pundit who thinks Obama is to the left of America simply because relatively few people describe themselves as "liberal" in polls and are more likely to say "moderate" or "conservative." Egan's column is ostensibly praising Americans for supporting Obama despite their ideological predispositions -- and praising Obama for being the liberal that he advertised himself to be in his campaign. But the assumptions underlying the piece nevertheless advance the silly meme that liberals are outside the ideological mainstream.

Behold the logical fallacies at work.

First, Egan simply assumes that Obama is liberal even though the president doesn't describe himself that way. Yet voters who share Obama's political philosophy may or may not choose "liberal" when asked to self-identify in a poll. The liberal-moderate-conservative breakdown therefore says nothing about the public's ideology relative to Obama's.

To be fair, Egan mentions a survey that says 60% of the public sees Obama as "very" or "somewhat" liberal. So if you apply a little (but not much) deductive reasoning, you might infer that people see Obama as being to their left. But in a society where "liberal" is used as an epithet, people are much less likely to apply the label to themselves than to someone else. Moreover, the press has relentlessly described Obama as liberal or even socialist -- thereby making it understandable that people would ascribe that label to him. But on actual issues, there's very little to suggest that Obama is to the left of the country.

And that brings us to point number two: Egan wrongly assumes that the labels that people use for themselves match up perfectly with establishment views of what those labels mean. Sure, only one in five voters calls himself a liberal. And yet decisive majorities say the federal government should have a more diplomatic and cooperative foreign policy than it had in the Bush years, raise taxes on rich people and corporations, impose more environmental regulations, and ensure everyone has quality health insurance even if means higher taxes. Indeed, just over half of the public favors full investigations into the torture crimes that were committed under Bush -- even though barely anyone in the Washington establishment agrees. So just because people tell a pollster that they're moderate doesn't mean they're to Obama's right. They may well be to the president's left.

In a classic case of trying to prove a point by narrowing the range of debate, Egan says this: "We are said to be a center-right country. In truth, we lean to common sense." Or maybe there's another option: that we are a reasonably progressive country that has been turned off to the term "liberal." But that option isn't on the table. It does, however, seem to reflect reality.