Brendan Nyhan

Maybe I’m being unfair, but when Ted Koppel misspeaks and tells Jon Stewart that China has “1.3 million people,” I can’t help but think of his 2000 comment about the debate over George W. Bush’s proposed tax cuts:

KING: OK. Were you impressed with this fuzzy, top 1 percent, 1.3 trillion, 1.9 trillion bit?

KOPPEL: You know, honestly, it turns my brains to mush. I can’t pretend for a minute that I’m really able to follow the argument of the debates. Parts of it, yes. Parts of it, I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about.

The quantitative illiteracy of the press corps is a national disgrace.

Are people interested in an RSS comments feed? The comments have been more active lately and a feed would make it easier to keep up with the back-and-forth. Let me know what you think…

Mark Leibovich, formerly of the loathsome and regrettably influential Washington Post Style section, continues to infect the New York Times with nonsense like this about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s clothing and (supposed) body language:

Woodstock or no, Unity at least provided the ultimate festival for students of political body language. Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and Mrs. Clinton appeared arm in arm, waving to a cheering crowd. U2’s “Beautiful Day” blared over loudspeakers, sputtering out for a few nervous seconds before recovering. Mr. Obama’s too-long blue tie went nicely with Mrs. Clinton’s blue pantsuit.

Once on stage, Mr. Obama placed his hand on Mrs. Clinton’s shoulder but stopped short of a full hug. There was minimal physical contact between the two throughout, though they shared a few close whispers, punctuated by laughter. He waved, she waved, often in opposite directions. There was no joint raising of hands. She smiled deferentially while he spoke, hands folded at her waist.

Are Leibovich’s ties always the right length? Why is that detail relevant?

Since coming to the Times, Leibovich has (among other things) psychoanalyzed Hillary’s signature, referred to her campaign as “Version 08, Nurturing Warrior, Presidential Candidate Model,” compared Al Gore to a recovering alcoholic, and gratuitously pointed out that Gore has gained weight. What a hire!

For almost ten years, George W. Bush has repeatedly dissembled about the impact of his tax policies on small business (among other demographic groups). Many people (including me) have pointed these things out to the press. But as Paul Krugman points out, McCain is using the same playbook to vastly overstate the effect of Barack Obama’s planned rollback of Bush’s upper-income tax cuts on small business and it’s still working:

John McCain makes a typically Bush-like conflation: there are 21 million small business owners; there are small business owners in the top two tax brackets; therefore, Barack Obama plans to raise taxes on 21 million small businesses. It was nonsense, of course. (Most living things are microbes; men are living things; therefore, most men are microbes.) But sure enough, McCain’s claim is being reported as a fact.

Update 6/29 9:00 AM: Per David’s request in comments, here is the relevant excerpt from McCain’s speech:

Currently, there are the 21.6 million sole proprietorships filing under the individual income tax. When Senator Obama talks about raising income tax rates on those making over 250,000 dollars — that includes these businesses as well.

Here’s what I wrote in a comment below about McCain’s tricky use of language in this passage:

McCain’s quote obliterates the some/all distinction in exactly the way that Bush does on this issue (hence the headline). Rather than clarifying that the increase would not apply to the whole group, he says “that includes these businesses as well” — a phrase that suggests that all 21.6 million small businesses face an increase. If he instead said “that includes *a small fraction* of these businesses as well,” I would have no objection.

John McCain is a genuine war hero, but how many times can he and his political campaigns exploit that experience before the press stops claiming that he doesn’t exploit it?

McCain, who rarely discusses what is perhaps the most compelling element of his biography, used the new language twice on Tuesday to bring up his refusal to take early release in Vietnam.

“When I was offered a chance to go home early from prison camp in Vietnam, I put my country first,” McCain said on a conference call Tuesday night with independent and Democratic voters in South Florida. “And I’ve been doing that ever since.”

In fact, however, McCain’s campaigns have repeatedly promoted his POW experience since his failed 2000 presidential campaign.

Apologies for the limited blogging — we are currently hosting the seventh annual summer institute on Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models here at Duke. I’m both a participant and a graduate assistant so posting will be intermittent for the next couple of weeks.

UNC’s James Stimson (the country’s leading analyst of macro public opinion) is posting daily horse race estimates for the presidential race on his website. Right now he has Obama at 53% of the two-party vote:

It’s almost exactly consistent with the estimate by Wisconsin’s Charles Franklin that appears at Pollster.com:

[Note that, unlike Stimson, Franklin’s graph covers 2007 as well as 2008. Also, he includes lines for both Obama and McCain.]

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times public editor and a national treasure, calls out the retrograde sexism of Maureen Dowd:

Dowd’s columns about Clinton’s campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism, right along with the comments of Chris Matthews, Mike Barnicle, Tucker Carlson or, for that matter, Kristol, who made the Hall of Shame for a comment on Fox News, not for his Times work.

…[T]he relentless nature of her gender-laden assault on Clinton — in 28 of 44 columns since Jan. 1 — left many readers with the strong feeling that an impermissible line had been crossed, even though, as Dowd noted, she is a columnist who is paid not to be objective.

…Politically correct is never a term one would apply to Dowd’s commentary. Her columns this year said Clinton’s “message is unapologetically emasculating,” and that she “needed to prove her masculinity” but in the end “had to fend off calamity by playing the female victim.” In one column Dowd wrote, “She may want to take a cue from the Miss America contest: make a graceful, magnanimous exit and wait in the wings.”

…Even she, I think, by assailing Clinton in gender-heavy terms in column after column, went over the top this election season.

As Bob Somerby points out, Dowd’s response is utterly disingenuous:

“I’ve been twisting gender stereotypes around for 24 years,” Dowd responded. She said nobody had objected to her use of similar images about men over seven presidential campaigns. She often refers to Barack Obama as “Obambi” and has said he has a “feminine” management style.

…“From the time I began writing about politics,” Dowd said, “I have always played with gender stereotypes and mined them and twisted them to force the reader to be conscious of how differently we view the sexes.” Now, she said, “you are asking me to treat Hillary differently than I’ve treated the male candidates all these years, with kid gloves.”

Somerby’s response is exactly right:

Who knew? Readers, had it even crossed your mind that Dowd was trying to make this point? That Dowd has been trying to “force [us] to be conscious of how differently we view the sexes?” We’ll confess—we’ve read Dowd closely for more than a decade, and it never so much as entered our head that this was her lofty intention!

…[L]et’s get clear on one basic point: No, she hasn’t done this sort of thing to Democrats and Republicans alike. Let’s quote Digby on this point: “Her ‘twisting of gender stereotypes’ has turned every Democrat into a mincing ponce or a blubbering mama’s boy and every Republican into a macho, scotch drinking throwback or an arrogant jock.” Once in a while during Campaign 2000, Dowd did picture Candidate Bush blubbering for his “beloved feather pillow.” But she has constantly turned Dem Males into girls—and she constantly switched the scam with her trashing of man-woman Clinton.

In a Washington Post article on increasing traffic to white supremacist websites as a result of Barack Obama’s presidential nomination, there’s a puzzling quote from the leader of one of the hate groups:

“I haven’t seen this much anger in a long, long time,” said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. “Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president.”

“[A]n overtly nonwhite president”? What does that mean? Was there a “covertly” nonwhite president that I missed? Or is it some sort of implicit reference to Toni Morrison calling Bill Clinton the “first black president”? I don’t expect white supremacists to make a lot of sense, but it’s strange for the Post to use it as the first quote in the piece without an explanation.

Update 6/24 12:29 AM: Aha! In comments, Jeff suggests that Roper may have been referring to the possibility that Warren G. Harding was part black. The New York Times Magazine article he links to says “the circumstantial case for Harding’s mixed-race ancestry is intriguing though not definitive.”

It’s amusing to me that the defense of Barack Obama’s decision to refuse public funding centers on the idea that no one will have leverage over him because he has so many small donors. It exposes the essential silliness of campaign finance reform rhetoric. Consider the opposite case. Even if all his donors were maxing out, why would Obama care what one person gave him? What leverage would they have? The maximum federal contribution is $4600 (primary and general). He’s raised over $200 million.

Ironically, Obama’s reliance on small donors actually increases their leverage over him. Rather than raising money from self-interested donors who want private benefits — any one of whom can be ignored at little cost — he has to appease vast legions of liberals who will be upset if he pivots toward the center. To the extent that future candidates follow his lead, elections will be more polarized than they are today.

PS Expect to hear more about this soon from Washington establishment types bemoaning the death of centrism. It’s tomorrow’s David Broder today!

Update 6/23 8:16 PM: In comments, Willie correctly points out that so-called “bundlers” can package together contributions that add up to much more than $4600. But even a top-level bundler who raises $200,000 or more is a tiny fraction of what will ultimately be a $400-500 million campaign. They just don’t have any leverage.