Brendan Nyhan

All aboard the Straight Talk Express! John McCain has re-launched his (struggling) candidacy and he’s going to tell it like it is! Oh wait…

Mr. McCain at first only hinted that on Thursday he might call for the resignation of Mr. Gonzales. Asked by reporters if he still supported Mr. Gonzales, he responded, “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” explaining that he did not want to “step on my message.”

I’m hereby renaming the bus “The Straight Talk (When It Doesn’t Step on My Message) Express.” Between the pandering to the right and the obviously parsed language, the McCain mystique is going to quickly die out. He’s just another politician, folks. Sorry to shatter everyone’s illusions.

PS The pitiful interviewing of Larry King eventually lured McCain into revealing his view on Gonzales:

In fact, Mr. McCain stepped on his message hours later when he sat down to tape an interview with Mr. King for CNN. When Mr. King asked if he thought Mr. Gonzalez should step down, Mr. McCain responded, “I think that out of loyalty to the president that that would probably be the best thing that he could do.”

I don’t know how we’re supposed to parse Senator Sam Brownback’s incoherent position on the death penalty (Hotline subscription required):

On the death penalty, Brownback called it “something that I’ve changed on in my career in public life” and now believes that it should be used only when “society can no longer protect itself from the perpetrator” such as, for example, the case of Osama bin Laden. Brownback: “It is tough for us to teach a culture of life and still use this tool of death.” However, he added that this is not a policy point which he plans to push “aggressively” (Hotline reporting, 4/25).

What does it mean to use the death penalty only when “society can no longer protect itself from the perpetrator”? By definition, we can only execute perpetrators who we’ve already caught, which means that we’re protected if they’re given a life sentence.

I don’t understand how this show will pass muster with the FEC:

The online social networking site MySpace and reality TV producer Mark Burnett are teaming to launch the search for an independent presidential candidate.

The political reality show “Independent” comes with a $1 million cash prize and a catch: the winner can’t keep the money.

The prize can be used to finance a run for the White House or can be given to a political action committee or political cause.

Contestants in the show, set to launch in early 2008, will meet the public and interact with supporters, protesters and others. An interactive “town hall” will give MySpace users and TV viewers a chance to rate their performance.

The show does not yet have a commitment from a TV network.

The only way someone can spend $1 million legally in so-called “hard money” is if they donate it to their own campaign. But if the show gives the winner money and legally requires them to spend it in certain ways, does that count as an illegal donation from the network? And the article is just wrong to say the winner could give $1 million to a PAC – the maximum individual donation is $5,000 per year. So I guess the winner would need to start a 527 or a 501(c)3 nonprofit.

If this isn’t illegal, couldn’t a funder just launder his $1 million for, say, a spoiler candidate by naming them as the winner of a “contest”?

Via Josh Marshall, White House spokesperson Dana Perino claimed during today’s White House briefing that no one in the administration has questioned Democrats’ patriotism:

Q Can the President say both that he does not question the patriotism of Democrats, but their actions aid the enemy?

MS. PERINO: I think that I want to take a little bit more time to talk about this based on our discussion this morning, because the President’s policies are held up to intense scrutiny by the media, and by Democrats, and by everyone around the world, and we welcome that. And I think that when the President and his team and other Republicans try to hold the Democrat’s policies up to that same standard of scrutiny, that immediately, the Democrats play the patriotism card.

And I’m sorry, but I don’t think that there’s anyone in this White House who has actually done that, nor have we have engaged in name calling…

In response, I have compiled an edited version of my timeline of GOP attacks on dissent since 9/11 below. For the sake of clarity, I’m excluding all of the cases in which the White House has suggested that criticism of the president, opposition to the war in Iraq, or opposition to the war on terror emboldens the enemy or that it constitutes “waving the white flag of surrender,” etc. I think much of that rhetoric also suggests a lack of patriotism (see the timeline for details), but I will set it aside here. Thus, this list focuses exclusively on cases in which administration officials have explicitly suggested that liberals or Democrats have treasonous, disloyal, or unpatriotic motives or don’t care about national security:

December 2001: In response to Democratic plans to question parts of the USA Patriot Act during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, John Ashcroft suggests that people who disagree with the administration’s anti-terrorism policies are on the side of the terrorists. “To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.”

September 2002: Campaigning against Democrats who did not support his legislation to create the Department of Homeland Security (a department whose creation he had previously opposed), President Bush said that “the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people.”

July 2005: Senator Dick Durbin states that a description of US interrogation procedures at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility sounds like something “done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others.” Presidential adviser Karl Rove responds by suggesting that Durbin and other liberals seek to put US troops in danger, saying that “Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”

January 2006: President Bush suggests that “defeatists” on Iraq are disloyal by contrasting them with a “loyal opposition,” stating that the American people “know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.”

Ms. Perino, that’s what George Tenet might call a “slam dunk” (if he ever actually said that).

Time for what Brad DeLong calls “intellectual garbage pickup” at National Review Online. In a column today on NRO Financial, Jerry Bowyer, a conservative columnist/radio host/investment adviser, blames media bias for the lack of coverage of current levels of black unemployment under President Bush:

Each year the National Urban League releases a report called “The State of Black America.” Inside this report is something called the “Equality Index,” which is designed to measure the gap between blacks and whites in a variety of areas…

The 2007 edition of the report was released on April 17, with the media immediately seizing on the conclusion that “gaps continue to exist between black and white Americans.” What the media did not note, however, is that the current rate of black unemployment is lower than the average rate achieved during President Bill Clinton’s second term, and that black unemployment has dropped precipitously since the full implementation of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts in late May 2003.

Since those tax cuts went into effect, the rate of black unemployment has dropped 2.7 percent to just 8.3 percent. Comparatively, this statistic averaged 8.6 percent during Clinton’s second term.

Hmm. BuzzCharts can’t help but wonder why the Clinton number was applauded by the media while the better Bush number has drawn sneers.

The problem is that Bowyer is comparing apples to oranges — he’s juxtaposing 8.3 percent unemployment in a single month under President Bush with the “average rate achieved during President Bill Clinton’s second term.” In fact, black unemployment dropped all the way to 7.3 percent during Clinton’s second term, and the average of Clinton’s second term was lower than the average under Bush. Here’s what the data actually look like:

In addition, the unemployment rate can be a misleading indicator because it excludes people who are not employed and are not actively searching for work. This Excel spreadsheet from the Economic Report of the President shows that black civilian labor force participation has also declined from its peak in 1999-2000.

Sadly, Bowyer’s work is frequently unreliable — see here and here for more. But it hasn’t stopped NRO from continuing to publish him!

[Disclosure: I appeared on Bowyer’s radio show a couple of times to talk about Spinsanity and All the President’s Spin.]

In the last few days, there have been a slew of accusations or insinuations of treason in the debate over US foreign policy and the war in Iraq, continuing the pattern of attacks on dissent since 9/11.

Rush Limbaugh, who once accused former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of having “chosen to align himself with the axis of evil,” is now referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as “Benedict Arnold.”

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay suggested that Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “are getting very very close to treason”:

I think Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are getting very very close to treason…For the Majority Leader of the United States Senate in a time of war, with soldiers dying on the ground, announcing that we have lost the war, is very close to treasonous. I looked it up while we were driving over here, the definition of treason, it’s the betrayal of trust. I have never in my adult life, nor in my understanding of history, seen something so blatantly outrageous…

The Center for Individual Freedom distributed a fundraising email that essentially accuses Pelosi of treason:

Question: Will Republicans chicken out and allow Nancy Pelosi to get away with prancing off to Syria and conspiring with Syria’s leader Bashar al-Assad, a supporter of terrorism?

…For months, Pelosi has been strutting around the country… waving a white flag… savaging the President… demanding our UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER ON THE WAR ON TERROR.

…But more than that… She basically gave every terrorist around the world a GREEN LIGHT!

She sent a clear and unmistakable message to terrorists and terrorist sponsors around the world that the United States is divided and weak… That we don’t have the will to fight an enemy that has shown itself to be ruthless and not beyond killing innocent Americans at home and abroad.

And former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is campaigning for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, suggested Democrats “want” the US to be on the defensive in the war on terror:

“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”

In the one exception to the rule, liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman reversed the direction of treason rhetoric, stating that President Bush’s position on the war in Iraq is “a clear and present danger to national security”:

The fact is that Mr. Bush’s refusal to face up to the failure of his Iraq adventure, his apparent determination to spend the rest of his term in denial, has become a clear and present danger to national security.

More than five years after 9/11, this kind of demagoguery shows no signs of abating. If anything, it may increase as the 2008 presidential election gets closer.

Update 4/25 9:55 PM: Media Matters flags Sean Hannity calling Reid “a propaganda minister for our enemies”:

On the April 24 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity attacked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for his remark during an April 19 press conference that “the [Iraq] war is lost.” Hannity said to former Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp: “I think [Reid is] a propaganda minister for our enemies. He’s emboldening our enemies, and he’s taking away the morale of our troops. They’re out there fighting that war, and he said it’s lost.”

Back in September, I wrote this about the leverage that liberal blogs have over opinion magazines like The American Prospect, which pressured me to only criticize conservatives:

One important factor shaping TAP’s decision may have been the popularity of Democratic bloggers like Atrios, who pump out a stream of pre-filtered news and commentary. Before the rise of online competition, opinion magazines had some freedom to be idiosyncratic and less partisan than their readers. The initial incarnation of the Prospect, for example, had a thoughtful, academic tone. But the availability of more points of view online (while laudable in many ways) has paradoxically increased the pressure on ideological publications to pander to readers, who have the option of seeking out exclusively partisan blogs instead.

In addition, the huge audiences of the partisan bloggers make them a key source of online traffic for opinion magazines if they supply ideologically favorable content. (At Spinsanity, we quickly learned that it was virtually impossible to get links from liberals when we criticized a liberal, and vice versa for conservatives.) Similarly, the risk of not getting links means that few commentators are willing to criticize the gatekeepers.

In some cases, the threat may be existential. Opinion magazines lose money — a lot of money — and are vulnerable to further financial losses. Atrios, Kos, and other liberal bloggers have attacked The New Republic for years, helping to undermine the center-left magazine’s lagging popularity among liberals. If TNR’s subscriber base were to shrink as a result of these attacks, the viability of the magazine could be threatened.

Considering these factors, TAP’s decision makes perfect sense; they have no incentive to incur the wrath of the liberal heavyweights whom they depend on for traffic. According to Alexa.com, prospect.org is less
popular than Atrios and dwarfed by Daily Kos
(whose site also includes reader blogs and discussion boards). With Eric Alterman [a former MSNBC.com blogger now on Media Matters] and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Kos joining Atrios’ attack on the Prospect Friday afternoon, the risk was real.

Then yesterday I saw this ad running on TAP’s site:

In the old days, bloggers touted endorsements from opinion magazines. Now it’s the other way around.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has been in a war of words with Vice President Cheney over his statement that the war in Iraq is “lost,” recently made this crack:

Mr. Reid said he was not going to engage in a tit-for-tat with the vice president. “I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating,” he said.

This is a classic example of the Cheney disapproval fallacy in which Democrats overestimate how unpopular Cheney is. The most recent poll (Time 3/23-3/26) shows Cheney with a 32 percent approval rating, which is indistinguishable from Bush’s rating in the same poll of 33 percent. To be sure, those are bad numbers, but Cheney isn’t any more unpopular than Bush.

Update 4/25 12:36 PM: Mark Blumenthal makes a similar point at Pollster.com.

Update 4/27 7:44 AM: Charles Franklin plots Cheney approval and disapproval on his Political Arithmetik blog, showing that Cheney’s numbers track Bush’s closely.

I was sent the DVD and transcript to Frontline’s “News War” series. I have to say I was underwhelmed reading the transcripts. If you’ve followed the news closely over the last few years, there are few revelations. But it might still be worth watching if you want an overview.

Here’s a summary of the four parts of the documentary (270 minutes):

In the first two hours of the series, “Secrets, Sources & Spin,” Bergman talks to the major players in the debates over the role of media in U.S. society. He examines the relationship between the Bush administration and the press, the use of anonymous sources, and the consequences of the Valerie Plame leak investigation.

…In part three of “News War,” entitled “What’s Happening to the News,”FRONTLINE examines the mounting pressure for profits faced by America’s network news divisions and daily newspapers, as well as growing challenges from cable television and the Internet.

…The fourth hour of “News War” is called “Stories from a Small Planet” and is produced by FRONTLINE/World. It looks at media around the globe to reveal the international forces that influence journalism and politics in the United States.

You can watch it online here in Quicktime or Windows Media formats.

Sadly (but not surprisingly), the Duke Chronicle has done a better job than Times public editor Byron Calame of explaining what went wrong with the NYT’s coverage of the case. Like most of his Calame’s work, his criticisms are narrow, guarded, and often pedantic. How long until this guy retires again?

(See Slate’s Jack Shafer here and here for more on Calame’s lameness.)

Update 4/25 8:19 AM: The Chronicle has printed an article on problems with coverage of the case in the Durham Herald-Sun.