Brendan Nyhan

Rudy Giuliani has reportedly filed a “statement of candidacy” with the Federal Election Commission, meaning that he is joining John McCain among the contenders for the GOP nomination. So what do all the people who hyped the two of them as third party candidates say now? Obviously, if McCain and Giuliani thought they had a better chance of winning as independents, they would have run as such. (An independent run is still possible, but you look like a sore loser if you do it after being defeated in the primaries.)

The tag team of NYU physicist Alan Sokal and my friend Chris Mooney have an excellent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today on attacks on science from the left and right:

As these cases suggest, attacks on science by ideologues and special interests have a long history in this country. A stance of postmodernist relativism — or, on the part of the media, of giving “equal time” to unequally substantiated viewpoints — weakens us in the face of such strategic campaigns to undercut well-established knowledge.

But the abuse of science has lately materialized in an even more disturbing form, this time within the corridors of our own government. Driven by the Bush administration and its congressional allies, the new American “science wars” have reached an alarming stage.

Here’s the saddest commentary I’ve seen recently on the state of bipartisanship in Washington. In a NPR report on President Bush’s visit to a House Democratic retreat, reporter Andrea Seabrook said this:

The President brought a very cordial tone to his relations. As I said, he extended all of these olive branches and some that may be slightly more arcane. He used the words “Democratic Party” rather than “Democrat Party,” which is one thing that we political reporters watch for as being a sign of real bipartisanship in language.

Yes, calling a party by its proper name is a sign of “real bipartisanship.” He didn’t call Democrats the A-hole Party – what a statesman!

Is Rick Reilly the Walter Cronkite of the war in Iraq?

The popular Sports Illustrated columnist departed from the scrupulously non-political tone of his magazine to write about former athletes who died in Iraq recently, concluding with a question about whether the war is doomed to failure:

Athletes love teams, and when they run out of sports teams they sometimes join bigger teams, ones with Humvees for huddles and tombstones for trophies and coaches they’ve never met sending them into a hell they never imagined.

And they throw their whole selves into it anyway, because they are brave and disciplined and will chew through concrete to win the game.

But what if the game can’t be won?

Should President Bush be saying “If I’ve lost Reilly, I’ve lost the war?”

The Economist’s Democracy for America blog gets this exactly right:

A NEW Harris poll shows that 55% of Americans believe gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the military, the Wall Street Journal reports. Support for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is waning, even among Republicans, who have long been the policy's biggest supporters. Only 51% of GOP members agree with the current rule.

It's great that people are coming around to the idea of gay and lesbian military service, but the timing seems a little disturbing. It brings back memories of previous American wars, when blacks and Latinos were asked to help the nation in its hour of need after being abused for years. The narrative is the same. Suddenly, in the middle of a bloody (and in this case unpopular) war, Americans decide that a previously neglected minority should be allowed to fight. How convenient!

What Americans have to ask themselves now, however, is a more difficult question. The problem is that it is a lot easier to ask someone to fight for you in a far-away place than to make the effort to tolerate them when they live (and love) next door. Why, if gays and lesbians can fight and die for their country, should they not be allowed to marry?

Even as “Team Rudy” touts his national poll numbers, Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal notes that Republicans know nothing about him, quoting USA Today:

Barely one in five Republicans knew that he supports abortion rights and civil unions for same-sex couples, the USA TODAY poll found. Nearly as many thought he was “pro-life” as said he was “pro-choice.”

When they were told about his stance on those issues, his star dimmed. One in five Republicans said his views would “rule him out as a candidate” they could support. That included one-third of those who attend church every week, an important base of the GOP that makes up a third of party loyalists.

Another 25% of Republicans said his views made them less likely to support him, nearly double the proportion who said they made them more likely to support him.

Not content to let the GOP attack dissent as treasonous, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has apparently decided to jump on the bandwagon. Media Matters reports that Blitzer asked Democratic senator Carl Levin the following question:

On the right, though, a lot of your critics are saying, ‘You know what you’re doing, Senator? You’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and you’re undermining the U.S. military in Iraq, who are serving there right now.

CNN then aired this graphic later during the interview:

With “liberal” cable news like this, who needs Fox?

Here’s an example of some appropriate fact-checking. Samuel Bodman, the current Secretary of Energy, is quoted in today’s New York Times making the absurd claim that the United States is “a small contributor” to the overall global warming problem. But as Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew C. Revkin point out, we actually account for a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions:

At the same time, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman rejected the idea of unilateral limits on emissions. “We are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution,” he said.

The United States, with about 5 percent of the world’s population, contributes about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other country.

That’s, um, not “a small contributor to the overall.”

Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial board refers to the “economist Michael Darda.” Typically, the phrase “economist” means someone with a Ph.D. (or at least a master’s degree) in economics, but it turns out that Darda’s academic credentials consist of a degree in economics, journalism and public relations from the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.

Similarly, the conservative pundit Stephen Moore once suggested “Brian Wesbury of Chicago, Richard Vedder of Ohio University, and David Malpass of Bear Stearns” for chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, failing to mention that Wesbury was chief economist of an investment bank in Chicago, not an economist at the University of Chicago as his phrasing suggested. Wesbury, too, lacks a Ph.D. (he has a BA in economics and an MBA).

One other example — despite having only an undergraduate degree in economics, the actor, game show host, and conservative pundit Ben Stein describes himself as “an economist” and even attacked the qualifications of Princeton economist Paul Krugman:

Last year, after [Krugman] published an encomium to the late economist James Tobin, he received a bizarre screed from actor and game-show host Ben Stein; Stein, who majored in economics in college, accused Krugman, a likely future Nobel laureate, of having a “limited background” in the field.

This is all ridiculous credential inflation. Majoring in sociology doesn’t make you a sociologist, and majoring in economics doesn’t make you an economist.

A fellow graduate student passed on this great moment in Congressional history — a floor speech titled “Notre Dame will rise again” from November 21, 1993:

Mr. KING. Mr. Speaker, with all the events of the last week, NAFTA, the Brady bill, D.C. statehood, allegations of stolen elections, I think it is important we focus on one of the most momentous tragedies of our time, and that was Notre Dame’s loss to Boston College yesterday.

As an alumnus of Notre Dame, it pains me to extend congratulations to Congressman Blute and Congressman Markey for proving that, unfortunately, in this instance God was on the side of Catholic Boston College as opposed to Catholic Notre Dame.

But I wanted to tell them on behalf of my colleagues, Mr. Roemer, Mr. Mazzoli, and Mr. McDade, that our day will come, and the good Catholics will finally emerge over those of Boston College, and Notre Dame will rise again.