Brendan Nyhan

Until yesterday, I hadn’t posted on the Lieberman/Lamont race. I don’t have particularly strong feelings about it and I think its importance is being greatly exaggerated. But I can’t say I’m sad about the result.

Like many people, Lieberman’s priorities annoyed me. He (mostly) votes against the GOP, but he seems to spend his time criticizing liberals rather than going after the Republicans who have made a mess of the federal government. In short, he’s still fighting the “new”/”old” Democrat wars of the 1980s-1990s.

And then it came to me — Lieberman is annoying for the same reason as Mickey Kaus, another alleged left-of-center figure who was baptized in the intra-Democratic battles of the old days. As Kevin Drum noted recently, Kaus has an annoying fetish for criticizing the left in an effort to not be “partisan” or “predictable”:

There’s nothing wrong with a liberal criticizing liberal policies he finds indefensible. It’s all part of the show. But the rest of us can judge writers and pundits only by what they say, not by what’s in their heart of hearts. If the only thing you do is snipe at liberal policies, the only reasonable conclusion is that this represents the sum total of what you really care about. And if that’s the only thing you care about even in our current era of rampant conservative extremism, Bush-inspired governmental incompetence, and Rovian dedication to ever-increasing polarization as a positive political good, it doesn’t suggest a very robust commitment to liberal principles.

Sound like any Connecticut senators you know?

[Disclaimer: I don’t consider myself a liberal and I have plenty of objections to liberalism. But the world of Congressional bipartisanship is gone. The result is that Lieberman has become an enabler of the Republican agenda and the Bush administration’s failed approach to the war in Iraq.]

Update 8/10 6:07 PM: In the course of defending Lieberman, TNR’s Peter Beinart summarizes my view of Joe perfectly:

In the ’90s, Lieberman proved a crucial check against his party’s worst instincts. In the Bush era, by contrast, he has proved a poor check against the GOP’s. While, in the Clinton era, he was often prophetic in recognizing the threat to liberal values posed by enemies overseas, in the Bush era he has been slow in recognizing the threat to liberal values posed by adversaries at home.

Via Jay Rosen, Steven Johnson has written an excellent rejoinder to the tedious debate over the effects of blogs on journalism:

Long-time readers of this blog know that I have very rarely posted anything here on the “bloggers versus mainstream journalism” debate, largely because the market for good ideas on this topic has long been saturated, in my opinion. But Nicholas Lemann’s piece in the New Yorker this week has finally pushed me over the edge. Don’t get me wrong — Lemann is a superb journalist, and I agree with just about everything he says in the article. But that’s the problem. I think everyone agrees with just about everything he says in the article. Jay Rosen tried to kill off this kind of discussion a year or two ago with his smart essay, Bloggers Versus Journalists Is Over, but obviously it didn’t stick. So let me propose a slightly more blunt approach. Does anyone disagree with the following concepts:

1. Mainstream, top-down, professional journalism will continue to play a vital role in covering news events, and in shaping our interpretation of those events, as it should.

2. Bloggers will grow increasingly adept at covering certain kinds of news events, but not all. They will play an increasingly important role in the interpretation of all kinds of news.

3. The majority of bloggers won’t be concerned with traditional news at all.

4. Professional, edited journalism will have a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than blogging; examples of sloppy, offensive, factually incorrect, or tedious writing will be abundant in the blogosphere. But diamonds in that rough will be abundant as well.

5. Blogs — like all modes of contemporary media — are not historically unique; they draw upon and resemble a number of past traditions and forms, depending on their focus.

So here’s my proposal: if you’re writing an article or a blog post about this issue, and your argument revolves around one or more of these points — and doesn’t add anything else of substance — STOP WRITING. Pick a new topic. Move on. There’s nothing to see here.

The ironies of history: Al Gore and Joe Lieberman were denounced for failing to accept the results of the 2000 election. Now Joe Lieberman has lost his party’s endorsement, and he’s going to be derided by Democrats for failing to accept the results of the primary and running as an independent. Will Ned Lamont start calling him Sore Loserman?

Update 8/9 6:10 PM: Best of the Web Today’s James Taranto notes that Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos has called on his readers to “Let people know what a sore loser Lieberman is” and that the phrase “Sore Loserman” is all over the site. Also, Alec Oveis makes the same point as me at Tapped.

You know you’re a well-known blogger when spammers are using your name as a subject line — I just got a spam email (PDF) with the subject “MuseBrad DeLongs.”

The Nyhan family has added a new member, so posting will be light (and especially sleep-deprived) for a few weeks. More soon…

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is going to install a video wall in the briefing room to try to capitalize on the power of visual imagery (sub. required):

For a decade, the daily White House news briefing has been televised. Now it is becoming television.

Earlier this year, Fox News talk show host Tony Snow was hired as press secretary. Next up: a renovation of the briefing room, likely with a video wall that could display everything from “flags waving in the breeze [to] detailed charts and graphs,” according to a senior White House official working on the project. For TV viewers, the video feed could be the sole on-screen image, or could share the space with the speaker.

White House officials say they are weighing how — and how often — to use the video capability. But the new technology could help transform White House briefings — midday exchanges with reporters in a utilitarian setting — into more interesting viewing. Both the planned video capabilities and Mr. Snow’s hiring appear to be part of a subtle but sweeping effort by administration officials to deliver their message directly to the public, particularly through video.

This move fits with the White House obsession with visual backdrops for its press events. The trend dates back at least to Reagan, whose communications team focused heavily on using imagery. The canonical illustration of this shift is described by Lesley Stahl in a famous anecdote that Bob Somerby summarized back in 2000:

Dick Darman clued in Lesley Stahl — it’s all about the pictures. During the 1984 presidential campaign, Stahl aired a lengthy report on the CBS Evening News; it was broadly critical of President Reagan. In her recent book, Reporting Live, Stahl described her thoughts as the piece went to air:

STAHL (page 210): I knew the piece would have an impact, if only because it was so long: five minutes and 40 seconds, practically a documentary in Evening News terms. I worried that my sources at the White House would be angry enough to freeze me out.

But that isn’t what happened, she says. When the piece aired, Darman called from the White House. “Way to go, kiddo,” he said to Stahl. “What a great piece. We loved it.” Stahl replied, “Didn’t you hear what I said [in the broadcast]?” Darman’s answer has been frequently quoted:

STAHL: [Darman replied,] “Nobody heard what you said.”

Did I hear him right? “Come again?”

“You guys in Televisionland haven’t figured it out, have you? When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. I mean it, Lesley. Nobody heard you.”

Stahl’s critical report about President Reagan had been accompanied by generally upbeat visuals. According to Darman’s theory, the pictures registered more with viewers than anything Stahl had said.

This anecdote may be apocryphal. It certainly exaggerates the power of images. But nonetheless, they do have an influence. And the problem is that the White House shift is just the latest effort to use PR tactics to reshape every aspect of the presidency. (See All the President’s Spin for much more on this trend.)

American Prospect blogger Greg Sargent flags President Bush’s former State Department policy planning director laughing at the administration’s absurd up-is-down spin about the Mideast crisis:

The White House recognizes the danger but thinks the missiles flying both ways across the Israel-Lebanon border carry with them a chance to finally break out of the stalemate of Middle East geopolitics. Bush and his advisers hope the conflict can destroy or at least cripple Hezbollah and in the process strike a blow against the militia’s sponsor, Iran, while forcing the region to move toward final settlement of the decades-old conflict with Israel…

“This moment of conflict in the Middle East is painful and tragic,” Bush said in his radio address Saturday. “Yet it is also a moment of opportunity for broader change in the region. Transforming countries that have suffered decades of tyranny and violence is difficult, and it will take time to achieve. But the consequences will be profound for our country and the world”…

Haass, the former Bush aide who leads the Council on Foreign Relations, laughed at the president’s public optimism. “An opportunity?” Haass said with an incredulous tone. “Lord, spare me. I don’t laugh a lot. That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what’s Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?”

Welcome to the postmodern GOP! Coming soon: How North Korean nukes can bring peace to Asia.

David Cay Johnston, a respected New York Times reporter on tax issues, has debunked “America: From Freedom to Fascism,” a crackpot anti-tax documentary that has been treated respectfully in mainstream press reviews:

Mr. Russo, the narrator, asserts that every president since Woodrow Wilson and every member of Congress has perpetrated a hoax to tax people’s wages and issue them dubious currency. All of the federal income tax revenue, the film says, goes to these bankers to pay interest on the national debt, even though by the broadest measure the federal government’s interest payments are less than 40 percent of the individual income taxes, according to an examination of every federal budget since 1995…

Near the film’s beginning Mr. Russo says, and others appear on screen asserting, that the Internal Revenue Service has refused every request to show any law making Americans liable for an income tax on their wages.

Yet among those thanked in the credits for their help in making the film is Anthony Burke, an I.R.S. spokesman. Mr. Burke said that when Mr. Russo called him asking what law required the payment of income taxes on wages, he sent Mr. Russo a link to documents, including Title 26 of the United States Code, citing the specific sections that require income taxes be paid on wages. Title 26 says on its face that it is law enacted by Congress, but Mr. Russo denied this fact…

Arguments made in court that the income tax is invalid are so baseless that Congress has authorized fines of $25,000 for anyone who makes them. But even though the penalty was quintupled, from $5,000, it has not deterred those who assert this and other claims that Congress and the courts deemed “frivolous arguments.”

The film also states repeatedly that people are tricked into paying income taxes because no law makes them liable for taxes. The tax code uses the word impose, whose definition includes the concept of liability, courts have held in published decisions…

Mr. Russo also said that “Congress has no authority to tax people’s labor.” Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution begins with the phrase “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes.”

Only three limitations are placed on that power, none of which bars a tax on wages. One limitation, however, was a requirement that taxes be “apportioned among the several states.”

The 16th Amendment repealed apportionment, but Mr. Russo says in the film that the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified and thus a tax on wages is unconstitutional. This claim has been made in various forms by thousands of tax protesters since 1913, and so far their batting average with the courts is .000.

And by the way, Aaron Russo, the director, producer, and writer of the film, has “more than $2 million of tax liens” filed against him by the IRS, New York and California. But according to Johnston, he says the liens “were not relevant to his film.” Right…

I have a great deal of respect for people of faith, but we have a problem in this country when churches are pushing military propaganda:

[Rev. Gregory A. Boyd] said there were Christians on both the left and the right who had turned politics and patriotism into “idolatry.”

He said he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus singing “God Bless America” and a video of fighter jets flying over a hill silhouetted with crosses.

“I thought to myself, ‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with the cross?’” he said in an interview.

Patriotic displays are still a mainstay in some evangelical churches. Across town from Mr. Boyd’s church, the sanctuary of North Heights Lutheran Church was draped in bunting on the Sunday before the Fourth of July this year for a “freedom celebration.” Military veterans and flag twirlers paraded into the sanctuary, an enormous American flag rose slowly behind the stage, and a Marine major who had served in Afghanistan preached that the military was spending “your hard-earned money” on good causes.

Meanwhile, the military is becoming increasingly Republican and Christian–dominated:

[Mikey] Weinstein, 51, was once a White House lawyer who defended the Reagan administration during the Iran-contra investigation. Three generations of his family — he, his father, both his sons and a daughter-in-law — have gone to U.S. military academies.

Now he’s declaring war against what, for him, is an improbable enemy: the defense establishment.

He is suing the Air Force in federal court, demanding a permanent injunction against alleged religious favoritism and proselytizing in the service. He has also formed the nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation to combat what he sees as a concerted effort by evangelical Christian organizations to treat the armed forces as a mission field, ripe for conversions.

…[O]ne of his favorite lines these days — right up there with “sucking chest wounds” — comes from the Officers’ Christian Fellowship, a private organization with 14,000 active-duty members on more than 200 U.S. military bases worldwide.

In its mission statement, the OCF says its goal is “a spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit.”

Ambassadors for Christ in uniform. According to the OCF’s executive director, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce L. Fister, it means that “the people around a military leader ought to see the characteristics of Christ in that leader.” It is a national tradition reflected in “hundreds of writings and proclamations issued down through the ages by American leaders who claim divine protection for our nation, place our nation’s trust in God and claim God as our source of strength.”

To Weinstein, a Jew and a member of a military family, it is an abomination. It “evokes the Crusades.”

Keeping religion and military affairs separate is good for both. It’s hard to imagine us winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world if our military is led by self-proclaimed “ambassadors for Christ in uniform” who see “characteristics of Christ” in their leaders. And from a democratic perspective, people should not be made to feel like they are betraying their faith if they do not support Republicans or the war in Iraq.

This sentence from The New Yorker annoys me:

Senator Zell Miller, the maverick Georgia Democrat, endorsed [Ohio secretary of state Ken] Blackwell for governor.

Can journalists please stop calling Zell Miller a Democrat? “Maverick” is a weasel word. Miller gave the keynote address at the 2004 Republican convention endorsing George W. Bush (where he made a number of misleading claims about John Kerry and suggested that Democratic criticism of Bush helps terrorists); backs Blackwell, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor; and has also endorsed Sonny Perdue, the Republican governor of Georgia.

The term “maverick,” which also the AP recently used to describe Miller, simply does not do justice to his current views. It’s the same word the press uses to describe John McCain, the so-called “maverick Republican” who is a conventional conservative on most issues and strongly backed Bush’s re-election. There’s just no comparison between them.