Brendan Nyhan

Self-promotion alert: All the President’s Spin is a finalist for The Lulu Blooker Prize, which is a new award created to honor “blooks” — ie books based on blogs.

Update 3/11: Our nomination was mentioned in the Philadelphia Inquirer today.

The hallmark of President Bush’s communication style is numbing repetition of the same anecdotes, jokes and misleading spin. So it’s not surprising that he’s even on message about the (apparently fascinating) Oval Office rug:

For whatever reason, Bush seems fixated on his [Oval Office] rug. Virtually all visitors to the Oval Office find him regaling them about how it was chosen and what it represents. Turns out, he always says, the first decision any president makes is what carpet he wants in his office. As a take-charge leader, he then explains, he of course made a command decision — he delegated the decision to Laura Bush, who chose a yellow sunbeam design.

…"He loves his rug," said Nicolle Wallace, the White House communications director. "I’ve heard him describe it countless times."

Sometimes Bush describes it as a metaphor for leadership. Sometimes he relates how Russian President Vladimir Putin admired the carpet. Sometimes he seems most taken by the lighting qualities.

…Not only does the president describe the rug to journalists and foreign leaders, he does so to virtual visitors. During "An Oval Office Tour With President George W. Bush" on the White House site ( http://www.whitehouse.gov ), he wastes no time pointing out the carpet…

Some visitors have the impression that the rug story is revealing. In his new book, “Rebel-in-Chief,” Fred Barnes recounts how Bush told him about the carpet…

But if Barnes or other visitors had the idea that Bush was sharing an intimacy just with them, they should listen to his speeches. Bush doesn’t need the Oval Office to talk about the Oval Office carpet. Lately he’s been taking the story on the road, sharing it with workers at a moving company in Sterling on Jan. 19, then with students at Kansas State University on Jan. 23, and again with supporters at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry on Feb. 1.

Here’s a Google search that yields seven versions of the story on the White House website.

PS How sad is it that the President has to use this story to illustrate his leadership style?

Update 4/28/08 8:28 PM: For some reason, this post is currently showing up when you go to www.brendan-nyhan.com. If you’re looking for my main page, please click here.

Last year I blogged frequently about the innovative protest campaign of the “Pirate Captain” for NC State student body president. Here he is in action during the campaign:

The Captain won a runoff and promptly declared “The Year of the Pirate.”

However, Ken Waight of Lying in Ponds alerts us that, as the NC State newspaper puts it, “Pirate Captain ventures into rough water.” Here’s the lede from their story:

Today in its biweekly meeting, the Student Senate will at last address explicit complaints expressed by several of its members about the actions of Student Body President Whil Piavis when it hears new legislation that calls for his impeachment.

The bill, which is sponsored by 10 senators, cites 21 specific illegal or unethical actions committed by the president over the course of his term.

An ally blames the move on a cultural mismatch between the Captain and the senators:

Director of Executive Management Jason Mo, a senior in business management, said the Senate is trying to “blow the issue out of proportion” and has been looking for mistakes in Piavis’ performance since the beginning of the year. Mo said Piavis has done a lot in terms of getting students involved in the SG this year and that the record turnout in student body elections last spring serves as evidence.

“Whil is not someone who fits into their culture,” Mo said, pointing to the Senate culture as being dictated by formality.

It’s not unlike the Washington establishment’s reaction to Bill Clinton, as summarized by David Broder: “He came in here and he trashed the place, and it’s not his place.”

Writing in yesterday’s New York Times, David Brooks claims that “the likely Democratic presidential nominee is Hillary Clinton, who has been barely distinguishable from John McCain on foreign policy matters (aside from her ports pandering).”

Hmm. “Barely distinguishable”? It just so happens that National Journal released their 2005 vote ratings last week. And it turns out that McCain and Clinton disagree quite a bit about matters other than the wisdom of immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

National Journal ranked Clinton as more liberal than 66 percent of senators on foreign policy votes in 2005, whereas McCain was more liberal than 45 percent of senators. And out of the thirteen votes that went into the NJ foreign policy rating, McCain
and Clinton voted in opposite directions on seven:

84/S600: Retain the cap on U.S. contributions to U.N. peacekeeping operations. April 6. (40-57) C-3

(McCain: Nay; Clinton: Yea)

129/-: Limit debate on the nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. representative to the United Nations. May 26. (56-42; 60 votes required to invoke cloture. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., voted no so that he could subsequently move to reconsider the vote.) L-3

(McCain: Yea; Clinton: Nay)

170/S1307: Approve the Central American Free Trade Agreement. June 30. (54-45) C-2

(McCain: Yea; Clinton: Nay)

171/HR2419: Prohibit funds for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. July 1. (43-53) C-3

(McCain: Nay; Clinton: Yea)

319/S1042: Deny access to the federal courts for most detainees at Guantanamo. November 10. (49-42) C-3

(McCain: Yea; Clinton: Nay)

322/S1042: Require the president to provide a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq. November 15. (40-58) C-3

(McCain: Nay; Clinton: Yea)

324/S1042: Grant habeas corpus rights to the federal courts for detainees and enemy combatants. November 15. (44-54) C-3

(McCain: Nay; Clinton: Yea)

To be fair, there’s a complicated debate about how to measure legislators’ preferences. The National Journal vote ratings are an imperfect proxy at best. But they do illustrate that McCain and Clinton are quite easily distinguishable on foreign policy.

I’ll have to take this up with Brooks when he comes to Duke next year…

The Los Angeles Times puts Bush approval at 38 percent, confirming the drop reported in a CBS/New York Times poll that has faced hack conservative opposition:

Buffeted by resistance to the port transaction and discontent over the turmoil in Iraq, President Bush’s approval rating fell to 38%, the lowest level recorded for him in a Times poll. His disapproval rating rose to 58%.

And, in a trend that could affect turnout in the November midterm elections, Bush confronts what might be called an intensity gap: The percentage of Americans who said they strongly disapproved of his performance on a wide range of issues greatly exceeded the share who strongly approved.

The poll also reveals remarkable across-the-board disapproval of Bush’s policies, including the war on terror:

The LAT notes that “44% said they approved of Bush’s handling of terrorism, whereas 54% disapproved — the first time a majority has expressed a negative opinion of his handling of that issue in a Times survey.” Presumably, the ports deal is the reason. How long until Bush caves? The countdown is on…

At Spinsanity, we wrote on the website and in our book about the ways that President Bush tried to link Iraq with 9/11 and imply Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda.

These tactics worked — more than 75% of Bush supporters believed (PDF) in October 2004 that Saddam was directly involved in 9/11 (20%) or gave substantial support to Al Qaeda (55%).

Sadly, a new Zogby International poll of soldiers in Iraq (via Brad DeLong by way of Scott Rosenberg) suggests that soldiers in Iraq may be even more misinformed:

The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure. While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”

“Ninety-three percent said that removing weapons of mass destruction is not a reason for U.S. troops being there,” said Pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International. “Instead, that initial rationale went by the wayside and, in the minds of 68% of the troops, the real mission became to remove Saddam Hussein.” Just 24% said that “establishing a democracy that can be a model for the Arab World” was the main or a major reason for the war. Only small percentages see the mission there as securing oil supplies (11%) or to provide long-term bases for US troops in the region (6%).

Here’s the text of the key questions from RadioBlogger:

Please rate the statements in questions 8 through 14 as reasons
for the Iraq invasion, using the following scale:

1 – Not a reason
2 – Minor reason
3 – Major reason
4 – Main reason
5 – Not sure

8. To remove weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from Iraq

1 2 3 4 5. Not sure

9. To remove Saddam Hussein from power
1 2 3 4 5. Not sure

10. To establish a democracy that can be a model for the Arab
world
1 2 3 4 5. Not sure

11. To stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq
1 2 3 4 5. Not sure

12. To retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks

1 2 3 4 5. Not sure

13. To secure Iraqi oil supplies
1 2 3 4 5. Not sure

14. To provide a long-term base for U.S. troops in the Middle
East
1 2 3 4 5. Not sure

Note: Polling in Iraq is extremely difficult and Zogby has not disclosed his methodology for security reasons — see Mystery Pollster’s posts here, here, here and here discussing how much faith we should put in the findings.

Bob Herbert reviews the wit and wisdom of Conrad Burns on Times Select:

The Abramoff scandal is just the latest issue to raise questions about Senator Burns’s fitness to hold high public office. You’ve heard of accidents waiting to happen? He’s an accident that happens again and again and again.

Back in 1994, while campaigning for a second term, Senator Burns dropped by a local newspaper, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and told an editor an anecdote about one of his constituents, a rancher who wanted to know what life was like in Washington.

Mr. Burns said the rancher asked him, “Conrad, how can you live back there with all those niggers?”

Senator Burns said he told the rancher it was “a hell of a challenge.”

The anecdote was published, and Senator Burns apologized. When he was asked why he hadn’t expressed any disapproval when the rancher used the word nigger, the senator said: “I don’t know. I never gave it much thought.”

Maybe he didn’t express any disapproval because he didn’t particularly disapprove. On another occasion Senator Burns had to apologize after giving a speech in Billings about America’s dependence on foreign sources of oil. In the speech, he referred to Arabs as “ragheads.”

“I regret the use of such an inappropriate term,” he said. “I hope I did not overshadow the serious substance of my remarks.”

Mr. Burns’s apologies have always been undermined by the serial nature of his offensive remarks. Last fall he upset a pair of female flight attendants after one of them, a mother with two children, asked him about outsourcing and the economy. She wondered what she would do if she lost her job. The senator reportedly replied that she could stay home and take care of her children.

A third flight attendant, after hearing the story, wrote an angry letter to Mr. Burns, saying, “Before you sit in judgment and make such ignorant statements, you really should stop and remember that we don’t all live in a ‘Leave It to Beaver’ world.”

It has always been this way with Conrad Burns. Back in 1991, immediately after a civil rights bill had been passed, he invited a group of lobbyists, some of them white and some of them black, to accompany him to an auction.

When asked what was being auctioned, he replied, “Slaves.”

The Washington Post quoted one of the lobbyists as saying: “We were floored. We couldn’t believe it.” Senator Burns later said he was talking about a charitable auction in which the services of individuals are sold.

The Republican senator, who is under fire for his ties to Jack Abramoff, has apparently decided that comparing himself to a bank robber is his best defense:

In an interview, Mr. Burns, a former agricultural auctioneer and broadcaster, dismissed as irrelevant the relative size of the campaign contributions he had received from Mr. Abramoff and his associates, saying some Democrats had taken money from the same sources.

“What’s the difference between one dollar and one thousand? Its all dollars,” Mr. Burns said. “Just like you rob a bank down here. If you get a thousand you go to jail, and if you get a million you go to jail.”

Genius.

Update 3/2: Noam Scheiber of The New Republic comments on the same quote:

Hmmm… If only the architects of our legal system had seen fit to accommodate these subtle distinctions. Oh wait, they did. Turns out you go to jail for a lot longer if you steal a million dollars. Who knew?

Good. It looks like the Supreme Court gets what’s wrong with the Vermont campaign finance law:

The Supreme Court displayed little appetite on Tuesday for making basic changes in its approach to campaign finance law, under which the government may place limits on political contributions but not on a candidate’s spending.

Vermont’s aggressive effort to drive much private money out of politics, through a law it enacted in 1997 that set tight limits on both contributions and expenditures, appeared unlikely to withstand the court’s scrutiny after an argument that included a low-key but withering cross-examination by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of Vermont’s attorney general, William H. Sorrell.

The chief justice challenged the attorney general’s assertion that money was a corrupting influence on Vermont’s political system, the state’s main rationale for its law. “How many prosecutions for political corruption have you brought?” he asked the state official.

“Not any,” Mr. Sorrell replied.

“Do you think corruption in Vermont is a serious problem?”

“It is,” the attorney general replied, noting that polls showed that most state residents thought corporations and wealthy individuals exerted an undue influence in the state.

The chief justice persisted. “Would you describe your state as clean or corrupt?” he asked.

“We have got a problem in Vermont,” Mr. Sorrell repeated.

The chief justice pressed further. If voters think “someone has been bought,” he said, “I assume they act accordingly” at the next election and throw the incumbent out.

He also challenged a line from the attorney general’s 50-page brief, an assertion that donations from special-interest groups “often determine what positions candidates and officials take on issues.” Could the attorney general provide an example of such an issue, Chief Justice Roberts asked. Mr. Sorrell could not, eventually conceding that “influence” would have been a better word than “determine.”

By the end of the argument, it appeared clear that Vermont’s spending limits would fall, and that its contribution limits, the lowest in the country, were hanging by a thread.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he was concerned that the limits, $400 over a two-year election cycle to candidates for statewide office down to $200 for the state’s House, were so low as to “give incumbents a tremendous advantage” and “really shut off the possibility of a challenge” by a candidate who had to raise and spend more money to make an impact. Political parties face the same limits on contributions to their own candidates.

On the expenditure side, the limits go from $300,000 over a two-year cycle for a governor’s race down to $2,000 for a seat in the House. The law makes no adjustments for candidates who have to run in a primary in addition to the general election. Incumbents are held to 85 percent or 90 percent of what a challenger may spend, depending on the office.

“I’d like to know why the limits are not far too low,” Justice Breyer said to Mr. Sorrell.

It’s time for more idiocy from the postmodern “bias” warriors at the Media Research Center.

Drudge is currently running the following headlines aboiut the poll I posted about earlier today:

CBSNEWS SHOCK POLL: Bush approval rating falls to 34%…

But CBS Slants Bush Poll in Favor of Democrats?

The second link goes to a blog post by Greg Sheffield of the Media Research Center that says this:

In its classic "fair and balanced" tradition, CBS slanted in favor of Democrats its poll that found Bush has a 34 percent approval rating and a 59 percent disapproval rating, an all-time high for a CBS poll.

On the bottom of the PDF version of the poll (page 18) it says how many Democrats versus Republicans were contacted.

"Total Republicans" contacted: 272 unweighted and 289 weighted.

"Total Democrats" contacted: 409 unweighted and 381 weighted.

"Total Independents" contacted: 337 unweighted and 348 weighted.