Brendan Nyhan

Wonkette says what needs to be said about Judy Miller:

The New York Observer reports that Miller dragged her feet on writing her own piece on the leak investigation for so long that the paper’s entire package (including the 6K word report on the paper’s internal investigation) was held from early editions. There’s a word to describe going to jail as a First Amendment martyr only to have your paper restrict its own coverage — that word is “bullshit.” Miller says that when her second attorney, Robert Bennett approached her, he said: “I don’t want to represent a principle. I want to represent Judy Miller.” And that is good, because Judith Miller doesn’t represent a principle, either.

On today’s Meet the Press, Tim Russert was the latest media figure to hype the ridiculous 2% approval figure for President Bush among African Americans in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (PDF). This number is based on a tiny subsample — 89 people! It is not a reliable statistical estimate. But that hasn’t stopped Russert and many others from parroting it as fact. For much more on the problems with this figure, see Mystery Pollster here and here.

No discernable philosophy:

“We spent 1,200 hours together and I calculated that we addressed more than 6,000 agenda items, and I never knew how she was going to vote until she voted,” said Jim Buerger, who served with Miers on the City Council from 1989 to 1991.

Buerger said Miers was something of a nonentity on the council.

“She didn’t express any views, she didn’t campaign for anything and I’m unaware of any cause that she championed,” Buerger said. “This is a lady who keeps close counsel with herself.”

But, uh, she’s a a good bowler:

“You know, she’s a very gracious and funny person,” said Joshua B. Bolten, the director of the Office of Management and Budget whom Ms. Miers succeeded as deputy White House chief of staff in 2003. “I was racking my brain trying to think of something specific.”

In the next breath, Mr. Bolten recalled relaxing with her at Camp David. “She is a very good bowler,” he said. “For someone her size, she actually gets a lot of action out of the pins.”

Update 10/16 — Even Republican senators found her notable mostly for “banal chatter”:

Lawmakers and staff contend that during her first round of courtesy calls, Miers had anything but a commanding presence, looking more like a prom date next to the confident Senators. Republicans said she seemed unwilling or unable to answer questions about whether she viewed particular cases as important precedents and said she offered little beyond banal chatter.

I just opened a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraising letter from Ted Kennedy that begins with this loathsome sentence:

The reckless abuse of power by George Bush and his right-wing allies is an imminent danger to the nation and must be stopped.

“Imminent danger to the nation” is a loaded phrase that is generally used to describe grave threats to the US from foreign powers. It’s not appropriate for describing your domestic political opponents.

Kennedy should know better. He’s clearly thought about what phrases like “imminent danger” and “imminent threat” mean, since he said in March 2004 that “Iraq was not an imminent threat.” So why is he saying that George Bush is?

The White House is lashing out at journalists who criticize them again. As Richard Bradley points out on Huffington Post (via Alterman), the latest target is syndicated columnist Helen Thomas. Here’s an exchange from Thursday’s White House briefing:

THOMAS: What does the President mean by “total victory” — that we will never leave Iraq until we have “total victory”? What does that mean?

McCLELLAN: Free and democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East, because a free and democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will be a major blow to the ambitions —

THOMAS: If they ask us to leave, then we’ll leave?

MCCLELLAN: I’m trying to respond. A free and democratic Iraq in the heart of the broader Middle East will be a major blow to the ambitions of al Qaeda and their terrorist associates. They want to establish or impose their rule over the broader Middle East — we saw that in the Zawahiri letter that was released earlier this week by the intelligence community.

THOMAS: They also know we invaded Iraq.

McCLELLAN: Well, Helen, the President recognizes that we are engaged in a global war on terrorism. And when you’re engaged in a war, it’s not always pleasant, and it’s certainly a last resort. But when you engage in a war, you take the fight to the enemy, you go on the offense. And that’s exactly what we are doing. We are fighting them there so that we don’t have to fight them here. September 11th taught us —

THOMAS: It has nothing to do with — Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

McCLELLAN: Well, you have a very different view of the war on terrorism, and I’m sure you’re opposed to the broader war on terrorism. The President recognizes this requires a comprehensive strategy, and that this is a broad war, that it is not a law enforcement matter.

To state the obvious once again, pointing out that Iraq and 9/11 are unrelated does not mean that you oppose the war on terrorism. I’m no fan of Thomas, who’s become pretty wacky in recent years, but that’s a smear.

Update 10/16: An Editor & Publisher article on the exchange (via Romenesko) reveals that Bradley truncated a further exchange between Terry Moran of ABC, Thomas, and Moran. Here it is, continuing directly from above:

MCCLELLAN: …The President recognizes this requires a comprehensive strategy, and that this is a broad war, that it is not a law enforcement matter.

Terry.

MORAN: On what basis do you say Helen is opposed to the broader war on
terrorism?

McCLELLAN: Well, she certainly expressed her concerns about
Afghanistan and Iraq and going into those two countries. I think I can go
back and pull up her comments over the course of the past couple of years.

MORAN: And speak for her, which is odd.

McCLELLAN: No, I said she may be, because certainly if you look at her
comments over the course of the past couple of years, she’s expressed her
concerns —

THOMAS: I’m opposed to preemptive war, unprovoked preemptive war.

MR. McCLELLAN: — she’s expressed her concerns.

And people wonder why no one trusts the media (via Drudge):

If Michelle Kosinski’s canoe had sprung a leak on NBC’s “Today” show Friday, she didn’t have much to worry about.

In one of television’s inadvertently funny moments, the NBC News correspondent was paddling in a canoe during a live report about flooding in Wayne, N.J. While she talked, two men walked between her and the camera — making it apparent that the water where she was floating was barely ankle-deep.

Matt Lauer struggled to keep a straight face, joking about the “holy men” who were walking on water.

“Have you run aground yet?” Katie Couric asked.

“Why walk when you can ride?” Kosinski replied.

Later, an NBC News spokeswoman explained that Kosinski had been riding in deeper water near an overflowing river down the street, but there were concerns that the current was too strong for her.

“It’s not like we were trying to pass it off as something it wasn’t,” spokeswoman Lauren Kapp said.

Riiiight.

Update 10/16 — Here’s the picture of the incident that’s featured on Drudge:

Update 10/19: I’ve been wondering why this post has been getting so many Google hits, and now I know — the video clip was featured on “The Daily Show” on Monday night.

Former Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully offers a testimonial to Harriet Miers in the New York Times today that includes this passage about her work as staff secretary from 2001-2003:

It is true that Harriet Miers, in everything she does, gives high attention to detail. And the trait came in handy with drafts of presidential speeches, in which she routinely exposed weak arguments, bogus statistics and claims inconsistent with previous remarks long forgotten by the rest of us.

So does that mean we can hold her responsible for all the weak arguments, bogus statistics and inconsistent claims that Bush made in speeches from 2001-2003? (See Spinsanity and All the President’s Spin for more.) Also, if the speeches that were delivered were dramatically improved by Miers’ edits, I can only imagine what the speechwriters were giving her.

Update 10/16: Matthew Scully again draws attention to the White House’s low standards for factual accuracy in a New York Times interview about Miers:

“Sometimes when you’re doing these speeches, you sort of think, ‘This can slide, nobody is going to challenge this,’ but that was not a high enough standard for Harriet.”

It’s useful to know that those are your standards, Mr. Scully, but look at how much she didn’t challenge! Clearly, as I argued, she’s better qualified to be press secretary than Supreme Court justice.

Commenters claimed it was unfair for me to juxtapose Harriet Miers’ fawning letters to George W. Bush with the legal writings of Antonin Scalia. So let’s offer her a fairer playing field and consider her published writing instead. Take it away, David Brooks:

Of all the words written about Harriet Miers, none are more disturbing than the ones she wrote herself. In the early 90’s, while she was president of the Texas bar association, Miers wrote a column called “President’s Opinion” for The Texas Bar Journal. It is the largest body of public writing we have from her, and sad to say, the quality of thought and writing doesn’t even rise to the level of pedestrian.

Of course, we have to make allowances for the fact that the first job of any association president is to not offend her members. Still, nothing excuses sentences like this:

“More and more, the intractable problems in our society have one answer: broad-based intolerance of unacceptable conditions and a commitment by many to fix problems.”

Or this: “We must end collective acceptance of inappropriate conduct and increase education in professionalism.”

Or this: “When consensus of diverse leadership can be achieved on issues of importance, the greatest impact can be achieved.”

Or passages like this: “An organization must also implement programs to fulfill strategies established through its goals and mission. Methods for evaluation of these strategies are a necessity. With the framework of mission, goals, strategies, programs, and methods for evaluation in place, a meaningful budgeting process can begin.”

Or, finally, this: “We have to understand and appreciate that achieving justice for all is in jeopardy before a call to arms to assist in obtaining support for the justice system will be effective. Achieving the necessary understanding and appreciation of why the challenge is so important, we can then turn to the task of providing the much needed support.”

I don’t know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers’s prose. Nearly every idea is vague and depersonalized. Nearly every debatable point is elided. It’s not that Miers didn’t attempt to tackle interesting subjects. She wrote about unequal access to the justice system, about the underrepresentation of minorities in the law and about whether pro bono work should be mandatory. But she presents no arguments or ideas, except the repetition of the bromide that bad things can be eliminated if people of good will come together to eliminate bad things.

Or as she puts it, “There is always a necessity to tend to a myriad of responsibilities on a number of cases as well as matters not directly related to the practice of law.” And yet, “Disciplining ourselves to provide the opportunity for thought and analysis has to rise again to a high priority.”

Throw aside ideology. Surely the threshold skill required of a Supreme Court justice is the ability to write clearly and argue incisively. Miers’s columns provide no evidence of that.

With conservative discontent over Miers showing no signs of relenting, pundits are already proposing exit strategies. For instance, Mickey Kaus suggests that Bush nominate Miers for a federal appeals court instead. But let me offer a different alternative. Bush’s PR machine is falling apart. Scott McClellan lacks Ari Fleischer’s talent for “[fastening] together clumps of non sequiturs into an elaborate web of obfuscation.” And there’s a desperate need for more “empty banality” at the White House after the departure of deputy press secretary Claire Buchan. Given Miers’ ability to produce large amounts of vacuous verbiage, it’s clear that Bush can put her unique talents to better use at the White House podium. Miers for press secretary!

Apparently, it’s good politics to leverage pop culture just about anywhere. First, the New York Times reported that Venezuelan state television is using Darth Vader’s theme music from “Star Wars” to hype the supposed assassination threat to Hugo Chavez. And now AP is reporting that the Belgian office of UNICEF is using the Smurfs to dramatize the effects of war on children. Here’s a poster from the campaign, which also includes a TV ad:

What’s next? Will Vladimir Putin feature the Huxtables in his next TV ad campaign? Will Hu Jintao use the painful decline of “The Simpsons” to illustrate why American geopolitical dominance can’t last forever? Only time will tell!

[PS For those who have never considered the Communist and anti-Semitic overtones of the Smurfs TV show, Wikipedia has a hilarious entry on “Smurf Communism” that’s not to be missed. Try finding that in Encyclopedia Brittanica!]

Update 10/13: Oops, I implied the Smurfs were American. They were actually created by a Belgian. Mistake corrected above.

Update 10/15: Here’s video of the Belgian TV commercial showing the Smurfs being bombed.

I just read the sad news that Daniel Drezner, a leading scholar-blogger, was denied tenure by the University of Chicago’s political science department.

For me, the decision raises two big concerns. First, as commenters at Drezner’s blog pointed out, the mentoring system at Chicago failed. Drezner wrote that he was “genuinely surprised” by the news; that should never happen at the end of the tenure process. As a graduate student who will be in the same situation in about ten years, I’m troubled. Second, the decision may be taken — rightly or wrongly — as somehow related to Drezner’s blogging, which would be a shame since he’s arguably the most prominent untenured scholar-blogger out there. Let’s hope he finds a good job soon.