Brendan Nyhan

I was out of town over the weekend, classes start today, and I’m leaving for the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting on Wednesday, so blogging will be light this week. But I will be posting occasionally, so stay tuned…

Via Atrios, Media Matters has a hilarious quote of Tony Blankley trying to convince himself (and others) that the Iraq war is popular:

These mis-characterizations of the president’s view on victory are important, because public support of the war is largely based on an expectation of victory. In a major USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll from three weeks ago 32 percent of the public said we can’t win the war in Iraq. Another 43 percent predict victory, while — critically — 21 percent say “the United States could win the war, but they don’t think it will.”

If one adds that “could win, but don’t think we will win” 21 percent to the 43 percent who predict victory — one has a very solid 64 percent supporting the war.

Non-reality-based poll interpretation! You gotta love it. For example, if you add the 58% of the public who think President Bush is doing a “only fair/poor” job to the 40% who think he’s doing an “excellent/pretty good” job, then you have a very solid 98% of Americans supporting Bush! Just think of the possibilities…

Update 8/26: Michael Koplow makes an excellent point in comments — Blankley is also claiming that perceptions of the likelihood of US victory in Iraq translate directly into support or opposition for the war, but that isn’t necessarily true.

But of course, assessments of the war and support for it are closely related. And if you look at the results of poll Blankley refers to, it found that 58% of Americans believe we won’t be able to establish a stable democratic government in Iraq and 51% of Americans believe the Bush administration deliberately misled the American people about WMDs in Iraq. Other recent polls show that 61% of Americans want to bring our troops home in the next year, 54% think we made a mistake in invading Iraq, 54% think the war was not worth it and 56% think the war is going “moderately badly” or “very badly.” So it’s very hard to believe that more than 45% of the public supports this war right now.

A while back, Eric Alterman had a nice precis on what’s wrong with Slate and “counter-intuitive” journalism:

It’s not easy trying to be as smart
as Mike Kinsley; in fact, for mere mortals like you and me, it’s impossible.
I’ve always thought the biggest problem over at Slate is that nobody there
got the memo that read “Don’t try this at home,” (or in the office, for that
matter). More often than once a week, there’s someone over there making
some contrarian argument for the sake of contrariness with none of Kinsley’s
brilliance, panache or, ironically, intellectual modesty. (One of Kinsley’s
greatest attributes, as Paul Simon might put it, is that he knows what he
knows… and vice-versa.)

Exhibit A this week is Jack Shafer’s perfectly “contrarian” brief on behalf
of biased book reviewing. There is a case to be made that nobody is really
“objective” about anything, and that the search for the appearance of an
objective book reviewer can result in the choice of a less than ideal
review, but Shafer’s argument, which mocks the very idea of fairness is
quite a different thing. (Kinsley has actually gone so far as to argue
against reading books before judging them, but, of course, he somehow
managed to come up with a pretty good argument.) But Shafer—like the rest
of us—is no Mike Kinsley. What’s more, he’s never written a book. Here he
treats the book itself as an unimportant appendage to the review. Good
books take years to write and the authors who undertake them deserve an
honest hearing for their work from someone who can at least try to judge
them on the basis of their merits. From a societal standpoint, moreover,
they are important cultural artifacts, perhaps the single most important
avenue for a culture to learn—or at least discuss—arguments and data that
are either complex or uncomfortable–and require both evidence and
explication to elucidate. Shafer’s argument reveals the limits of Slate’s
reification of the contrarian wiseguy, together with the flaws of
Kinsleyless Kinsleyism.

In general, the problem with Slate is that it’s virtually content-free. There’s almost never new reporting, so the articles have to present really smart takes on the news to be worth reading. But as Alterman points out, there’s only one Michael Kinsley, so instead you get a lot of faux-clever “everything you know is wrong” pieces, which almost never succeed.

I haven’t read all of the recent coverage of “intelligent design” in the news, which I understand has been hit-and-miss due to reporters’ insistence on treating both sides of a controversy as equally valid, but here are two signs of progress. A week ago on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” host Susan Stamberg referred to “the teaching of creationist-based intelligent design in Kansas,” and on Tuesday, the New York Times referred to “creationism or its doctrinal cousin, intelligent design, both of which depend on the existence of a supernatural force.” Amen. Intelligent design is religion, not science, and descends directly from creationism.

Also, Bill Frist recently tried to blur the same distinction in an early pander for 2008:

Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design.”I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith,” Frist said…

Via Brad DeLong, here’s Pharyngula taking apart Frist’s statement:

I don’t even understand what he’s babbling about in that first sentence—he’s muddling together fact, science, and faith, and implying that faith is a subset of the first two. What does it mean to have a “wide range” of those things? Do facts have reasonable ranges, such that we can simultaneously argue that humans evolved, and humans were created? That science, the study of the observable, should encompass religion, the invention of the invisible?

Frist’s statement is a logical disaster. And yes, the man is a doctor who should know the difference between fact, science, and faith. (Hint: Intelligent design belongs to only one of those three categories.)

Note: For much more on the debate over intelligent design, see my friend Chris Mooney’s science policy blog and his forthcoming book, The Republican War on Science, which I’ll be blogging more about soon.

Via (ugh) the Progress Report and E&P, here’s presidential spokesman Trent Duffy suggesting that critics of the war in Iraq don’t want to win the war on terror:

Q: Is the White House concerned about the protests that are
planned in Salt Lake City today?

MR. DUFFY: The President addressed that directly. He can
understand that people don’t share his view that we must win the war on
terror, and we cannot retreat and cut and run from terrorists, but he
just has a different view. He believes it would be a fundamental
mistake right now for us to cut and run in the face of terrorism,
because if we’ve learned anything, especially from the 9/11 Commission
Report, it is that to continue to retreat after the Cole, after Beirut
and Somalia is to only empower terrorists and to give them more
recruiting tools as they try to identify ways to harm Americans.

So he believes that people have a fundamental right to express
their views. That’s one of the reasons we’re fighting this war on
terrorism, to protect our fundamental rights. But at the same time, he
disagrees strongly.

And via the Progress Report again, here’s Donald Rumsfeld comparing critics of the war in Iraq to those who praised Stalin and Communism during World War II:

Of course, some are arguing that the effort in Iraq is doomed. Recently we’ve again been told that Iraq may prove worse than Vietnam, and it’s been alleged that we’re not winning…

Throughout history there have always been those who predict America’s failure just around every corner. At the height of World War II, a prominent U.S. diplomat predicted that democracy was finished in Britain and probably in America too. Many Western intellectuals praised Stalin during that period. For a time, Communism was very much in vogue. It was called Euro-Communism to try to mute or mask the totalitarian core. And thankfully, the American people are better centered. They ultimately come to the right decisions on big issues. And the future of Iraq is a very big issue. So those being tossed about by the winds of concern should recall that Americans are a tough lot and will see their commitments through.

For more on attacks on dissent since 9/11, see my Spinsanity column from Sept. 2004, All the President’s Spin, and Henry Farrell’s updated list of claims that the left is rooting for the other side in Iraq or the war on terror.

Update 8/25: Readers seem to think my objection to these comments wasn’t laid out in enough detail, so here’s a bit more. (I try to keep it brief generally since I’ve written so much about the smearing of dissent that I don’t want to repeat myself. See what I’ve written in the past [linked above] for more information.)

Duffy’s quote uses a key tactic that is employed in attacks on dissent – blurring the distinction between a handful of people on the fringe who actually want the US to lose the war on terror and the vast majority of Americans, who do not. Duffy, speaking generally about anti-war protests and opposition to the war, says that Bush “can
understand that people don’t share his view that we must win the war on
terror.” That is a smear. You can protest against the war in Iraq and still believe we “must win the war on terror” — indeed, that is undoubtedly the position of most opponents of the Iraq war.

Another tactic that is frequently used is to associate political opponents with hated figures — Saddam Hussein, Nazis, North Korea, etc. We wrote about this frequently on Spinsanity. And I believe Rumsfeld’s statement is very much in that vein. Yes, he is making a historical analogy, but it disguises an attempt to liken war opponents to Communist sympathizers. That analogy implies that war opponents sympathize with the other side. That, again, is a smear. With the exception of a handful of fringe figures, it is not a fair statement about those who question the war in Iraq.

Various readers will undoubtedly respond by saying that obscure extremist X or Y said something favorable about the insurgency. And they may be right. Such statements are loathsome, but they do not excuse making sweeping generalizations about a huge swath of people. 56% of Americans believe the war in Iraq is going badly — are they sympathizers with the insurgents? Do they believe we don’t need to win the war on terror?

Here’s a fun fact that my father-in-law on Monday thinks hasn’t gotten enough attention — assuming Dick Cheney doesn’t run for president, 2008 will be the first election since 1952 in which neither an incumbent or vice president is running on either side.

2004: George W. Bush (incumbent)
2000: Al Gore (VP)
1996: Bill Clinton (incumbent)
1992: George H.W. Bush (incumbent)
1988: George H.W. Bush (VP)
1984: Ronald Reagan (incumbent)
1980: Jimmy Carter (incumbent)
1976: Gerald Ford (incumbent)
1972: Richard Nixon (incumbent)
1968: Hubert Humphrey (VP)
1964: Lyndon Johnson (incumbent)
1960: Richard Nixon (VP)
1956: Dwight Eisenhower (incumbent)

Historical challenge: How many other times has this happened in American history?

The same poll that shows John Kerry losing to Hillary Clinton in a Massachusetts presidential primary also reveals that Governor Mitt Romney, a supposed 2008 contender for the GOP nomination, badly trails the leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate:

As Romney weighs whether to forgo a reelection bid to prepare a run for president in 2008, the poll found that his chief Democratic rival for the governor’s office, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, has continued to hold his lead over Romney. Reilly leads Romney by 51 to 38 percent in a matchup for a potential 2006 governor’s race. In March, Reilly led 48 to 41 percent.

The survey of 503 adults, completed last week, found that 41 percent said Romney has accomplished little as governor, posing a challenge if he tries to promote himself on the presidential trail as an effective chief executive and political leader. Only 16 percent said he has accomplished ”a lot” and another 34 percent think he has been blocked by the Legislature.

The portion of adults who think he should be reelected remains at a precariously low level, with 30 percent saying he should be given a second term, and 51 percent saying someone else should be elected. That is statistically the same finding as in a Globe poll in March.

The poll found that Romney also would fare poorly in a potential GOP presidential primary in Massachusetts. Asked their choice if the GOP primary were held now, Republicans preferred both former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Senator John McCain of Arizona to Romney.

Once again, if you can’t win in your home state, you’re probably not a strong presidential contender. These are horrible numbers.

If only TV hosts had the guts to do this more often…

The longtime NBC sports and talk show host [Costas], who signed on this year to be an occasional substitute for Larry King on CNN, resisted a request last Thursday to be the host of a King program devoted to interviewing guests about the already widely covered Natalee Holloway missing-person case in Aruba.

When he could not get the show’s topic changed, Mr. Costas said he respectfully decided not to participate.

TNR’s Michael Crowley, who is guest-blogging for Josh Marshall, catches George Allen using a silly metaphor:

When Republican senator/presidential hopeful George Allen was on ABC’s This Week today praising the Bush administration for its training of Iraqi security forces, George Stephanopoulos suggested that the Post’s story has some pretty troubling implications for that utterly essential element of our success there. Not to worry, Allen said — factional divisions are nothing new:

[Y]ou have that even in our United States. We have local police, we have state police, and you have the FBI.

Got that? Bloodthirsty Shiite militiamen really aren’t so different from, say, Virginia state troopers. To which a startled-looking Stephanopoulos objected: “They’re not militias going out and killing people outside the law!”

It’s amazing, come to think of it, that Stephanopoulos didn’t burst into laughter. There may be reassuring responses to the Post’s story, but Allen’s certainly wasn’t one of them. Let’s hope someone in the White House has a better answer.

Given that one of the knocks against Allen is that he isn’t that sharp, this looks pretty stupid.

(To read all my previous posts on Allen, click here.)

More from the John Kerry is not popular files: a Boston Globe poll in Massachusetts finds that Hillary Clinton leads Kerry 33%-21% in a 2008 trail heat among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in his own state. Ouch.