Brendan Nyhan

Back in 2006, I proposed the following corollary to Godwin’s law in a column for Time.com:

A well-known rule of Internet discourse is Godwin’s law, which states that, as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches inevitability.

Let me propose Nyhan’s corollary: As a foreign policy debate with conservatives grows longer, the probability of a comparison with the appeasement of Nazis or Hitler approaches inevitability.

As Sam Roggeveen notes, my prediction came true yesterday. Within hours of President Obama’s decision to cancel an antiballistic missile system in Eastern Europe, the Hudson’s Institute Seth Cropsey was already driving the talking point into the ground in a Weekly Standard article:

Obama’s Appeasement
The likely harm that results from the administration’s surrender on missile defense goes far beyond Europe.

The Obama administration chose an historic month to appease the Russians by reneging on the U.S. proposal to place ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. September 1st of 2009 was the 70th anniversary of the Nazis’ unprovoked attack on Poland. In the middle of the same month the Red Army invaded Poland–70 years ago to the day. At the end of this month is the 71st anniversary of the Munich agreement in which England and France agreed to allow Hitler to annex large portions of western Czechoslovakia…

Obama’s appeasement of the Russians in the same two countries is an eerie recapitulation of Western weakness…

As with Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, appeasing the Russians is not likely to produce any
positive results…

This decision is the clearest and most definitive evidence yet that what the Obama administration means by a “reset” of our relations with Russia is simple appeasement…

In Central Europe the decision is a pointed reminder that U.S. policy has thrown the Central Europeans under the Russian bus once since the end of World War II…

This capitulation is all the more inexcusable because, unlike the situation that Chamberlain faced at Munich in 1938, Russia, unlike Nazi Germany, is still a relatively weak power. The Obama administration has as little to fear from Russia’s military as it has to expect that Russian goodwill or self-interest will have a moderating effect on Iran’s plans to become a nuclear power.

This sort of argument by analogy is a substitute for rational thought. (Who cares if it’s almost the 71st anniversary of Munich?) People may disagree about the merits of Obama’s decision, but it’s absurd to say that it’s comparable to the appeasement of Hitler.

Update 9/18 2:19 PM: Mike Pence gets in on the action:

Republican Congressman Mike Pence (IN) harkened to the days of the Cold War and warned the administration against bowing to a burgeoning powerhouse, Russia, “The Obama administration is continuing a policy of appeasement at the expense of our allies. History teaches that weakness and appeasement invite aggression against peaceful nations.”

Update 9/18 3:02 PM: And here’s Roy Blunt:

One Republican, Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, went as far as to accuse Obama of appeasement, noting that yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. “Appeasement of dangerous nations does not inspire peace,’’ Blunt said in a statement.

Back in August, I created this plot showing the parallels in partisan misperceptions about President Bush (a 9/11 conspiracy) and President Obama (not a citizen):

Public Policy Polling just asked questions about both misperceptions in the same poll in New Jersey (PDF). While the 9/11 question, which asks whether the respondent thinks Bush had “advance knowledge” of the attacks, isn’t ideal for reasons outlined in the previous post, the results are extremely similar to those presented above (though the partisan skew of the misperceptions among independents flips):

The poll also asked if people think Obama is the anti-Christ (GOP: 14% yes, 15% not sure). It’s too bad they didn’t also ask about whether Bush is the anti-Christ or we could have had another nice comparison…

(Cross-posted to Pollster.com)

Via Taegan Goddard, Michael Dukakis confuses reporters with this classic rationale for not commenting on a possible Senate appointment:

“I’m not commenting,” he said. “Why not? ‘Cause I don’t want to comment.”

It’s either a PR masterstroke (you answer the question while saying nothing), or a statement of his belief in free will.

Chris Orr beat me to the metaphor, but has there ever been a more absurd game of political Telephone than the way the two million protestors myth was created and propagated online?

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters documents the carnage:

The
conservative comedy of errors began on Saturday when Matt Kibbe, president of
FreedomWorks, took to the rally stage and unfurled a massive lie. He told the
crowd ABC News had reported that between 1 million to 1.5 million people had
gathered to protest Obama’s policies. (Later, a FreedomWorks flack conceded she had no idea know why Kibbe
manufactured the claim about ABC News.)

Immediately,
conservative activist Tabitha Hale (aka
“pinkelephantpun”) tweeted Kibbe’s lie but added an additional
500,000 people to the tally: “ABC reporting 2 million people.”

Seven
minutes later, Malkin re-tweeted Hale’s claim. Then, one minute
after that, Malkin turned that tweet into part of her ongoing protest coverage. Intrepid
“reporter” Malkin took an unsupported tweet and reported it as news:

12:34pm Eastern: Police estimate 1.2 million in attendance.
ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million — tweets Tabitha Hale from D.C.

Teeny, tiny fringe, huh?

Note that
in her blog post there were no links for Malkin’s utterly fantastic claim, no
place on the Web where readers could go and confirm that D.C. police had pegged
the crowd at 1.2 million or that ABC had made the staggering claim of 2
million. The lack of live links should have been a massive red flag for readers
and fellow bloggers, especially when it was associated with such a
controversial and news-breaking claim.

But, of
course, Malkin had no links or any real facts to go on. All she had was a couple
of tweets from Hale, who, in retrospect, appeared to have spent much of Saturday just making shit up.

But again,
none of that mattered, because Malkin had spoken (2 million!) and the
right-wing bloggers knew what to do. Let’s take a stroll through the far-right
blogosphere and see which sites did their best to spread Malkin’s patently
absurd claim about 2 million protesters. [Emphasis
added.]

Pajamas Media’s Roger Simon:

I can remember telling Glenn Reynolds during CPAC that these
Tea Party demonstrations were rinky-dink and going nowhere. Barely more than a
half-year later, they’re putting two million people on the Washington Mall.
Wow!

Jawa
Report:

UPDATE:(Newbie):
Crowd estimated by ABC NEWS: 2 MILLION!

Looking at the Left:

ABC News reports that two million
Americans
flooded D.C. in what people in the crowd were calling “a conservative Woodstock” Like the liberal Woodstock of the ’60s, thousands were rumored
stranded on freeways.

Atlas Shrugs:

The two photos above show a tiny
fraction of the two million ABC
estimates attended.

NewsBusters, the day after the 2
million people story had been debunked:

You’ll
note no mention of the D.C. rally yesterday that drew an estimated 1-2
million people.

Wizbang:

Michelle Malkin reported on her site that ABC
News estimated the crowd to be 2 million people.

[…]

Rick at Brutally Honest linked to this awesome time
lapse video showing progression of the approximately 2 million people who
marched in DC today:

Riehl World View:

ABC Reports 2 Million At DC Rally

Right
Pundits:

Michelle Malkin is reporting that estimated turnout is
now 2 million people.

And then
there was the sad, confused work of blogger Stephen Green.
Doing his best to spread the word about the supposedly massive crowd size on
Saturday, Green first claimed that CNN had reported the crowd was 2 million
strong. (CNN never did any such thing.) Then later under a banner that read “correction,”
Green, following Malkin’s phony lead, reported it was ABC News that reported 2
million protesters were on hand. (Green then failed to correct his
“correction.”)

Of course,
the 2 million tally never made sense. Not only couldn’t anybody find ABC’s
alleged reporting, but no other news organization (not even rally co-sponsor Fox News) were
going anywhere near the 2 million mark. Instead, most of Saturday’s reports
used phrases like “tens of thousands” to describe the crowd size.

Just after 4 p.m. Saturday, New York University journalism professor Jay
Rosen tweeted the glaring discrepancy:

http://michellemalkin.com/:
“ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million.” Front page, ABCNews.com:
“thousands march on Capitol”  

By the end of that 4 o’clock hour, ABC’s News’ Yunji de Nies
also weighed in:

Later that
afternoon, ABC News took the unusual step of reporting an
article about itself. Headlined “ABC News Was Misquoted on Crowd Size,” the
dispatch, designed solely to knock down the false rumor that Malkin helped
hype, was quite emphatic:

At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number
anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to
70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington,
D.C., fire department. In its
reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as “tens of thousands.”

Finally,
near day’s end, Malkin finally addressed her bogus ABC News claim
and pointed the finger of blame at FreedomWorks’ Kibbe. (He’s the one who
first mentioned ABC News.) Malkin then thanked ABC News for “clearing this up,”
without noting that “this” was launched when Malkin broadcast a completely
fictitious claim without the slightest hint of attribution and then waited most
of the day to acknowledge her colossal blunder. And note that Malkin blamed
Kibbe because Kibbe told the rally that ABC News had estimated the crowd to be
between 1 million and 1.5 million. But Malkin told the world ABC News had
claimed it was 2 million. So how was that Kibbe’s fault?

Post-protest,
some conservatives, such as Instapundit, still tried to push the phony 2
million claim by clinging to a typically
awful and unsubstantiated article from the British
press that originally suggested “up to two
million people” marched on Washington. The article, though, lacked any sourcing. It was just another
case of the British press regurgitating a
right-wing lie. (The article was later changed to include an equally misleading
claim: “As many as one million people flooded into Washington for a massive rally.”)

By Saturday
night, RedState blogger Erick Erickson, conceding the 2 million number was pure
fantasy, did his best to clear up the confusion:

I’ve been talking all night to people who are there and
involved. The 2 million number was generated by the media, but truly
seems to be a gross inflation of what is there.

And with
that we traveled full circle in the unstable world of the right-wing
blogosphere. According to press-hating Erickson, it was the media that
concocted the wildly inflated 2 million number. (ABC News again?) In the new,
sanitized telling, Malkin’s dirty hands, of course, had been completely washed
and her leading role in the embarrassing
charade had been forgotten and forgiven. Because at the end of the day, it
was the media’s fault all along.

Amazingly, as Boehlert later pointed out, the Los Angeles Times then framed the story as a “he said,” “she said” debate in its headline and subhed:

Crowd estimates vary wildly for Capitol march
How many angry conservatives showed up to protest Obama’s policies? Was it 2 million? Or 60,000? It all depends on whom you ask.

In the lede, the LAT noted crowd “estimates ranging from 60,000 to 2 million” before finally clarifying in the fourth paragraph that the actual turnout was under 100,000 people.

But that’s not all! As Ben Dimiero pointed out on Media Matters, a new meme later circulated in which a quote was attributed to a National Park Service spokesperson saying the rally was the largest Washington march ever. The problem is that he was talking about the Obama inauguration:

Yesterday on his radio program, while discussing the crowds at this weekend’s 9/12 protests, Glenn Beck claimed that the LondonTelegraph “quote[d] a source from the Park Service, the National Park Service, saying that it is the largest march on Washington ever.”  This led to a good deal of confusion here, as the Telegraph article contains no such quote.  Just another case of Beck making things up?  Actually, the story behind this turns out to be much funnier than we could have anticipated. 

Several conservative blogs have been quoting National Park Service spokesman “Dan Bana” as saying the 9/12 protest was “the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever.”  This appears to be a repurposing of this quote from David Barna (who, unlike Dan Bana, appears to be a real person):

David Barna, a Park Service spokesman, said the agency did not conduct its own count. Instead, it will use a Washington Post account that said 1.8 million people gathered on the US Capitol grounds, National Mall, and parade route.

“It is a record,” Barna said. “We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever.”

Very impressive!  Unfortunately, as Little Green Footballs pointed out, that quote was actually about the inauguration:

This is so pathetic I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Dozens – if not hundreds – of right wing blogs are running with this quote, portraying it as a statement about the tea party held last weekend: ‘We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever.’

The quote is from January. The National Park Service spokesman was talking about Barack Obama’s inauguration.

When people said the Internet would revolutionize democracy, I don’t think this is what they had in mind.

Update 9/16 2:22 PM: Broken links fixed (sorry about that).

Update 9/17 6:37 AM: Per David Smith’s comment below, Glenn Reynolds was more skeptical of the two million figure than Boehlert’s language suggests. He previously called it “improbably high” and wrote of the Daily Mail headline “So maybe I was wrong to be so skeptical. But cut it in half and it’s still a huge number.”

Jon Chait follows up on his brilliant TNR column on the vacuousness of Senate moderates with a blog post in which he impersonates a moderate trying to avoid taking a position on where to go to dinner:

My wife: Do you want to go out to dinner?

Me: I don’t think there’s enough of a consensus on a restaurant.

Her: Well, why don’t you suggest a place you’d like to go?

Me: We’d just go to a Japanese restaurant, and I hate Japanese.

The underlying problem is that most politicians in the contemporary era enter politics at least in part because they have strong views on public policy. That seems to be less true of moderates, who therefore tend to allow themselves to be dragged along by the prevailing political tides, which they cautiously navigate with an eye toward reelection* and avoiding primary challenges. In principle, moderates can take tough stands and make bold votes, but it’s rarely observed in practice.

* In fairness, moderates often have more competitive seats, but longtime incumbents like Olympia Snowe are basically safe and still take almost no political risks.

As I’ve noted before, Deborah Solomon, who does the “Questions for…” feature in the New York Times Magazine, is an incredibly harsh interviewer (sample question: “You strike me as deeply unanalyzed. Have you ever considered seeing a psychiatrist?”). But as a friend notes, her interview with “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane is especially nasty:

SOLOMON: [T]he show might seem to mock family values by presenting the Griffins as a self-absorbed, unattractive clan. Are you contemptuous of families?

MACFARLANE: No. I’m very much on the fence.

SOLOMON: Which fence is that?

MACFARLANE: There are things about the single lifestyle that are very appealing.

SOLOMON: Are you straight?

MACFARLANE: Yep. I don’t have a steady gal.

SOLOMON: Why is that?

MACFARLANE: Oh, boy, we’re getting deep.

“Are you contemptuous of families?” is one of the great “When did you stop beating your wife?” questions of all time. There’s no way to answer that, let alone a question about why someone is single.

The underlying problem is that Solomon’s interviews are heavily condensed and edited, which gives her immense power to portray her subjects in whatever fashion she likes. It also allows her, as in the MacFarlane interview, to feature her own voice at the expense of the subject — the published version of the MacFarlane interview includes more of her words than his. As a result, she gets off her zingers but we learn very little about the subject whose character is supposedly being revealed.

Though the public is closely divided on health care reform, Matthew Yglesias suggests an alternative interpretation in which “Obama is clearly winning” on the issue because of the zero sum nature of partisan politics. As evidence, he cites the public’s preference for Democrats on the “Who do you trust to do a better job handling health care?” question in the latest Washington Post poll (48% Democrats, 36% Republicans).

However, it’s not clear that the issue is zero sum. While a plurality of the public may prefer the Democratic approach to health care reform to the Republican approach (i.e. D > R), many of those same people may prefer the status quo to both parties’ approaches (i.e. SQ > D > R). As a result, the Democratic pursuit of health care reform may hurt them more than Republicans, who are unlikely to have the power to pass legislation any time soon.

Update 9/14 4:41 PM: To clarify, the question is whether saying you trust Republicans to handle health care can be interpreted as a preference for the status quo over the Democratic proposals and nothing more. My argument is that saying you trust Republicans to “handle” health care may instead be interpreted as indicating a preference for the GOP’s private market approach to reform (i.e. John McCain’s plan). If a large number of people interpret the question this way and don’t like the private market approach, the Democatic approach could look artificially popular. Individual-level poll data would help us adjudicate between these two different stories.

(Cross-posted to Pollster.com)

A New York Times story today uses Michael Moore’s new documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story” as a news peg for a discussion of new report on ethical issues in documentary filmmaking:

At an early screening for the media and the film industry on this opening weekend of the Toronto International Film Festival, a packed house of more than 500 was mostly quiet as it watched Mr. Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” open with rousing scenes of an armed robbery, which played over a punked-up version of “Louie, Louie.”

What followed was a kaleidoscopic history of forced evictions, political corruption and Wall Street malfeasance — the sort of stuff that has made Mr. Moore one of the most commercially successful documentary filmmakers in history…

But a panel discussion on Sunday afternoon had a message for those who look to documentary films for guidance about matters as serious as business, politics and the meaning of life: let the viewer beware.

The discussion centered on a new report from the Center for Social Media at American University, titled “Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work.”

Based on anonymous interviews with 45 long-form documentary filmmakers, the study came to some conclusions that could shock those schooled in conventional journalistic ethics…

The report found that documentarians, while they generally aspire to act honorably, often operate under ad hoc ethical codes. The craft tends to see itself as being bound less by the need to be accurate and fair than by a desire for social justice, to level the playing field between those who are perceived to be powerful and those who are not.

That often means manipulating “individual facts, sequences and meanings of images,” said the report, if that might help viewers to grasp the documentary’s “higher truth.” Deception in pursuit of a good story is acceptable to some. A number said that corporate executives and celebrities were entitled to less protection as interview subjects than more sympathetic individuals.

However, the story fails to link these concerns back to Moore’s work (as does the report). While media fact-checks of “Sicko” were often overstated, he has repeatedly manipulated “individual facts, sequences and meanings of images” in his previous work. For instance, Moore famously distorted the chronology of events in his first film “Roger and Me.” In “Bowling for Columbine,” Moore added a caption about Willie Horton to a Bush/Quayle ad in order to suggest that the campaign had engaged in race-baiting. He also portrayed Lockheed Martin rockets used to launch satellites as “weapons of mass destruction,” staged a scene in which he picks up a gun at a bank, and distorted a speech given by National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston. (“Fahrenheit 9/11” does not include such blatant distortions, but it includes numerous half-truths and misleading insinuations.) This pattern is clearly relevant to the story, and yet it is omitted entirely.

Last week, I predicted that President Obama’s primetime speech to Congress would fail to have a significant effect on public opinion. While it’s too early to reach a definitive conclusion, the early indications are largely consistent with that conclusion. An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted Sept. 10-12 shows no statistically significant change in Obama’s approval on health care or support for health care reform compared with a poll conducted August 10-12 (see also the Post story on the poll — via Kaus). At best, Obama might have regained the ground he lost in late August — a CBS News poll (PDF) conducted Sept. 10 showed a 12 point increase in approval of the president on health care compared with a poll conducted August 27-31, but that poll also showed no change in the percentage of Americans who think health care reform would help them personally. (In addition, the CBS poll re-surveyed respondents from the August 27-31 poll — a format that is useful for comparing opinions before and after the speech, but may not be fully representative.)

Update 9/16 8:36 PM: Nate Silver calls me and George Stephanopolous out, falsely stating that both of us “[concluded] that there is no bounce on the basis of the ABC poll… while ignoring the other polling.” That’s wrong on two counts. First, at the time I posted, I had not seen any post-speech polls other than the ones cited in the post. Second, I didn’t say “there is no bounce” — I said the speech would most likely “fail to have a significant effect on public opinion” and that, “While it’s too early to reach a definitive conclusion, the early indications are largely consistent with that conclusion.” (Note also the post title: “Obama’s health numbers: Not moving much” [emphasis added].)

Since I wrote that post, Rasmussen and CNN have released polls showing what Mark Blumenthal describes as “[s]mall, nominal increases in approval for Obama or support for health reform.” In particular, the observed increases in support for health reform in the two polls were not statistically significant (Rasmussen’s has seemingly dissipated already). Despite preliminary evidence of a small uptick in Obama’s approval, I’ll stand by my claim.

(Cross-posted to Pollster.com)

An interesting development on the polling front: Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling is open-sourcing his polls. Yesterday he asked for suggestions on which state to poll next and posted a draft questionnaire for Joe Wilson’s district for comment.

This approach, which I think is brilliant, raises a more general question: where’s the innovation in content creation among political organizations? Beyond MoveOn.org, very few organizations in politics take advantage of the creativity and intelligence of their supporters.

Along similar lines, why doesn’t a political organization like one of the major parties offer up some money in a competition to, say, predict who will respond favorably to solicitations for money, votes, etc. using anonymized data? The Netflix Prize, which will be awarded on the 21st, drew a vast amount of effort from the machine learning community, and there’s now a company that will provide infrastructure for similar contests. Who’s going to be the innovator?

(Cross-posted to Pollster.com)