Brendan Nyhan

In a loathsome Washington Times column attacking reporters’ treatment of Barack Obama, Tony Blankley likens the mainstream media to the official Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and to “Goebbels’ disciples”:

The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight out propagandists for the Obama campaign. While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08 for the first time, the major media are consciously covering for one candidate for president and consciously knifing the other. This is no longer journalism — it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Volkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.) And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly and even half way honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs — the press.

…The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeats any McCain gaffes, while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Internet sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Mr. Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventual one or two clear sentences from Mr. Obama. Nor do you see Mr. Obama’s ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the United Nations. Nor his whining and puerile “come on” when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels’ disciples, not Cronkite’s.

Blankley also engages in one of the most bizarre attempts at guilt by association that I’ve ever seen:

But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting, is the shocking gaps in Mr. Obama’s life that are not reported at all. The major media simply has not reported on Mr. Obama’s two years at Columbia University in New York, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers— after which they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Mr. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Mr. Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks the media has focused on all the colleges Mrs. Palin has attended, her husband’s driving habits 20 years ago and the close criticism of Mrs. Palin’s mayoral political opponents. But in two years they haven’t bothered to see how close Mr. Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.

Bill Ayers lived “a mere quarter mile” away when Obama was at Columbia? So did tens of thousands of other people — it’s Manhattan!

Here’s what I wrote back in June 2007 about why I don’t (usually) comment on the substance of debates — it still applies in the general election:

I frequently don’t have anything interesting or new to say about debates, which are over-analyzed to the point of absurdity. There’s usually not a lot of substance to discuss, so you end up offering McLaughlin Group-level observations about who “won,” the way the candidates looked, the supposedly important “moments” of the night, or the implications of the debate for the horse race.

I have those (not particularly profound) thoughts just like anyone else, but why share them? You can already get similar stuff here and here and here and on cable news (among many other places). Blogging should be more than amateur hour for aspiring pundits.

Also, as I argued last week, the importance of debates is frequently exaggerated by media commentators.

The only thing worse than newspapers failing to report on other polls is the way they (mis)interpret their own findings.

The Los Angeles Times is currently running a story titled “Obama slightly widens lead after debate, poll finds” (via Yglesias). The basis for this claim is a 1% increase in Obama’s support and a 2% increase in Obama’s lead among voters in their poll who watched the debate (presumably a non-random group):

The much-anticipated first presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama on Friday appears to have helped Obama slightly widen a lead over his Republican opponent, a post-debate Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg survey shows.

Registered voters who watched the debate preferred Obama, 49% to 44%, according to the poll taken over three days after the showdown in Oxford, Miss.

That is a small gain from a week ago, when a survey of the same voters showed the Democratic candidate with a 48% to 45% edge.

An increase of 1% in Obama’s poll numbers (or a 2% increase in his lead among the group that watched the debate) is meaningless. There are two problems. First, we can’t be sure that the increase among the group who watched the debate is meaningful. Any time you survey people twice on their vote preferences, there may be minor fluctuations. A difference of 1-2% is almost surely not statistically significant. Second, we can’t extrapolate anything meaningful from that group’s change to the larger population of registered voters as a whole. The reason is that the voters who didn’t watch the debate may also change their preferences as a result of media coverage, external events, etc.

Who allowed this nonsense to be published in a major newspaper? It’s the statistical equivalent of 2+2=5.

Update 9/29 8:41 AM: The description of the problems with the article above has been improved and corrected with help from Joel Wiles.

Update 9/29 9:10 PM: Per Jonny Drake’s comment below, the wording of the post has been clarified to distinguish between a 1% increase in Obama’s support and a 2% increase in his lead among voters in the Times poll who watched the debate.

Matthew Yglesias rightly objected to the people who rounded up the $700 billion tab for the financial bailout to “nearly $1 trillion” — a description that is technically true but glosses over a difference of $300 billion.

He didn’t follow up, but it’s worth noting that Thomas Friedman (in one of his trademark fake letters from one foreign leader to another) actually called it “a $1 trillion bailout for our troubled banking system.” No!

A reader points out that the Associated Press has acquired the ability to read the minds of both John McCain and Barack Obama:

McCain hoped voters would believe that he rose above politics to wade into successful, nitty-gritty dealmaking at a time of urgent crisis, but he risked being seen instead as either overly impulsive or politically craven, or both. Obama saw a chance to appear presidential and fit for duty but was also caught off guard strategically by McCain’s surprising gamble in saying he was suspending his campaigning and asking to delay Friday night’s debate to focus on the crisis.

Just to reiterate the obvious point: we all can speculate about the strategic calculations of the candidates, but no one knows what McCain “hoped” or Obama “saw.”

A compare and contrast exercise for the reader…

Sarah Palin on the geographic position of Alaska:

[I]t’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is — from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to– to our state.

Dan Quayle on the geographic position of Hawaii:

Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here.

During his interview with Sarah Palin, ABC’s Charlie Gibson misquoted one of her past statements, claiming that she said “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.”

However, Palin actually asked her congregation to “pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

In context, the phrase “for this country” in Palin’s second sentence clearly links it with the request that people “pray” in the first sentence. Also, the third sentence clearly indicates that people should pray that US military decisions are part of a “task” or “plan” from God, not that she knows that to be true.

Even though Gibson came under fire for his statement, the myth is still out there. Most recently, the AFP, a foreign wire service widely available on American websites, claimed without explanation that Palin “has previously remarked that US soldiers in Iraq were being sent on a task from God.”

UNC’s Jim Stimson on the evaporating GOP bounce and the state of the race (posted on Sunday):

I wrote in Tides of Consent that convention “bounces” were permanent effects, persisting through election day unless counteracted by some later events. The Palin bounce of 2008 appears to contradict this conclusion. It appears that Obama was ahead by about two points going into the Democratic Convention. A 4 point bouce put him at 6. Then the more dramatic Republican/Palin bounce appeared to put McCain in the lead by appout two points, a net 8 point shift. Now, more than two weeks later, it appears that about half of the Palin bounce was transient and the other half almost exactly offsets the Democratic bounce of four points. That leaves the race exactly where it began in late August, with a small Obama lead. But a post-convention lead is much more solid than a pre-covention lead, because it represents mainly real voting intentions, as opposed to the much fluffier stuff of pre-convention polls, where large portions of the electorate have yet to think about the contest. Thus, after a period of unremitting second-guessing and hand wringing, it appears that the Obama campaign is the net beneficiary of the convention season, if not by much.

Stimson’s poll-filtering algorithm (Excel spreadsheet) puts Obama at roughly 51.5% of the two-party vote, which is back in line with the fundamentals.

Deep breaths everyone — as I pointed out last month, debates rarely matter as much as people think. Jim Stimson, who I quote in that post, argues the following in Tides of Consent:

What we have seen is perhaps some influence. The evidence is inconclusive to say either that debates matter or that they do not. But if they do matter at all, their influence is vastly smaller than, say, the conventions. The reelection landslides [1964, 1972, 1984, 1996] show that once voters have decided, debates will not change the outcomes.

There is no case where we can trace a substantial shift to the debates. But in elections that were close at debate times, there are cases (1960, 1980, 2000) where the debates might have been the final nudge.

UW-Milwaukee’s Tom Holbrook reiterates this point in a blog post showing that there is very little evidence of substantial swings in the polls due to debates. Of course, since the race is close, anything could affect the outcome, but it seems clear that the debates will be covered far out of proportion to their importance.

At a more meta level, to the extent debates matter, it’s likely that the media narrative that’s created (i.e. Gore’s “sighs” in 2000) is far more important than the actual content of the debates since most people do not watch the debates and most of those who do watch are supporting one of the candidates. In this sense, people should worry less about their campaign’s performance and more about the performance of their campaign’s spin room after the fact. It’s a sorry spectacle.

The President of the United States, August 1, 2008:

THE PRESIDENT: President George W. Bush calling to congratulate you on 20 years of important and excellent broadcasting.

RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. You’ve stunned me! (laughing) I’m shocked. But thank you so much.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s hard to do.

RUSH: (laughing) I know, it is.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m here with a room full of admirers [Jeb Bush and George H.W. Bush]. There are two others that would like to speak to you and congratulate you, people who consider you friends and really appreciate the contribution you’ve made.

Rush Limbaugh, September 22, 2008:

These polls on how one-third of blue-collar white Democrats won’t vote for Obama because he’s black, and — but he’s not black. Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood? He doesn’t have any African — that’s why when they asked whether he was authentic, whether he’s down for the struggle. He’s Arab. You know, he’s from Africa. He’s from Arab parts of Africa. He’s not — his father was — he’s not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American. I guess that’s splitting hairs, I don’t — it’s just all these little things, everything seems upside-down today in this country.

Update 9/26 11:10 AM: Per Chris Lawrence’s comment below, Bush obviously isn’t responsible for everything Limbaugh says. However, as I pointed out in a previous post, Limbaugh has a long history of offensive racial comments. In that context, I think it’s appropriate to hold Bush responsible for endorsing such a loathsome figure.