Brendan Nyhan

In All the President’s Spin, we showed how the Bush administration rarely engages in outright lying. Instead, they use technically true but misleading claims to spin the press in a more subtle — and effective — manner.

Here’s an example of that tactic from a New York Times story last week on the changing priorities of the Justice Department under President Bush.

When asked about the decreased number of voting rights lawsuits brought by DOJ, the Bush spokesperson replied that the numbers were actually up compared with President Clinton, but the Times surprisingly pointed out that this statistic was misleading:

the department has sharply reduced its efforts to combat voting rights plans that may dilute black electoral strength.

Ms. Magnuson, the department spokeswoman, said that the civil rights division had brought more voting rights lawsuits under Mr. Bush than had been brought in the Clinton administration.

But an examination of the Justice Department’s Web site listing of the cases brought through early 2007 shows that many of them involved a different part of the law, one that requires voting materials be available in languages other than English in places with high concentrations of Asian and Hispanic voters.

With President Bush’s poll numbers at such a low point, we may see more aggressive coverage like this over the next 18 months.

Here’s a Romney campaign email passed on by a friend — it sure tugs at the heartstrings:

Dear [name],

Father’s Day is coming up, and as the oldest of five sons, I feel responsible for making sure my Dad feels appreciated on his special day.

This year, I had a particularly difficult time deciding how to celebrate Dad. So much has happened this year and I wanted to give him a great gift.

Often, under pressure to give a holiday gift, we buy our family and friends something they don’t want or won’t use and I’m sure I’ve even given Dad a couple of useless gifts.

That’s why this year, I want to be sure that my brothers and I do something for Dad that we know he wants and will appreciate – raise $500,000 toward his end-of-quarter fundraising goal.

I know that I can raise a few thousand dollars more by contacting everyone in my address book. With Dad gaining support every day, it’s becoming an easier task. However, to get to our $500,000 goal, my brothers and I are going to need your help.

Will you join us in the address book challenge? All you have to do is forward this message to everyone in your address book and ask them to help us raise $500,000 for presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Father’s Day gift.

And please take the time to add a contribution of your own to the effort at www.MittRomney.com/FathersDay…

My brothers and I do our best to help with the campaign. We hope we can count on you to help us make Father’s Day special for our Dad this year.

As my friend asks, “Who responds to this crap?”

In the Democratic primaries, even the slightest hint of ethnic insensitivity can be devastating to your chances (ask Joe Biden). So what are Barack Obama and his campaign doing?

Today’s New York Times reports that the Obama campaign attacked Hillary Clinton’s investment in an Indian company and fundraising among Indian Americans by deriding her as “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)”:

Mr. Clinton also has $15,001 to $50,000 in Easy Bill Ltd., an India-based company that works on electronic transactions and business services for Indians.

Shortly after the Clinton campaign released the financial information, the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, circulated to news organizations — on what it demanded be a not-for-attribution-basis — a scathing analysis. It called Mrs. Clinton “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)” in its headline. The document referred to the investment in India and Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising efforts among Indian-Americans. The analysis also highlighted the acceptance by Mr. Clinton of $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a company the Obama campaign said has moved American jobs to India.

A copy of the document was obtained by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which provided it to The New York Times. The Clinton campaign has long been frustrated by the effort by Mr. Obama to present his campaign as above the kind of attack politics that Mr. Obama and his aides say has led to widespread disillusionment with politics by many Americans.

Asked about the document, Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, said: “We did give reporters a series of comments she made on the record and other things that are publicly available to anyone who has access to the Internet. I don’t see why anyone would take umbrage with that.”

Asked why the Obama campaign had initially insisted that it not be connected to the document, Mr. Burton replied, “I’m going to leave my comment at that.”

There would be an uproar — and rightfully so — if someone referred to Clinton as “D-Tel Aviv” or “D-Mexico City.” So why is it ok to engage in this kind of nativist smear about India?

The silliest thing about this is the obvious hypocrisy. Obama has set himself up as being against divisive politics, so why would nativist attacks be a good idea?

[On a related but less serious note, Bill Richardson was quoted saying the following about negotiating with North Korea: “Their U.N. guy calls. His name is Ambassador Kim. K-I-M. They’re all named Kim.” A tip for future presidential candidates: It’s never a good idea to say “They’re all named ____” about any ethnic group.]

Update 6/15 10:16 AM: Matthew Yglesias ignores the Obama smear and instead quibbles with my criticism of Richardson, saying it is “political correctness out of control” and noting that “it’s actually the case that an incredibly large proportion of Koreans are named ‘Kim.’” Of course. There are several ethnic groups/nationalities with very common last names (ie Nguyen for people from Vietnam), but my point stands. I don’t think Richardson’s comment is that big a deal — hence my saying “[o]n a related but less serious note” above — but the very definition of stereotyping is generalizing from some to all. For instance, imagine if the statistical tendency in question was instead something more fraught with meaning such as blacks’ lower average socioeconomic status, and you’ll see what I mean.

Update 6/15 2:20 PM: A reader alerts me that the reference to Punjab is based on a joke Hillary told — a detail that is not included in the Times story:

The Punjab reference came from a joke Clinton made herself at a fundraiser hosted by an Indian doctor when she said “I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily, after being introduced by Singh as the Senator not only from New York but also Punjab.”

However, the attack on Clinton in the document, which the New York Daily News reprinted (via RCP), is not a joke:

HILLARY CLINTON (D-PUNJAB)’S
PERSONAL FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL TIES TO INDIA

The Clintons have reaped significant financial rewards from their relationship with the Indian community, both in their personal finances and Hillary’s campaign fundraising. Hillary Clinton, who is the co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, has drawn criticism from anti-offshoring groups for her vocal support of Indian business and unwillingness to protect American jobs. Bill Clinton has invested tens of thousands of dollars in an Indian bill payment company, while Hillary Clinton has taken tens of thousands from companies that outsource jobs to India. Workers who have been laid off in upstate New York might not think that her recent joke that she could be elected to the Senate seat in Punjab is that funny.

It even goes on to (implicitly) criticize her for co-founding the Senate India Caucus. What is wrong with that?

Via The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, the rapper Jin (best known for the song “Learn Chinese”) has released the song “Open Letter 2 Obama” (MP3 download):

I bet you’ve never heard “higher fuel-efficiency standards” in a rap song before…

Update 6/18 7:01 AM: Here’s some related news on the hip-hop primary — Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of Run-DMC is backing Hillary “because it’s gangsta”:

According to The New York Observer, DMC is juggling his decision to back either Clinton or Barack Obama. Apparently, DMC believes Barack “could fix everything,” but is leaning towards Clinton “because it’s gangsta [and] I ain’t doing what everybody else is doing.”

I’m not pleased to see that the upcoming Playstation 3/Xbox 360 game Cipher Complex is based on the (admittedly fictional) premise that Iraqi WMD were “stolen before the U.S. invasion.” Too many people already believe that! Here’s the relevant passage from the current issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (p. 18):

Cipher Complex is part [of] a new crop of games that, at some level, attempts to connect to current events… Beginning in northern Iraq, Cipher Complex centers on weapons of mass destruction stolen from the country before the U.S. invasion (so that’s where they went!).

How long until the game where you lead the Bush/Unocal conspiracy to take over Afghanistan in order to build a natural gas pipeline?

The New York Times editorial board appropriately mocks Robert Bork for his lawsuit against the Yale Club:

There are many versions of the cliché that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged,” and Robert Bork has just given rise to another. A tort plaintiff, it turns out, is a critic of tort lawsuits who has slipped and fallen at the Yale Club.

Mr. Bork, of course, is the former federal appeals court judge who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987 but not confirmed by the Senate. He has long been famous for his lack of sympathy for people who go to court with claims of race or sex discrimination, or other injustices. He has gotten particularly exercised about accident victims driving up the cost of business by filing lawsuits. In an op-ed article, he once complained that “juries dispense lottery-like windfalls,” and compared the civil justice system to “Barbary pirates.”

That was before Mr. Bork spoke at the Yale Club last year, and fell on his way to the dais, injuring his leg and bumping his head. Mr. Bork is not merely suing the club for failing to provide a set of stairs and a handrail between the floor and the dais. He has filed a suit that is so aggressive about the law that, if he had not filed it himself, we suspect he might regard it as, well, piratical.

Mr. Bork puts the actual damages for his apparently non-life-threatening injuries (after his fall, he was reportedly able to go on and deliver his speech) at “in excess of $1,000,000.” He is also claiming punitive damages. And he is demanding that the Yale Club pay his attorney’s fees.

It reminds me of the way that libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick exploited rent control laws to extort more than $30,000 from his landlord — see this New Republic article for more.

Where do they find these people?

Weekly Standard senior editor Andrew Ferguson opened his Washington Post Outlook piece on Sunday by asserting there are no footnotes in Al Gore’s book The Assault on Reason:

You can’t really blame Al Gore for not using footnotes in his new book, “The Assault on Reason.” It’s a sprawling, untidy blast of indignation, and annotating it with footnotes would be like trying to slip rubber bands around a puddle of quicksilver. Still, I’d love to know where he found the scary quote from Abraham Lincoln that he uses on page 88.

“[L]ike trying to slip rubber bands around a puddle of quicksilver”? In fact, as Bob Somerby and Eric Boehlert point out, the book has endnotes, not footnotes. Did Ferguson open the book? How could he not know this?

In the world of the Post, such a colossal mistake results in this one-sentence correction a couple days of later:

Andrew Ferguson’s June 10 Outlook article, “What Al Wishes Abe Said,” said that former vice president Al Gore’s book “The Assault on Reason” does not contain footnotes. The book contains 20 pages of endnotes.

In his piece, Ferguson goes on to make a seemingly persuasive case that the Lincoln quote Gore uses on page 88 is bogus. But how much trust can we place in someone who can’t find 20 pages of endnotes in a 320 page book? They’re listed in the table of contents! I can even look up the exact citation that Gore uses on Amazon Inside the Book. In a profession other than opinion journalism, this kind of sloppiness would destroy your career.

Factcheck.org caught John McCain again claiming that “the tax cuts have dramatically increased revenues” at the May 15 GOP debate. As I wrote in April, he and Rudy Giuliani have suddenly embraced the supply-side dogmas that even Bush administration economists reject. Not coincidentally, they’re running for the GOP presidential nomination. All aboard the Straight Talk Express!

The zombie-like third party hype just won’t die!

Democratic consultant Bob Shrum is suggesting Mike Bloomberg has a chance of winning based on this dubious proposition:

The second key question: Can Bloomberg win? Mike, a businessman, is not the type to launch a Quixotic quest. Well, believe it or not, there is a long-shot path to Pennsylvania Avenue – if he really goes for the win rather than contenting himself with playing spoiler. He could target states like Missouri, where his gun control position would doom him in a two-way race. In a three-way contest, it could pick up all the state’s electoral votes with, say, 36% of the vote.

I’m skeptical that Bloomberg could win any states given the strength of party loyalty and the strength of the partisan organizations that are already in place. And as Michael Crowley pointed out, “Shrum doesn’t say how many states like this he thinks Bloomberg can successfully target.” Missouri is a long way from 270 electoral votes.

Writing in the Washington Post, Dan Balz suggests that the failure of the immigration bill could inspire a third-party candidate:

The collective failure of the two parties already appears to have stimulated interest in a third-party candidate for president in 2008 whose main promise would be to make Washington work. It is far too early to assess the viability of such a candidate, but it is easy to imagine the immigration impasse finding its way into a television commercial if someone such as New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg decides to run.

But as Matthew Yglesias points out, this claim makes no sense either:

But. But. But. What would the commercial say? Would it accuse congress of failing by failing to clamp down harder on immigration or would it accuse congress of failing by failing to deliver relief to suffering undocumented aliens? This is the crux of the matter. There isn’t a unitary “immigration problem” that Washington is failing to solve. Rather, various people see various different problems and there’s not a consensus as to which problem is sufficiently problematic as to warrant action.

Finally, Andrew Sullivan is hyping the silly Powell-Obama fantasy ticket and the likelihood of a third-party challenge if the major parties nominate Clinton and Giuliani:

The ticket may be a long-shot, but the connection between the two has already been established. One element of the coming campaign – and a function of its accelerated national schedule – is that two candidates will have it wrapped up pretty early next year. We will then have an opportunity to watch the candidates staff up over several months, give us a glimpse of their rival cabinets and teams. Jon Rauch explores this in the new Atlantic. A relationship between Obama and Powell would be a perfect blend of old-school Republican realism and diplomacy with a fresh, and internationally powerful new face in the presidency. My sense is that this country desperately wants to unite behind a rational, sane, realist in foreign affairs, who can appeal beyond either party’s base. If we end up in a polarizing Clinton-Giuliani race, then I predict a serious third party candidate…

Who is it going to be? What states are they going to win? What money are they going to use to get on the ballot? This is the same silly speculation that happens every four years. The press is either naive about politics, treating the public like rubes, or both.

(For more, see my previous posts on third party hype.)

A great “yo mama” slam from Jon Chait, who is bashing David Brooks for misrepresenting the liberal agenda:

Brooks writes, “Tax code changes to reduce outsourcing are symbolic.” Well, sure. That’s why it isn’t an important part of the liberal agenda. You know what is symbolic? Advocating a new governing ideology whose sole specific policy prescription is building more monuments.