Brendan Nyhan

After the bizarre kabuki debate (see here and here) in which David Brooks, Paul Krugman, and Bob Herbert all wrote New York Times op-eds about Ronald Reagan’s 1980 speech in Philadelphia, MS without making clear that they were debating each other, it’s great to see Slate publishing a critique of Will Saletan’s awful race and intelligence series and the Washington Post allowing two scientists to rebut Charles Krauthammer’s misleading claims about stem cell research. In both cases, the articles are much more informative and engaging because they can offer specific critiques of their opponents rather than vague attacks on straw men. More please!

To Slate’s credit, they have published a lengthy critique by Stephen Metcalf of Will Saletan’s disastrous series on race and intelligence. Here’s a sample (the emphasis is mine):

In a semi-retraction, labeled “Regrets,” Saletan writes, “The thing that has upset me most concerns a co-author of one of the articles I cited,” and goes on to describe how that author is pretty clearly a white supremacist. This Clintonian admission is technically true—Saletan did cite the work of J. Philippe Rushton, and and some may consider Rushton, based on his comments and connections, to be a dyed-in-the-wool, old-fashioned racist. Rushton is not the author of “one of the articles” Saletan cited. Rushton is the author of the article from which Saletan draws almost all of his ammunition. Rushton’s paper, co-authored with Arthur Jensen, “Thirty Years of Research Into Race Differences on Cognitive Abilities,” is a meta-analysis, a purportedly even-handed review of all the relevant research on race and intelligence. The majority of Saletan’s facts come to a reader, therefore, not secondhand, but third-hand, and via the prism of two highly biased researchers.

…Does it feel as though researchers like Jensen and Rushton, the so-called “race realists,” have spent their careers examining a range of competing hypotheses for the black-white IQ gap, and carefully scrutinizing the quality of the research at their disposal? Or have they been attempting, at all costs, to prove a single hypothesis—that blacks are congenitally dumber than whites? Shouldn’t researchers on any highly charged subject be required to show a minimum of clean hands? Why is it that every researcher I can find who supports the heredity-only thesis takes money from the Pioneer Fund? Would you ever take money from the Pioneer Fund? Under any circumstances?

How could Saletan miss this stuff? What was he thinking? It’s inexplicable.

Update 12/6 9:23 AM: I missed a December 1 New York Times article on the subject in which we learn that (a) the series wasn’t edited and (b) Saletan apparently blames the Internet, in part, as a place where we can’t have such a debate:

Appearing on a site with a liberal bent and written by its generally liberal science and technology columnist, William Saletan, the articles drew particular attention — and particular scorn. “William Saletan and the Editors of Slate Demonstrate That They Are Not Members of the Genetic Elite” was the headline on the Web site of the economist Brad DeLong (delong.typepad.com). On his popular political Web site, talkingpointsmemo.com, Joshua Micah Marshall referred to it as “Will Saletan’s nauseating foray into black genetic ‘pseudo-science.’”

Mr. Flynn and Richard Nisbett, two noted researchers on intelligence, also criticized the Slate series as grossly one-sided. Mr. Flynn said he was most persuaded by evidence that the environment causes I.Q. differences, but added that certainty on either side is misplaced given that the research is still in its infancy.

On Wednesday, Mr. Saletan posted a fourth article labeled “Regrets,” confessing that he had not realized that J. Philippe Rushton, a researcher on whom he had heavily relied, is the president of an organization that has financed a segregationist group. He also amended his previous position, stating that it was too early to come to any firm conclusions about the causes of racial differences in intelligence.

“If I had to do it again, I would have been much more circumspect about judging” the evidence, Mr. Saletan said in an interview. He later added that he should have written about inequality and left race completely out of it.

Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, said that since Mr. Saletan is a senior writer, his posts went up without anyone there reading them. “Given the sensitivity of the subject, Will’s commentary should have been carefully edited in advance of publication, and it wasn’t,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Mr. Weisberg said he was disturbed by the casual “what if” thought experiment and some of the sources Mr. Saletan cited. “I wouldn’t have stopped Will from writing on this subject, but I would have challenged him on these and other issues,” he wrote.

He added that a rejoinder by another Slate writer, Stephen Metcalf, was scheduled to be posted Monday.

Mr. Saletan said he was completely unprepared for the voluminous and vehement reaction. “I did not mean to start a wildfire.”

A subject as sensitive and complicated as this deserves to have a higher level of proof, he said, adding that he erred in treating it like any other topic.

“I don’t agree that it’s best not to discuss it,” he said, but “you have to do it in a responsible way and always with a constructive purpose.” Judging from his own experience, he said, the Internet is not a place where that can be done at the moment.

“I’m a little disappointed in myself,” he added.

He’s not the only one.

Over at Polysigh, John J. Pitney, Jr. questions the Obama kindergarten essay that I (among others) mocked Hillary Clinton’s campaign for using against him:

Bloggers and reporters are ridiculing the attack. As a political scientist and former oppo guy, I wonder why such a well-organized campaign made such a blunder.

As the father of a five-year-old, I have a different question: Was Obama really writing essays in kindergarten? Even under today’s ridiculously ramped-up kindergarten standards, kids are doing great if they can scrawl letters or the occasional word. And Obama attended back in the 1960s.

So there are three possibilities here:

• First, his kindergarten class was very advanced;
• Second, he was extremely precocious; or
• Third, the teacher just made the whole thing up.

He’s right — it does sound fishy.

A savvy take from the insider newsletter (subscribers only, alas):

It’s no surprise HRC has gone on the offensive. What is surprising: her angle of attack. When HRC put Obama on his heels re: Pakistan or dictators, it shined the light on her one big advantage – experience. But now, Camp Clinton’s throwing around terms like “slushfund” to undermine Obama’s change message. Problem is, she’s not a particularly effective messenger on “new politics.” Edwards sitting on the sidelines (on purpose?) doesn’t help. Also, Obama has done to HRC on health care what she did to him on Iraq: Blur the differences.

Confused about the relative merits of Hillary and Obama’s health care plan? So am I. Let’s try to boil it down.

Shorter policy debate (via Jonathan Cohn): While both plans will expand coverage substantially, Hillary’s plan probably covers more people. However, the health policy experts and economists are still fighting about this.

Shorter political debate: On the one hand, it’s important to establish universal coverage as a principle, as Clinton does, so that it won’t be bargained away in the legislative process (Ezra Klein). But requiring people to pay for health insurance may be a difficult sell politically (Noam Scheiber).

Feel better? I do.

Update 12/5 10:08 AM: The New York Times story on the “who covers more?” debate suggests the answer is not at all clear. Clinton would require coverage, but Obama might end up covering more if enough people don’t comply with the mandate.

Update 12/6 9:15 AM: Scratch that — see here and here for problems with the article linked above.

How can Hillary Clinton say stuff like this with a straight face?

Clinton wondered aloud if it made sense to “put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience who started running for president as soon as he arrived in the United States Senate.” Obama was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. Clinton first won election in 2000 from New York.

“How did running for president become a qualification to be president?” Clinton asked a few hundred Iowans at the Surf Ballroom, where Buddy Holly and other first-generation rockers played their last show before dying in a nearby plane crash in 1959.

The exact same criticism could be applied to her. Indeed, Obama has been doing a better job calling her out on the way she keeps using Bill’s time in the White House as the basis for her claims to have more experience.

Along these lines, I was amused (but a little embarrassed) to see Maureen Dowd write almost the same thing as me about Hillary’s experience a couple of weeks ago.

Me on January 4:

Implicitly, the Clinton experience argument seems to rest more on the fact that she was inside the White House advising her husband for eight years. But no one’s suggesting that other people who advised Clinton are qualified to be president on that basis — otherwise Rahm Emanuel and Leon Panetta would be throwing their hats in the ring.

Dowd on November 21:

She was a top adviser who had a Nixonian bent for secrecy and a knack for hard-core politicking. But if running a great war room qualified you for president, Carville and Stephanopoulos would be leading the pack.

You read it here first!

Now is the time when the press starts to go berserk about every little change in poll numbers, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the fundamentals of the Democratic and Republican races have not changed as much as people think. In particular, as Josh Marshall points out, the Intrade futures markets still counts Hillary Clinton as the overwhelming favorite on the Democratic side, which I think is correct. (On the other hand, Rudy is arguably overvalued.)

Isn’t the news in this lede the fact that Obama and Edwards are supporting a minimum wage of $9.50 per hour?

Could former senator John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama be considering a truce?

For a brief moment Saturday night, that unlikely prospect suddenly appeared possible.

Democratic presidential candidates had gathered here for the Brown and Black Forum, a panel on minority issues, and during a question-and-answer period, Edwards (N.C.) was given an opportunity to aim a question at any of his rivals.

Rather than hit Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) with a tough challenge, Edwards lobbed something of a softball to Obama: Would the senator from Illinois, he asked, join him in pushing to raise the minimum wage to $9.50?

“I think our voices together are more powerful than our voices alone,” Edwards said, praising Obama even as he asked the question.

In his response, Obama did not hesitate. “The answer is yes,” he said, drawing a large round of applause. “And John has done good work on this.”

According to MSNBC, Edwards wants to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2012. Under current law, the minimum wage is now $5.15, will rise to $5.85 on July 24 and to $7.25 in two years.

The economic evidence on the effects of the minimum wage is more mixed than most people realize, but this seems like a major increase with potentially significant negative effects on entry-level employment. I’d like to see what Democratic-leaning economists think…

Update 12/5 9:02 AM: Phil Klinkner of Polysigh sends along this graph, which illustrates that a $9.50 minimum wage would be very high in real terms (it looks like it would approach the historical peak of the late 1960s):

The Daily Howler’s Bob Somerby notes that vaunted straight talker John McCain told Charlie Rose that tax cuts increase revenue last Tuesday:

MCCAIN: We’ve presided over the largest increase in the size of government since the Great Society, and we didn’t pay for it. And I think—

ROSE: We didn’t pay for it because we had a tax cut that did not give us the revenue?

MCCAIN: Tax cuts—tax cuts increase revenues. The tax cuts, the revenues increased because of it. The spending outpaced the tax cuts.

And as Somerby also pointed out, Rudy Giuliani’s latest TV ad includes yet another claim that tax cuts increase revenue:

When I became mayor of New York City, things were out of control. I lowered taxes, I reduced the growth of government, made government more accountable, and New York City boomed. I would do these things for America because I know they work. I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues. Democrats don’t know that. They don’t believe that. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards — here’s a promise I assure you they’ll keep. They are making the promise to raise taxes. The only thing I can tell you in addition to that is, they’ll raise taxes even more than they promised. I’m Rudy Giuliani, and I approve this message.

Yet, as Somerby notes, the New York Times fact-check completely ignores the issue while the Washington Post ad watch falsely claims the effect of tax cuts on revenue is “a matter of fierce dispute among economists.”

What’s the point of fact-checking if you’re not going to call Rudy on that claim? Even Bush administration economists disagree!

And of course, these aren’t the first such statements from Rudy, McCain, or the GOP field in general. Giuliani made similar claims earlier this year (here and here), as did John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson (here and here). In fact, it would be worth asking if anyone in the GOP field disagrees. I doubt it.

As Barack Obama’s campaign notes (along with many bloggers), Hillary Clinton is pushing opposition research quoting an essay he wrote in kindergarten:

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want to Become President.’ “Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama’s kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, ‘I Want To Become President,’ the teacher said.” [AP, 1/25/07]

Did you know he cried once when he fell and scraped his knee? Clearly this man isn’t tough enough to be president!

On a more serious note, I agree with the Chicago Tribune’s Eric Zorn, who writes that Hillary has “blundered into illustrating one of the more unflattering caricatures of her … in a way that invites not sober criticism but mockery.” It’s a great illustration of the pathologies of both opposition research in general and the hyper-aggressive post-Bill Clinton, post-Swift Boat Democratic “war room” mentality in particular.