Brendan Nyhan

For those who are interested, I’ll be participating in an Illinois Humanities Council panel discussion about political division and debate with a very accomplished group of experts. A summary of the event, which will take place in Chicago on January 27, is below (note: RSVPs required — see the IHC website for details):

Ever since the 2000 elections, we’ve gotten used to the notion of a nation made up of red states and blue states, a nation divided politically and culturally, whose citizens can find little common ground.

Are Americans more ideologically segregated today than they have been in the past? Are public discussions of controversial issues more polarized? If ideological segregation and polarized discussion characterizes the current state of affairs, what does this mean for representative democracy and for our ability to make difficult decisions together? What is the role and responsibility of the mainstream media, and social media in our public discourse?

Please join us for a conversation with experts who are thinking, writing and talking about these issues, as we launch our new series, The (Un)Common Good.

Presenters:

• Danielle Allen, Ph.D. – UPS Foundation Professor, Institute for Advanced Study; author – Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education and Why Plato Wrote
• Wayne E. Baker, Ph.D. – University of Michigan, Robert P.Thome Professor of Management and Organizations; Professor of Sociology; Professor of Organizational Studies, LSA & Faculty Associate, Institute for Social Research; author – America’s Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception
• Bill Bishop – Co-author, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart; co-editor The Daily Yonder, a web-based publication covering rural America.
• Brendan Nyhan, Ph.D. – Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan; former Co-Editor of Spinsanity
• Pete Peterson – Executive Director, Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership, School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University
• Ralph Cintron, Ph.D. – Department of English, University of Illinois at Chicago (moderator)

People have been having a hard time holding two ideas in their head at the same time:

1. What Paul Krugman calls “eliminationist rhetoric” is bad.
2. Contrary to his suggestion, there is no evidence that such rhetoric caused Saturday’s events. Even if such evidence is later found, it would not justify the evidence-free claims that have been made in the last 48 hours.

For an example of the murky guilt-by-association tactics that have been employed by people on the left since the minutes after the shooting, consider this quote from the National Jewish Democratic Council (via John Sides):

It is fair to say — in today’s political climate, and given today’s political rhetoric — that many have contributed to the building levels of vitriol in our political discourse that have surely contributed to the atmosphere in which this event transpired.

The bolded passage is a chain of associations that would make Oliver Stone blush. NJDC “surely” doesn’t know the circumstances in which this event transpired, nor was there any evidence to support the constant invocations of the Sarah Palin bullseye map over the weekend. Nonetheless, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas tweeted “Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin” after the shootings and Brad DeLong wrote “Remember where the incitement comes from” and posted the Palin map, adding “It comes from Gabrielle Giffords’s voting for the Affordable Care Act.”

As Glenn Reynolds wrote in the Wall Street Journal today, liberals seem not to realize that much of the rhetoric and visuals they object to has parallels on the left (see here for example):

With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s words, a “climate of hate.”

The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—”lock and load”—and talked about “targeting” opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics… When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama’s famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”—it’s just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.

Some of the most troubling statements suggesting the use of violence in recent months have come from the right, but Republicans certainly don’t have a monopoly on extremist rhetoric. And in any case, there’s no indication that the alleged shooter was inspired by those statements. Attacking the entire conservative movement within hours of the shootings betrays the ideological nature of the project. Rather than reducing polarization, Krugman and others like him are creating more.

Update 1/10 12:41 PM — See also Jon Chait:

Since the closing stages of the 2008 election, conservatives have regularly described President Obama as an alien figure and his policies a fundamental threat to American liberty. It has become normal for conservatives to hint that they will take up arms if they don’t get their way politically — a violation of the cultural norm of respecting democratic outcomes that forms the basis for the stability of our political system. Sharron Angle, not just a fringe activist but the GOP’s candidate in a major Senate race, rhetorically flirted with outright sedition, and Republicans paid no attention to this, because they wanted to beat Harry Reid.

This is, I think, a serious problem. But it’s also a problem that has nothing, or almost nothing, to do with the tragedy in Arizona. This was not a right-wing militia member taking apocalyptic right-wing rhetoric about watering the tree of liberty too seriously. It was a random act.

I can see why those concerned about the rise of right-wing hysteria would want to use Loughner as a cautionary tale — even if he wasn’t a product of right-wing rage, they may be thinking, he is an example of what right-wing rage could lead to. Yet they fail to understand that this will appear to conservatives as an attempt to use the emotion of the moment to stigmatize them. The mania of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party must be dealt with on their own terms.

There’s a weird reversal going on in the debate over the propriety of inflammatory political rhetoric that has been sparked by Saturday’s shootings. During the Bush administration, conservatives frequently argued that criticism of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq encouraged our enemies. Liberals responded that these attacks were intended to silence dissent, and conservatives pointed out that no one had been legally silenced and that there was no right to speak without facing criticism. In the wake of the massacre in Arizona, however, it is liberals who are saying that conservative rhetoric about liberal politicians encourages violence (in this case, by domestic extremists), conservatives who feel that their dissent is under attack, and liberals who are responding that, as Matthew Yglesias put it, “Free speech guarantees the right to engage in irresponsible political rhetoric; doesn’t guarantee freedom from being criticized for it.” And with everyone in lizard brain mode, no one seems to notice the role reversal that has taken place.

With all of the coverage of President Obama’s staffing changes, it’s worth noting that he’s also been reading and soliciting outside advice as he prepares for the second half of his term. In particular, he’s signalled that he’s reviewing Ronald Reagan’s presidency by reading a biography of Reagan and meeting with Ken Duberstein, Reagan’s former chief of staff. But is Obama getting an accurate picture?

As an example, consider this account of Reagan’s presidency from Duberstein, who presumably told Obama something similar (though we don’t know for sure):

One way Reagan capitalized on [his] popularity was by focusing on moving public opinion, said Duberstein, who declined to comment on his advice to Obama in their Dec. 10 Oval Office meeting.

“The job of the president is fundamentally to build a consensus in the country in order to build the votes in Washington,” said Duberstein, Reagan’s chief of staff from 1988-89 and now chairman and chief executive officer of the Washington lobbying firm The Duberstein Group.

In fact, the “Great Communicator” generally wasn’t able to move public opinion in support of his ideas. That is a fiction that was created by the media and conservative hagiographers. In his books On Deaf Ears and The Strategic President, the political scientist George Edwards recounts how Reagan’s efforts repeatedly failed to increase support for his policy positions.

For instance, here’s Reagan himself writing in his memoirs about aid to the Contras (quoted in On Deaf Ears, page 53):

Time and again, I would speak on television, to a joint session of Congress, or to other audiences about the problems in Central America, and I would hope that the outcome would be an outpouring of support from Americans…

But the polls usually found that large numbers of Americans cared little or not at all about what happened in Central America…and, among those who did care, too few cared…to apply the kind of pressure I needed on Congress.

Reagan pollster Richard Wirthlin even wrote a memo to the president soon after his landslide re-election victory advising him against making high-profile speeches. “The president’s pollster told him,” Edwards writes, “that doing so was likely to lower his approval and generate more public and congressional opposition than support” (53-54).

None of this is surprising to political scientists, but it’s not well understood inside the Beltway, where the myth of the bully pulpit still reigns. Obama would learn more by reading Wirthlin’s memo instead.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

When will Gail Collins come up with some new material? Her end-of-year quiz includes her 12th Bristol Palin reference since October 2008, her 13th reference to Mitt Romney putting his dog on the roof of his car since August 2007, and fourth joke about John Boehner crying in the last month. She only became a columnist in July 2007 and she’s already recycling material. Even by the low standards of op-ed columnists, it’s been an incredibly fast decline toward intellectual and creative exhaustion.

As many other people have pointed out, the problem is that people like Collins are frequently elevated into columnist roles based on their career in journalism even though they themselves have nothing to say. Even those with a more substantive approach quickly run out of material and/or descend into self-parody (Broder, Friedman, etc.). Despite these obvious problems, prominent columnists are apparently given something resembling life tenure and can never be removed from their positions (the economics of the news create strong incentives to retain brand names). A better approach would be to have some sort of limit on the time anyone can spend as a columnist. Set Gail free!

Update 1/5 4:43 PM: Andrew Sullivan comments:

But term limits only make sense when there are a limited number of spots, and someone’s longevity is preventing someone else getting a point across. That was true a decade ago; it couldn’t be less true today. The institutional sinecures keep disappearing. Eventually, only Richard Cohen will be left.

I’m not sure what this means. Of course anyone can start a blog, but there are still only a few prestigious columnist slots at national publications like the Times and the Post. Given that those outlets continue to show little inclination to push out incumbents, the longevity of Collins, Cohen, and other established columnists is preventing newcomers from getting a chance.

Update 1/6 9:01 AM: Today’s column includes her fifth reference to Boehner crying. Stop her before she jokes again!

Chris Blattman inspired me to look up my top ten posts of 2010 (by traffic on this blog) — here they are in case you missed them:

1. The fallacy of insufficient extremism (10/1/10)
2. How much are Tea Party candidates hurting the GOP? (10/21/10)
3. The Obama tax cut misperception (2/15/10)
4. A preview of post-election storytelling (11/1/10)
5. Unsupported Democratic allegations against Chamber (10/11/10)
6. New Pew poll: Obama Muslim myth on the rise (8/19/10)
7. Pundits blame the victims on Obama Muslim myth (8/24/10)
8. Kos seeks to become the Jonah Goldberg of the left (8/10/10)
9. Hack narratives on Obama’s decline (3/8/10)
10. The difficulties of repealing health care reform (3/24/10)

Interestingly enough, some old content continues to attract significant traffic — here are five posts from previous years that were competitive with the top posts from this year:

1. The use of reconciliation 1980-2008 (4/20/09) [#1 post of the year by traffic due to links during the health care reform debate]
2. Leon Kass on ice cream cones (8/8/08) [highly recommended]
3. The continued dominance of the white quarterback (7/31/05) [apparently this is a common search on Google]
4. The Economist on “Meritocracy in America” (1/22/05) [ditto]
5. National Enquirer smears Obama (3/10/08) [ditto]