Brendan Nyhan

Do Deborah Solomon’s interviews in the New York Times Magazine make anyone else uncomfortable? (She does the “Questions for…” feature that runs near the front.) They’re exceptionally harsh — to the point that I think of British political culture, where journalists are far more confrontational than here. I want a more aggressive press corps, but I still believe that interview subjects deserve respect, and some of her questions are basically personal attacks.

Here’s a sample from her interview with Jeff Gannon/Guckert:

SOLOMON: Should I call you Jim Guckert or Jeff Gannon?

GANNON: My Amex card still comes in the name of James Guckert, but I want to be called Jeff Gannon. That is who I am.

SOLOMON: Or rather it is the pseudonym under which you gained access to White House press briefings for two years, until your identity was revealed. Why do you think they let you in?

GANNON: I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know the criteria they use. I asked to be let in, and they allowed me to come. I was very fond of all the people in the press office. They treated me well. They probably treated me better than I deserved.

SOLOMON: Are you suggesting that Bobby Eberle, the Republican operative who hired you to shill for his Gopusa under the guise of his Talon News service, has special access at the White House?

GANNON: I just don’t know the answer to that question.

SOLOMON: Scott McClellan, the press secretary to President Bush, called on you and allowed you to ask questions on a nearly daily basis. What, exactly, is your relationship with him?

GANNON: I was just another guy in the press room. Did I try to curry favor with him? Sure. When he got married, I left a wedding card for him in the press office. People are saying this proves there is some link. But as Einstein said, “Sometimes a wedding card is just a wedding card.”

SOLOMON: You mean like “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”? That wasn’t Einstein. That was Freud.

GANNON: Oh, Freud. O.K. I got my old Jewish men confused.

SOLOMON: You should learn the difference between them if you want to work in journalism.

According to officials who have scanned the document, the unclassified version of the report makes a “case study” of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the major assessment that the intelligence agencies produced at the White House’s behest – in a hurried few weeks – in 2002.

(For references to deceptive claims about UAVs in All the President’s Spin, click here. For references to claims about mobile labs, click here. Links courtesy of Amazon’s Search Inside the Book feature.)

Update 4/4: It turns out that the commission denies that intelligence was politicized before the war and refused to look at political use of intelligence findings — see Dan Froomkin here and .

MoveOn.org sent the latest installment (PDF) in the liberal clown show attacking the “nuclear option” to their members last Thursday. (For past installments in this series, click here.)

The opening passage gives you a flavor for the level of idiocy:

Radical Republicans are reaching for absolute power to appoint Supreme Court justices who favor corporate and extreme-right interests over the rest of us – and we only have a few weeks to stop them.

Their plan is to throw out 200 years of checks and balances in the Senate, by silencing the minority party for the first time in American history. It’s a maneuver so outrageous that even Republicans call it the “nuclear option.” It will take 51 senators to defeat them, and the vote is probably less than a month away.

The Republican leadership is working overtime to keep their plan out of sight, because they know most Americans oppose their bid for absolute power. To fight back, we need to expose them on the nation’s editorial pages, and demand that our senators stand up against one party rule.

A later passage continues:

The “nuclear option” calls for Dick Cheney to use a parliamentary trick to overturn the 200-year-old right to filibuster judicial nominations. A filibuster is simply the right of a group of at least 41 concerned senators to extend debate and delay controversial votes. If Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist can twist enough arms to get 51 votes in support of Cheney’s ruling, the minority party will be completely silenced for the first time ever.

Below are some important points we’ve compiled to help get you started on your letter:

-Radical Republicans want absolute power to appoint Supreme Court justices that will favor corporate interests and the extreme right over the rest of us.

-To get it, they plan to use a parliamentary trick they call the “nuclear option” to overturn 200 years of bipartisan checks and balances that have kept the courts fair for centuries.

-After eliminating the right to filibuster, Bush and the Republicans would have absolute, unchecked power over all three branches of the federal government for the first time in American history.

-While the “nuclear option” is likely to come up in a fight over an Appeals Court nominee, make no mistake – the real targets here are the 4 Supreme Court seats likely to turn over in the next 4 years.

-Republicans have taken millions of dollars from their corporate backers. Now as payback, they’re trying to force through judges who will favor those same corporate interests by overturning laws protecting the environment, civil rights, and workers — laws these companies have been trying to get rid of for years.

Just to reiterate a point I’ve made before, the “nuclear option” would not “silence” Senate Democrats, which could still pontificate at great length against judicial nominees. Nor would it give the Republicans “absolute power,” which is just a ridiculous claim (has anyone heard of the separation of powers or the Constitution?). Also, where’s the evidence of a “200-year-old right to filibuster judicial nominations”? The oldest example of a successful judicial filibuster that I know of was Abe Fortas in 1968. And finally, it’s not true that a single party has never had control of all three branches of government before. After the 1948 election, for instance, Harry Truman was President, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court was dominated by Democratic nominees.

How stupid does MoveOn think its members are? This is hysteria.

Has anyone noticed? Social Security is dragging down President Bush’s numbers:

President Bush’s job approval slipped into the mid 40s in national polls released this week as he lost some support among men and other groups of core supporters.

Public approval for Bush slipped from 52 percent in a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll over the weekend to 45 percent in that same poll released Thursday. A CBS News poll released earlier in the week found Bush’s approval slipping six points to 43 percent.

(Here are the latest approval numbers from pollingreport.com.)

This highlights a point I’ve been meaning to make. No one seems to say this in the political media, so I will: President Bush is actually not very popular. His numbers in early- to mid-2001 were pretty weak for a newly elected president (basically mid-50s to low-60s). Obviously, they shot up after Sept. 11 and then again when we invaded Iraq (see this chart) but after those effects — which would have happened for any president — wore off he’s barely over 50%. Bush was then re-elected by the narrowest margin since Woodrow Wilson, and now his approval numbers are down to the mid-40s.

What’s striking about this is that conservatives are starting to suggest a Cheney candidacy in 2008, as Jon Chait points out in the LA Times. That would be an incredibly stupid move politically. A new candidate would allow Republicans to get a fresh start and avoid responsibility for the (many) mistakes of the current administration, just as Bush disassociated himself with the unpopular Republican Congress in 2000. If Cheney ran, it would be a straight referendum on Bush, who is likely to still have mediocre approval numbers absent a foreign policy crisis.

Andrew Sullivan’s “email of the day” yesterday is another party-creation fantasy:

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “As I read through yesterday’s emails, I am struck by the possible fruitfulness of moderate Republican conservatives joining forces with similar folks in the Democratic Party. Perhaps if we leave the extremists of both parties out on their respective limbs and offer a strong ideology of fiscal responsibility, “gentle” hawks only responding in war when clear need is identified, protecting our own public financially from being sold out abroad, protecting our borders (even at the expense of some very wealthy businesspeople) — promising personal rights of privacy in the pew and the bedroom and on the deathbed — I think a strong, pragmatic, sensible, workable “party” could emerge. We MUST ditch religious zealotry ASAP — it is killing real moral values!!”

This is akin to Mickey Kaus’s “party-in-a-laptop” idea and the “Internet candidate” idea. All I can say is keep dreaming. The American electoral system is based on plurality voting. That means that we will almost always have only have two major parties, and the activists in those parties currently control the primaries that elect candidates. Moreover, the parties organize Congress, and thus there are very strong incentives to remain within them. (Reading assignment: Why Parties? by my adviser John Aldrich.)

Of course, it’s possible to create a new party and dislodge one of the major ones, but it hasn’t been done in more than a century. And as I wrote before, there’s virtually no incentive to abandon a major party that already commands the allegiance of a third of the electorate and roughly half the elected officials nationwide. A centrist third party may be attempted — I’m sure John McCain thought about it after 2000 — but it’s extremely unlikely to succeed…

A classic expression of centrist Washington “pain causus” thinking from Robert Samuelson, who uses his description of social insurance as “welfare” to justify yet another argument for vast cuts in Medicare and Social Security:

We are a nation of closet welfare junkies, which helps explain why we can’t have an honest debate about Social Security. Social Security and Medicare are our biggest welfare programs, but because Americans regard “welfare” as shameful, we’ve found other labels for them. We call them “social insurance” or “entitlements.” Anything but welfare. Democrats and Republicans alike embrace the deception. No one wants to upset older voters. Well, if you can’t call something by its real name, you can’t discuss it honestly.

Welfare is a governmental transfer from one group to another for the benefit of those receiving. The transfer involves cash or services (health care, education). We have welfare for the poor, the old, the disabled, farmers and corporations. Social Security is mainly welfare. Workers’ payroll taxes pay the benefits of today’s retirees. The taxes aren’t “saved” for the workers’ own retirement. There have been huge disparities between taxes paid and benefits received.

Here’s Mark Thoma (via Brad DeLong) making the point I’d been meaning to make about this:

Social Security is mainly a means of insuring against economic risk. It is fundamentally an insurance program, not a saving program, and as such it is not welfare.

Just because an economic activity transfers income from one person or group to another does not make it welfare. Fire insurance transfers income. Some people pay premiums for their whole lives and collect nothing. Others, the unlucky few who suffer a fire, collect far more than they contribute. Does that make it welfare? Of course not.

Social Security is no different, it is an insurance program against economic risk as I explain in this Op-Ed piece. Some people will live long lives and collect more than they contribute in premiums, some will die young and collect less. Some children will lose their parents and collect more than their parents paid into the system, others will not. But this does not make it welfare.

Is gambling welfare? Gambling transfers income from one person to another. Does that make it welfare? Loaning money transfers income when the loan is paid back with interest. Are people who receive interest income on welfare?

There is an important distinction between needing insurance ex-ante and needing it ex-post. Insurance does redistribute income ex-post, but that doesn’t imply that it was a bad deal ex-ante (i.e., when people start their work lives).

Thus, by this definition, farm subsidies are welfare. Steel tariffs are welfare. R&D tax credits are probably even welfare, and so is AFDC. All of these are pure ex-post redistributions. That is fundamentally different from the purchase of insurance.

It’s true that we’ll have to trim Social Security and make major changes in Medicare to bring them into balance, but Samuelson has almost a fetish for benefit cuts — hence, the overwrought, inaccurate language.

(Related reading: Part I in the series “What is Robert Samuelson talking about?” See also this post.)

My always-sharp wife

SOLOMON: You, yourself, as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, know that Cosby’s following is hardly based on his wealth. Why do you think the black middle class has been so moved by his call for individual responsibility?

…. (1) that private accounts are dead:

“Bush’s First Defeat” (Jacob Weisberg, Slate)

George W. Bush’s plan to remake the Social Security system is kaput. This is not a value judgment.It’s a statement of political fact. In the months since the president first presented the idea as his top domestic priority, Democrats in Congress have unexpectedly unified in opposition to any reform based on private accounts. Several Republican senators whose votes would be needed for passage are resisting private accounts as well. And public opinion, which has never favored any form of privatization, is trending even more strongly against Bush’s scheme. At this point, there’s just no way that the president can finagle enough votes to win.

This means that Bush is about to suffer—and is actually in the midst of suffering—his first major political defeat.

… (2) that the Bush administration is fundamentally changing the relationship between the White House and the press:

“Bush team’s press policy raises many concerns” (Mark Sauer, San Diego Union-Tribune)

Reporters sat on the edge of FDR’s desk and bantered with the president. Harry Truman played poker with them. Eisenhower took the press to the golf course, Kennedy and Reagan took them to charm school.

George W. Bush has frozen them out.

At least that’s what critics – ranging from a variety of columnists, many of them liberal, to the conservative Houston Chronicle editorial page to journalism-school professors and ethics experts – are saying.

It’s not just that he abhors press conferences, holding just 14 in his first term compared with Clinton’s 44, Bush’s father’s 83, Reagan’s 27 and Carter’s 59.

Bush’s critics within the mainstream media and academia cite a growing list of incidents which they say are undermining the public’s right to know and democracy itself.

But this age-old dance between a president and the media covering him has taken a decidedly 21st century twist, involving the high-tech venues of blogging and Web sites, newfangled prepackaged PR and political plants.

… (3) that the Media Research Center is a non-credible source of information.

“Propaganda Clothed as Critique” (Brian Montpoli, CJR Daily)

We’d like to take Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center seriously. We really would. There are ideological biases in the press, overt and covert, and organizations like MRC can, theoretically, be an important resource in identifying and understanding them. Media Matters — MRC’s competitor on the left — is, for example, a consistently useful resource, largely because the organization tends to limit its criticisms to specific instances of media malfeasance, and then supports those criticisms with documented facts and clear, transparent reasoning.

Underlying every assertion by MRC, on the other hand, is the notion that the media are consciously and deliberately acting to distort the news, thanks to an overriding and all-consuming ideological bias.

In a Washington Post column last week, Michael Kinsley weighed in on Maureen Dowd’s career:

When the New York Times anointed Maureen Dowd as a columnist nine years ago, I gave her some terrible advice. I said, “You’ve got to write boy stuff. The future of NATO, campaign spending reform. Throw weights. Otherwise, they won’t take you seriously.” The term “throw weights” had been made famous by a Reagan-era official who said that women can’t understand them — whatever they are, or were.

Dowd wisely ignored me and proceeded to reinvent the political column as a comedy of manners and a running commentary on the psychopathologies of power. It is the first real innovation in this tired literary form since Walter Lippmann. Eighty years ago, Lippmann developed the self-important style in which lunch with a VIP produces a judicious expression of concern by the columnist the next day about developments in danger of being overlooked. Most of today’s columns are still variations and corruptions of this formula. But Dowd is different, and she is the most influential columnist of our time.

This makes me crazy. It’s true that Dowd has been “the most influential columnist of our time.” But that’s not all to the good. In fact, she’s arguably been the most destructive columnist of our time, playing a role in the trivialization of our political discourse over the last 10 years that can hardly be overstated. When Kinsley says “a running commentary on the psychopathologies of power,” that’s code for her proclivity for cheap shots at caricatures of political figures, whose inner thoughts and private life she regularly speculates about without concern for accuracy or fairness. And that’s assuming she goes beyond rote name-calling and pained attempts at pop-culture references (see “SpongeBush SquarePants”). The fact that she won a Pulitzer Prize is a blight on the good name of journalism.

(Reference: Spinsanity on Dowd. Also, Josh Marshall had a good article on Dowd that was published on Feed Magazine in 1999, but I can’t find it online. Does anyone know where it is?)

Ben Fritz (my friend, formerly of Spinsanity) has some breaking news on his blog from the strange world of “integrated brand marketing”:

MCDONALD’S BUYING WAY INTO HIP-HOP SONG LYRICS
March 23, 2005

LOS ANGELES — McDonald’s Corp. has hired entertainment marketing firm Maven Strategies to help the fast-food giant encourage hip-hop artists to integrate the Big Mac sandwich into their upcoming songs.

You just can’t make this shit up. As Ben says:

What’s sadder? The people who do these things unironically, the ones who report on it unironically, or the ones who pay $300 per year to read about it unironically? I honestly can’t decide.