Brendan Nyhan

Via Andrew Sullivan, the obsequious rhetoric of Power Line:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Hyperbolic? Well, maybe. But consider Bush’s latest master stroke: the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. The pact includes the U.S., Japan, Australia, China, India and South Korea; these six countries account for most of the world’s carbon emissions. The treaty is, in essence, a technology transfer agreement. The U.S., Japan and Australia will share advanced pollution control technology, and the pact’s members will contribute to a fund that will help implement the technologies. The details are still sketchy and more countries may be admitted to the group later on. The pact’s stated goal is to cut production of “greenhouse gases” in half by the end of the century.

What distinguishes this plan from the Kyoto protocol is that it will actually lead to a major reduction in carbon emissions!

No wonder Power Line is so popular — this makes Rush Limbaugh look like an independent thinker. And, of course, the author (John Hindraker) fails to mention that Bush’s plan has no enforcement mechanisms. What a visionary! All we have to do to cut carbon emissions is make vague promises of long-term reductions! He’s the Van Gogh of environmental politics! The Einstein of carbon emissions!

Bill Frist’s decision to back an expansion of stem cell research is fascinating. Frist has been assiduously courting Christian conservatives for years in anticipation of a presidential run. So why did he decide to burn them now on a litmus test-type issue?

Some possibilities:

1) He decided that stem cell research is just too popular to resist. The fact that someone like Frist would back stem cells suggests that this issue is a political loser for conservatives and will soon be conceded by everyone to the left of Rick Santorum.
2) He realized that he’s not the candidate of choice for conservatives, so he’s trying to appeal to a broader swath of the Republican primary electorate and build up his general election appeal.
3) He realized that backing stem cell research plays up his greatest personal strength — his medical background.
4) After months of shameless pandering, he went with his instincts as a doctor rather than making a political calculation.

The stem cell debate is, of course, closely related to the abortion debate, but with one key difference — it’s playing out in the political realm without court involvement. So it’s a great test of the hypothesis that abortion politics are so polarized because Roe v. Wade removed the issue from the democratic process and prevented compromise. If that hypothesis is correct, then conservatives should eventually accept the legitimacy of stem cell research. The fact that so many conservatives have already accepted President Bush’s original plan — which allows for the destruction of embryos — suggests that the Roe theory is correct. Frist’s decision may be another step down that road.

Hillary gave a speech to the Democratic Leadership Council on Monday, and all hell broke loose. The funny thing is that if you actually read it, you’ll see it was largely Democratic boilerplate with only a few vague rhetorical gestures toward the center, as Mickey Kaus pointed out. But lefty bloggers lost their s—, helping Hillary position herself as a centrist without actually acting like one. As Kaus wrote, “it’s now also clear that her shift to the right doesn’t have to be that dramatic, because the … press is ready to interpret even the subtlest, most insubstantial shading as part of Hillary’s New Moderation. She can get credit for centrism without having to actually take too many positions that the left would disagree with.”

I don’t understand why people are falling for this. Even the very smart Matthew Yglesias claimed that Hillary is a moderate:

Ron Brownstein’s article on Hillary Clinton and the DLC twice asserts that she was once seen as a “champion of the left.” The question is: by whom? Not by the left wing of the Democratic Party which has always, and correctly, seen her as a moderate. Not by the moderate wing of the Democratic Party which has always, and correctly, seen her as a moderate. Instead, she’s been seen as a left-liberal by conservative propagandists and the public at large.

However, as I showed before, Hillary actually is a liberal according to the best indicators we have. Her Poole-Rosenthal DW-Nominate score (the standard in political science) rated her as the 12st most liberal member of the Senate in the 108th Congress — substantially to the left of the Democatic mean. And this is after her supposed turn to the center in the Senate. Here’s the chart again:

If she’s a moderate, then Carl Levin (13), Pat Leahy (14), John Kerry (16), Chuck Schumer (18) and Chris Dodd (20) are practically centrists. You would think the left would be thrilled at the prospect of a nominee with a more liberal voting record than Kerry, but instead they’re freaking out.

In the end, this reaction is very strange, but it certainly helps Hillary reposition herself stylistically, if not substantively, as a centrist. Kaus’s readers may have it right:

Several readers have suggested that Hillary Clinton is only attempting a mirror image of the trick George W. Bush used to gain the presidency in 2000: Set a moderate tone (“compassionate conservatism”) while making sure the fine print pleases the base.

If so, the question is whether that trick will work again. It depends on the underlying political circumstances (Bush’s popularity, the state of the economy, the war in Iraq, etc.), but I doubt it. The way the press incessantly portrayed Bush as a “different kind of Republican” seemed driven by a combination of his charm, Clinton fatigue, and reporters’ dislike for conservative ideologues like Newt Gingrich. It’s hard to imagine that sort of dynamic lasting very long with Hillary given the way she’s been treated by the media in the past.

A question recently came up during a conversation I had with Jason Reifler: what makes someone a good political candidate? Right now, political science models focus on variables like partisanship, economic performance, etc., and don’t take the personal qualities of the candidate into account. Is is true that personal qualities don’t matter, or is the problem that we can’t measure them well? And what should we measure that can be measured? For instance, the best data we have for Congressional candidates simply measures whether they had run for public office before or not, which is pretty crude. What are we missing?

In terms of whether quality candidates matter, I’m thinking in particular of our good friend HRC. The argument I’ve made is that she is a well-defined public figure with high unfavorables, which makes her a bad candidate.

Amy Sullivan made a similar claim recently in the Washington Monthly:

[W]hile her “favorables” are good—57 percent of Americans have a positive impression of her—her negatives are disturbingly high as well. This long before an election, most voters have yet to make up their mind about a candidate. Even as close to the primaries as December 2003, 66 percent of voters didn’t know what they thought of John Kerry. That’s not the case with Clinton. While at this point in George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign, Bush also had favorable ratings around the mid-50s, an additional 30 percent of voters said they either hadn’t made up their minds about him or they didn’t know who he was. Compare that to Hillary: Only 7 percent of respondents aren’t sure what they think of her, and—not surprisingly—no one says they haven’t heard of her.

Never in American political history has a candidate faced such a decided electorate at this early a point in a presidential race. That’s a disadvantage when you consider that one of the lessons of 2004 was that once voters develop a perception about a candidate, it’s as immovable as superglue. No one who thought George W. Bush was a likable, friendly guy could be convinced that he was corrupt or misleading. And once John Kerry became identified in voters’ minds as a “flip-flopper,” no amount of arguing could change that image. It’s a problem for any candidate. For Sen. Clinton, it could be fatal. Americans know exactly what they think of her. And nearly 40 percent say they would never consider voting for her.

But there are a few potential counter-arguments:

1) Personal qualities don’t matter; the economy does. Models focused on the economic predict presidential voting very well. Candidates are just stand-ins. So Hillary will win in 2008 if the economy is bad, and lose if it’s good.
2) Hillary is polarizing, but Bush’s 2004 campaign proves that a polarizing figure can win the White House if they turn out their base (this is arguably related to #1).
3) Personal qualities don’t ultimately matter because they are socially constructed and change over time. Al Gore was seen as a Boy Scout before he was completely redefined as a liar/leftist/etc. from 1997-2000, and now his profile looks like Hillary’s. In the jargon of social science, they’re endogenous. Dick Morris has made a similar argument that “charisma” is socially constructed.
4) Hillary has a unique (but completely unproven) ability to move the Democratic Party to the center, which can help increase a party’s vote share depending on the model you use and the assumptions you make.

What do you think?

It was an inferno here the last few days, but on the upside, I got to watch Grant Hill play pickup basketball against the Duke guys at the gym. Pretty cool.

Things have been busy; more soon…

Good for Seth Mnookin! The journalist has taken the unusual step of including a dedicated corrections section in the paperback version of his book about the New York Times:

Random House will publish the paperback of Seth Mnookin’s 2004 book, “Hard News,” on August 9. An advance copy received by E&P reveals that the book has a new subtitle, a new afterword by the author, and, in a rare move, three pages of corrections.

The subtitle has been changed from “The Scandals at ‘The New York Times’ and Their Meaning for American Media” to “Twenty-one Brutal Months at ‘The New York Times’ and How They Changed the American Media.”

Mnookin says he only made a few errors but, to continue his commitment to “transparency,” he is “offering up a relative rarity in the world of book publishing: a corrections section.”

Most of the corrections (like the Times’) are of a minor scale, such as the executive dining room of the paper being located on the 11th, not 14th floor, and Clyde Haberman stringing from City College of New York, not Columbia University.

The more substantial correction concerns the original’s assertion that two Timesmen, Jon Landman and Jim Roberts, had a testy relationship. Mnookin notes that this was based on a New York magazine story and that Landman tells him that though the two editors are not “drinking buddies,” they do share mutual respect.

It’s a little different than Ann Coulter, who “corrected” one mistake in her error-riddled book Slander, and that correction was itself misleading. Similarly, Michael Moore changed one deceptive caption in his fact-challenged documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” but his correction was, like Coulter’s, still misleading. And many, many other filmmakers and book authors never correct any mistakes. Mnookin deserves credit.

In an email to supporters after the announcement of John Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court, Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal falsely suggests that Roe is in danger of being reversed for the second time since Sandra Day O’Connor’s resignation:

Let there be no mistake about it. The case most likely to be reversed or pivotal in the coming Supreme Court nomination fight is Roe v. Wade. But even some of our progressive friends tend to marginalize the abortion issue. We must rally the millions of women and men who support reproductive rights if Roe is to be saved.

…The Feminist Majority will continue to examine Roberts’ record, and it will demand that Senators not confirm Roberts unless he makes clear that he will not reverse Roe and civil rights for women, minorities, and the disabled.

But of course, Roe does not need to be “saved”; there will be five votes supporting Roe on the Court after Roberts is confirmed. And the weasel phrase “reversed or pivotal” allows Smeal to suggest that Roe will be reversed, but gives her an out (since it could be “pivotal” without being “reversed”).

What’s ironic is that Smeal used almost the same misleading language in her last email, yet FM sent out a correction to this one stating that “In the original version of this email, the Feminist Majority, we believe, incorrectly stated that John Roberts represented Hooters in a sex discrimination case. Also, at a rally today, which may be appearing on CSPAN, Ellie Smeal inadvertently also made this error. We regret the error.” It’s great that they corrected the error, but pretending that Roberts will cause the court to reverse Roe is far more misleading.

According to two paragraphs at the end of a long Reuters story, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is chaired by Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, will “hold hearings on the use of espionage cover” and “review the probe of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame case for nearly two years.”

I’m no fan of Roberts, who has repeatedly dodged the White House’s manipulation of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction before the war in Iraq. But with the certainty of a scandal-mongering true believer, Josh Marshall quickly asserted that the order to investigate Fitzgerald came down from the White House:

Can any Senate Democrat not see now that Sen. Roberts only use for his committee is as a tool to defend the political interests of the White House? And will anybody deny that the decision to investigate Fitzgerald comes down on the orders of the White House?

And then in another post he did the same thing again:

And yet now we hear that [Roberts] plans to investigate Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation itself.

What this man won’t do when Karl Rove calls.

This is close to an accusation of obstruction of justice. And Marshall has no proof; he just asserts that the White House is involved. Didn’t Democrats used to object when the GOP acted like this during the Clinton years? It may turn out that the White House was involved, but who knows? Roberts may have decided to do this on his own. And that’s the point — we just don’t know.

Just a day after I denounced conservatives for manufacturing a conspiracy to suggest that John Roberts is gay, Atrios has made the same suggestion, even though the judge allegedly described in the story was reportedly removed from contention:

I Wonder Who This Was?

And did he wear plaid pants?

Amid the political hullabaloo surrounding white-bread Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, gay activist Michelangelo Signorile remembers a much more colorful candidate.

“There was a contender for the federal judiciary in the George W. Bush administration who I began receiving information … about him making sexual advances on men in gyms in Washington and other cities,” Signorile told us Friday. Immediately after sex, “he would … go into a religious tirade and then tell them how morally wrong all this was. His record was really conservative.”

…Having heard the stories about the would-be federal judge, the writer made a few calls to the White House.

“They said they’d have someone call me back, and they didn’t,” Signorile laughed.

“The upshot of it was, this person was just quietly no longer a contender!”

I’m revolted.

Update 7/25: A commenter suggests that maybe Atrios is mocking the blog post in question. It’s possible. But then why does he repeat the Signorile rumor? Also, the comments I read on the post appeared to be taking the suggestion seriously.

Update 7/26: Atrios says it was a joke in comments. It wasn’t clear to me given that the “joke” was combined with a suggestion that he wants to out the judge in the Signorile story, nor was it clear to his commenters who read it the same way. But fair enough; I’ll take his word for it. I’ve updated the title above to reflect this clarification.

Update 7/26: A further thought about this — you would think Atrios would understand why his intent might be confusing when he jokes about a phony conspiracy to suggest Judge Roberts is gay while endorsing the outing of a gay conservative in the same post. Those two ideas don’t fit together particularly well.

One of the primary criticisms of the Bush administration’s approach to foreign policy is to say that it unites the world against us. There’s some truth to that, but being popular is only useful insofar as it helps the US achieve its objectives, so I tend to think you need a more reasoned case for why having international support is a good thing: cooperation in the war on terror, support for US initiatives in multilateral institutions, etc.

What I never expected was how willing some conservatives apparently to go even further. Haven’t they done enough damage to America’s standing in the world? Don’t they realize that we stand on the precipice of radicalizing a generation of Arab youth against us? Yet in the aftermath of the London attacks, two prominent conservatives suggested ridiculous approaches that would have united our enemies and divided our friends.

Rich Lowry approvingly passed on “thoughts” from a British friend, including this: “There should be retaliation. Find a terror camp somewhere and hit it. Terrorists should, for these purposes, be treated as one nation, and all should be held responsible for any one attack.” And Tom Tancredo said the US should bomb Mecca if radical Islamists strike us with nuclear weapons.

Mecca is the most holy site in Islam. Destroying it would turn every Islamic country on earth against us. How hard is this to understand? The same thing applies to random strikes on “terror camps” before we know who committed the bombings. If we treat all of Islam, or all of the various terrorist groups, as one undifferentiated enemy, that’s what we’ll get.

And now there’s apparently a report in The American Conservative detailing plans to strike Iran after a second 9/11-type attack on the US — even if Iran is not involved. I’m all for a hawkish stance on anti-terrorism, but the war of ideas is part of the war on terror, and we’re going to lose it if this crowd stays in charge much longer.