Brendan Nyhan

With a big lead in her New York Senate race and early 2008 trial heats, is Hillary Clinton continuing to try to move back toward the center? Drudge is claiming that she will support John Roberts and has a background quote supposedly bashing MoveOn.org:

Senator Hillary Clinton has confided to associates that she intends to vote FOR Bush Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Unless some unforeseen development occurs around Roberts, Clinton will throw her support behind confirmation, says a top source.

“Look, we’re not thrilled President Bush is in office and gets to make these choices,” said a top Hillary source, “but we have to make the best of the situation until the next election!”

With her support of Roberts, Clinton ignores pressure from the reactionary-activist wing of the Democrat party.

“She is simply doing what is right for the country, not MOVEON.ORG,” the Clinton insider explained.

Given what Drudge did to Clinton in the 1990s, it would certainly be ironic if her campaign is actually leaking to him now. But given Drudge’s standards of “journalism,” this might be complete garbage. We’ll see.

Via Kevin Drum and Unfogged comes one of the wackiest blog posts I’ve ever read. The author, Charmaine Yoest, a conservative apparatchik now at the University of Virginia, accuses the left of insinuating that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts is gay. What’s the evidence for that very serious charge? A blog post on “Manhattan Offender” (whatever that is), a joke on Wonkette, and a New York Times article that Ann Althouse thinks is intended to suggest that Roberts is gay. The alleged problems with the Times story: it mentions that Roberts played Peppermint Patty in a Charlie Brown play at his all-male boarding schools, shows a series of pictures of him among men (shockingly enough, people who attend all-male schools are frequently photographed among men), mentions the fact that he married in his 40s, and includes a picture of him as a teenager in plaid plants.

That is a ridiculously flimsy basis for suggesting a leftist conspiracy. But Powerline, the ugly id of blog conservatism, pounced on Yoest’s post, exaggerating it even further:

[Democrats] are hinting that John Roberts is a homosexual because he was once photographed–more than thirty years ago–wearing plaid pants. You think I’m making this up? Charmaine Yoest has the story. If you think that’s contemptible, consider this: some on the Left have also suggested that Roberts’ four year old son is “gay.”

Throughout American history, until now, there have been limits. There have been depths beneath which Americans would not sink for the sake of partisan advantage. Even during the Civil War, when the Democrats were fighting to preserve slavery, limits were observed. Now, all civility is gone. There is no depth to which some Democrats will not sink. Hold your nose. Things are only going to get worse. With MoveOn and the Daily Dose dominating Democratic politics, all constraints are gone.

Who needs evidence when you can make up a conspiracy against you? In the Kabuki theater of 21st century politics, everyone wants to cobble together an offensive attack against them so they can denounce their enemies and portray themselves as victims. It’s the same approach Republicans used when they claimed that several blocked judicial nominees were the victims of anti-Hispanic and anti-Catholic bias (a claim that may be revived during the Roberts nomination fight).

And how ignorant are the people at Powerline about politics? The idea of a mythical age of political civility is nonsense. Here are the limits observed before the Civil War:

His opponents countered by making fun of Lincoln’s limited experience as a statesman and his “slang-whanging stump speaker” style, which they said reflected a limited intellect that would be an embarrassment to the nation should he be elected President. The Charleston Mercury ridiculed his looks, depicting him as a “horrid looking wretch . . .” unfit for office. Cartoons showed Lincoln dancing with black women and championing “amalgamation” and “miscegenation” (mixing of the races). One widely distributed picture showed Lincoln steering a ship with a thick-lipped black man embracing a young white girl sitting at his feet on deck. Other pictures were much cruder and even more blatantly racist, of a type never before so prevalent in a national election. One secessionist in Georgia warned that Lincoln planned to force the inter-marriage of black and white children, and that within “ten years or less our children will be the slaves of Negroes.”

Yes, as Drum mentions, this is Time’s 2004 blog of the year. We are losing our minds.

In addition to catching flak from Democrats for his ugly racial history, Virginia Senator George Allen’s recent pre-presidential trip to New Hampshire reportedly also managed to annoy Republicans, as Robert Novak reports:

Sen. George Allen of Virginia, the hottest early prospect for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, blundered on his visit to New Hampshire May 3 by conducting two fund-raisers there.

GOP insiders in the nation’s earliest primary state did not want to criticize him publicly, but called Allen’s New Hampshire performance “odd.” That’s because presidential candidates are supposed to spend funds in the state, not take money out. Allen was raising money for his 2006 Senate re-election campaign.

Via Wonkette, here’s an ex-Bush administration official speaking in late 2004 with The Nation’s David Corn:

“[Ari Fleischer] testified before the [Valerie Plame] grand jury for six hours. Afterward someone asked me if I thought he could get through all that without saying something untrue. Ari talk for six hours without saying something untrue? That’s not possible.“

I’d amend that to “misleading” since part of Fleischer’s genius is to say things that aren’t exactly untrue but leave a false impression. Still, it’s amusing, and it gets at a real question: was Fleischer was able to restrain himself after befuddling the White House press corps with disinformation for more than two years? The legal system plays by a whole different set of rules. There are already suggestions that he may be in trouble; we’ll see.

For more on the greatest spinner to ever hold forth from the White House podium, see Spinsanity’s posts on him, including our Fleischer retrospective; the many Fleischer references in All the President’s Spin; and Jonathan Chait’s 2002 Fleischer takedown in The New Republic.

Back in May, I wrote about how Los Angeles Times Ron Brownstein had failed to disclose his engagement to John McCain’s communication director when he hyped McCain’s 2008 presidential prospects. To his credit, Brownstein eventually ran a disclosure after getting married. LAT Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus later commented it was ok for Brownstein to discuss McCain “in a minor way.” I’ve been corresponding with McManus in the period since in the hopes of getting more specifics on the newspaper’s policy toward Brownstein’s relationship, but no official statement has yet been produced.

I don’t want to pick on Brownstein, who I think is one of the nation’s very best political reporters and analysts. I would hate to see him taken off the beat because of his marriage. At the same time, though, I think it’s crucial for him to be aggressive about disclosing the conflict of interest that exists. In the clubby world of Washington, those sorts of disclosures rarely happen because the relationships are well known among elites (but rarely known by the wider public). Thus, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell fails to mention she’s married to Fed chairman Alan Greenspan; Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper doesn’t note that he’s married to Democratic consultant Mandy Grunwald; and so forth.

So I decided to take a look at the transcripts of Brownstein’s frequent television appearances — the worst medium for disclosures because guests have no control of the topics that are discussed and very little time in which to speak. As a result, disclosures almost never happen. And that’s exactly what’s happened with Brownstein.

The list of times McCain has come up since Brownstein got married is growing. Brownstein briefly discussed McCain’s views on immigration on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on May 20 and McCain’s views on the filibuster/”nuclear option” debate on “Inside Politics” on May 23, July 1, and July 4, never mentioning his wife (you can find transcripts for those shows here). And Brownstein implicitly praised McCain’s immigration proposal in a LAT column on July 11 that ran without a disclosure.

I would rather see Brownstein write and speak about McCain as much as he wants, but disclose the relationship as openly as possible so that readers/viewers can draw their own conclusions. Instead, we’re getting a worst of both worlds solution where Brownstein doesn’t talk about McCain much, but when he does there’s no mention of his relationship. This is especially ill-advised on television, where there can be no reasonable assumption that CNN viewers read Brownstein’s LA Times disclaimer.

Like me, Jon Chait is troubled by the President’s obsession with exercise over substance:

A week ago, when President Bush met with Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III to interview him for a potential Supreme Court nomination, the conversation turned to exercise…

Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? I don’t mean the fact that Bush would vet his selection for the highest court in the land in part on something utterly trivial. That’s expected. What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy.

My guess is that Bush associates exercise with discipline, and associates a lack of discipline with his younger, boozehound days… The notion of a connection between physical and mental potency is, of course, silly. (Consider all the perfectly toned airheads in Hollywood — or, perhaps, the president himself.) But Bush’s apparent belief in it explains why he would demand well-conditioned economic advisors and Supreme Court justices.

Bush’s insistence that the entire populace follow his example, and that his staff join him on a Long March — er, Long Run — carries about it the faint whiff of a cult of personality. It also shows how out of touch he is. It’s nice for Bush that he can take an hour or two out of every day to run, bike or pump iron. Unfortunately, most of us have more demanding jobs than he does.

Breaking news from Drudge: “Mel Gibson’s next film will feature abundant violence…”

We have a problem in this country: we use too much oil. It pollutes the air, increases global warming, and forces us to police the Middle East to ensure a stable energy supply, which has helped radicalize angry Arab youth. What’s the easiest way to reduce oil consumption? A gas tax, as Matthew Yglesias noted recently. Taxes cause some inefficiency, but shifting relative prices is a far more efficient and effective way to reduce oil consumption than government mandates. That’s why even conservatives like Greg Mankiw, the former top economist in the Bush White House, have supported it. Mankiw wrote a 1999 article in Fortune titled “Tax Gas Now!”, which argued that a gas tax paired with an income tax cut “may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer.”

So what’s the problem? The public hates it, and politicians won’t go near it (Mankiw had to eat his words later). One reason is that the government’s commitment to ensuring that people get a fair deal from a gas tax is not credible. Politicians have every incentive to take the extra revenues and put them toward more pork while taking back the accompanying tax cut over time. So why not have an independent Federal Reserve-type board of economists that’s responsible for adjusting the tax cut to maximize fuel efficiency without creating economic dislocation? The board could also be responsible for creating a yearly tax rebate that could be administered separately from the normal income tax system. That way people would see the proceeds from the gas tax coming back to them in a transparent way.

If we’re going to make progress on reducing fuel consumption, we need a different approach. Why not this one?

Since my wife and I bought a house, I started getting a ton of junk mail peddling home repair services, second mortgages, etc.. Does anyone know if my mortgage company is selling my contact information, or if the junk mailers are getting it from public documents? If it’s the former, can I opt out? Or do we need a law to fix this?

Don’t miss today’s New York Times story on the indigenous female pro wrestlers of Bolivia, which includes the greatest front-page photograph in the history of the newspaper: