Brendan Nyhan

“World of Warcraft Gamers Plan Avatar March for Ron Paul”. For more, see this site, which includes some fantastic graphics:

Mike Huckabee better watch out…

Paul Krugman on the logical incoherence of John McCain’s explanation of his record on tax cuts:

McCain now says that he supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Not only that: he’s become a convert to crude supply-side economics, claiming that cutting taxes actually increases revenues. That’s an assertion even Bush administration officials concede is false.

Oh, and what about his earlier opposition to tax cuts? Mr. McCain now says he opposed the Bush tax cuts only because they weren’t offset by spending cuts.

Aside from the logical problem here — if tax cuts increase revenue, why do they need to be offset? — even a cursory look at what Mr. McCain said at the time shows that he’s trying to rewrite history: he actually attacked the Bush tax cuts from the left, not the right. But he has clearly decided that it’s better to fib about his record than admit that he wasn’t always a rock-solid economic conservative.

Sounds like straight talk to me!

The Washington Post and New York Times report on the group of old, increasingly irrelevant moderates who seem to want to draft Michael Bloomberg for a “national unity” government. There’s a serious problem, however. Neither Bloomberg nor the people trying to draft him have a national constituency or an actual issue-based rationale for running.

As I’ve written before, the only people who want Bloomberg to run are (a) moderate former elected officials and pundits who want to be relevant and dislike polarization and (b) consultants who would make a fortune from his candidacy. To repeat my line: some people call pundits and political consultants the elite; Bloomberg calls them his base.

The reasons Bloomberg is exceptionally unlikely to win are straightforward. Third-party candidacies are usually built around an issue that cuts across party lines like the deficit or race; Bloomberg has no such issue. More importantly, the factors preventing a successful third party bid — which include strategic voting for one of the top two candidates, party loyalty, ballot access, and the Electoral College — are essentially insurmountable. As a result, Bloomberg would probably follow the trajectory of John Anderson, a moderate Republican who ran for president as an independent in 1980. He entered the race with a splash and then tailed off into irrelevance. I would expect Bloomberg to do the same thing despite his billions.

With that said, Bloomberg would undoubtedly affect the race, particularly if he used his cash to go negative on one or both major party nominees. My take is that he would be more likely to peel moderate Democrats and independents off of, say, Hillary than to pull voters from the Republican nominee. But it is hard to predict.

In the end, he’s more likely to pull a Colin Powell and flirt with the idea for a long time before finally saying no. You get a big ego boost without the humiliation of utter defeat. (Ask Fred Thompson what happens when you say yes!)

The only thing worse than journalists pretending to be theater critics is to have actual theater critics writing about politics (see Rich, Frank). The latest perpetrator is TNR’s theater critic, who just posted this nonsense on The Plank:

In more cheerful news for Hillary, whatever time she’s been spending focus-grouping her laugh lately is paying off. When confronted with a Peggy Noonan column that called her more polarizing than Nixon, she erupted not in the old cackle but a new effusion, with a hint of giggle. Charm!

I missed it, but my friend and former Spinsanity co-editor Ben Fritz points out that Tim Russert, who is legendary for his preparation, apparently asked some pretty inane questions of Ron Paul. My favorite is this exchange:

MR. RUSSERT: You say you’re a strict constructionist of the Constitution, and yet you want to amend the Constitution to say that children born here should not automatically be U.S. citizens.

REP. PAUL: Well, amending the Constitution is constitutional. What’s a–what’s the contradiction there?

MR. RUSSERT: So in the Constitution as written, you want to amend?

REP. PAUL: Well, that’s constitutional, to do it. Besides, it was the 14th Amendment. It wasn’t in the original Constitution. And there’s a, there’s a confusion on interpretation. In the early years, it was never interpreted that way, and it’s still confusing because people–individuals are supposed to have birthright citizenship if they’re under the jurisdiction of the government. And somebody who illegally comes in this country as a drug dealer, is he under the jurisdiction and their children deserve citizenship? I think it’s awfully, awfully confusing, and, and I, I–matter of fact, I have a bill to change that as well as a Constitutional amendment to clarify it.

Does Russert even know what “strict constructionist” means? Being one certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t amend the constitution. If it did, then constructionists would have to oppose the Bill of Rights, the end of slavery, giving women the right to vote, etc. The whole line of questioning makes no sense.

Things I don’t understand:

(1) Who decided it was a good idea to waste a New York Times review on Liberal Fascism?

(2) David Oshinsky’s highly charitable review, which claims “what distinguishes Goldberg from the Sean Hannitys and Michael Savages is a witty intelligence that deals in ideas as well as insults — no mean feat in the nasty world of the culture wars.” Is it now grounds for praise to be less idiotic than Michael Savage? Have we really sunk that low?

Let me echo Matthew Yglesias and suggest that John McCain’s surge in the polls is a good reason to pick up Matt Welch’s McCain: The Myth of a Maverick. While I’m not sure I buy all of Welch’s analysis of McCain’s personality, the book is a valuable compendium of everything unflattering in his background, much of which I had never heard of due to the media’s love affair with the Arizona senator.

One thing that particularly struck me was the disjunction between McCain’s current views on war (he’s pro-) and a quote Welch unearthed from McCain’s 1983 speech opposing the continued deployment of US troops in Lebanon:

The fundamental question is “What is the United States’ interest in Lebanon? It is said we are there to keep the peace. I ask, what peace? It is said we are there to aid the government. I ask, what government? It is said we are there to stabilize the region. I ask, how can the US presence stabilize the region?…

The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.

What can we expect if we withdraw from Lebanon? The same as will happen if we stay. I acknowledge that the level of fighting will increase if we leave. I regretfully acknowledge that many innocent civilians will be hurt. But I firmly believe this will happen in any event.

As Welch writes, the speech “would have eerie echoes to debates two decades later.”

Saturday’s New York Times features two particularly insipid articles critiquing candidates’ reactions to the Bhutto assassination. Here’s the nut graf of the primary story by Patrick Healy:

The Bhutto assassination is one of those rare things in a presidential race — an unscripted, unexpected moment that lays bare a candidate’s leadership qualities and geopolitical smarts. Think of Mr. bin Laden’s videotape message late in the 2004 election — giving President Bush a chance to look more commanding than Senator John Kerry — or the twists of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, as Ronald Reagan made President Jimmy Carter look feckless.

Can someone explain to me how the bin Laden video “[laid] bare” George W. Bush’s “leadership qualities and geopolitical smarts”? What is Healy talking about?

After presenting some candidates relatively charitably, Healy then moves on to pedantic nitpicking. This, for instance, is one of the dumbest fact-checks I’ve ever read:

Some candidates had moments, meanwhile, that sounded a bit out of the presidential loop. Mitt Romney said that, if he had been president, he would have gathered information from “our C.I.A. bureau chief in Islamabad.” The Central Intelligence Agency has station chiefs, not bureau chiefs.

Busted! Clearly, Mitt Romney isn’t ready to be president.

The worst, though, is this passage about Mike Huckabee:

Mike Huckabee, the leading Republican in polls of Iowa caucusgoers, found himself on the defensive on Friday, trying to clarify earlier remarks in which he said the chaos in Pakistan underscored the need to build a fence on the American border with Mexico, and that “any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country” should be monitored. A series of misstatements in discussing the issue could buttress criticism that Mr. Huckabee has faced from his opponents that he lacked experience on foreign policy.

Note the passive voice in the last sentence, which seeks to obscure Healy’s own role in legitimizing that criticism. Like many people, I’m concerned that Huckabee lacks a deep knowledge of policy, but it’s pretty clear that reporters are being influenced by that narrative and writing nitpicky stories that serve to reinforce the perception. (It’s the same story as the narrative-driven feeding frenzy over Mitt Romney’s minor exaggerations.)

Things get even worse in the accompanying fact-check article on Huckabee by David Kirkpatrick. Ask yourself this question: would misstatements this minor become a story for any other candidate?

In discussing the volatile situation in Pakistan, Mike Huckabee has made several erroneous or misleading statements at a time when he has been under increasing scrutiny from fellow presidential candidates for a lack of fluency in foreign policy issues.

Explaining statements he made suggesting that the instability in Pakistan should remind Americans to tighten security on the southern border of the United States, Mr. Huckabee said Friday that “we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities, except those immediately south of the border.”

Asked to justify the statement, he later cited a March 2006 article in The Denver Post reporting that from 2002 to 2005, Pakistanis were the most numerous non-Latin Americans caught entering the United States illegally. According to The Post, 660 Pakistanis were detained in that period.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security, however, concluded that, over all, illegal immigrants from the Philippines, India, Korea, China and Vietnam were all far more numerous than those from Pakistan.

In a separate interview on Friday on MSNBC, Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, said that the Pakistani government “does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists.” Those borders are on the western side of Pakistan, not the eastern side.

Further, he offered an Orlando crowd his “apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.” His aides said later that he meant to say “sympathies.”

He also said he was worried about martial law “continuing” in Pakistan, although Mr. Musharraf lifted the state of emergency on Dec. 15. Mr. Huckabee later said that he was referring to a renewal of full martial law and said that some elements, including restrictions on judges and the news media, had continued.

Remember, this is a newspaper that routinely ignores far serious misstatements by the President of the United States about major policy issues. But if Mike Huckabee says “eastern” instead of “western” or “apologies” instead of “sympathies,” watch out!

Update 12/29 3:29 PM: Matthew Yglesias mocks geography trivia and points out the striking parallel between the narrative-driven nitpicking of Huckabee and what happened to Al Gore:

[I]n a sense maybe it’s fair to make a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to a minor geography slip-up.

But I don’t really think so. That’s the same kind of logic that led the press to conclude it was okay to say Al Gore had lied and said he invented the internet even though he (a) never said that, and (b) what he did say was true. To the press, the important points were (a) the press didn’t like Gore, and (b) Gore was a liar. Thus, any anecdote that could possibly be seized on to illustrate the point that Gore was a liar was seized on — whether or not they were actually lies. It was BS then, and it’s BS for it to happen to Huckabee. There’s solid evidence out there that he’s clueless on foreign policy, so point to the evidence.

Like many journalists, the Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman may sometimes pull his punches when reporting on partisan disputes over economic policy, but when both sides agree something is a bad idea, watch out. Check out his lede for a story on Mike Huckabee’s “Fair Tax”:

To former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, supporting a national retail sales tax is more than a policy proposal. It has provided much-needed muscle for his campaign, filling rallies and events with fervent supporters hoping to replace the entire income and payroll tax system.

There’s one problem: A national sales tax won’t work, at least not according to tax experts and economists of all political stripes. Even President Bush’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform dedicated a chapter of its 2005 final report to dismissing such proposals.

“After careful evaluation, the Panel decided to reject a complete replacement of the federal income tax system with a retail sales tax,” the panel said. It concluded that such a move would shift the tax burden from the rich to the poor or create the largest entitlement program in history to mitigate that new burden.

…[T]he biggest criticism is that the tax cannot be administered. Many economists say a black market would develop overnight, especially in the service sector…

At the same time, federal spending would shoot up because the government would have to pay sales taxes on purchases. To compensate, the sales tax rate would have to rise to more than 40 percent for the government to take in as much as it does now, said William G. Gale, a tax economist at the Brookings Institution. State and local governments, facing a new burden on purchases, would have to increase taxes to maintain current levels, as well.

On the other hand, Huckabee’s website claims that the Fair Tax “will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness”!

In the course of his lament at the lack of bipartisanship in Washington, Evan Thomas says things were not as bad at mid-century:

[T]he middle of the 20th century was a bit better on the question of cooperation. Back then the political parties tried to be big tents. The Democrats numbered conservative Southerners as well as liberal Northerners. The Republicans had some big-city liberals as well as rural conservatives. But then, starting in the 1960s, when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson bravely embraced civil rights, Southern conservatives deserted the Democrats. By the ’80s, Democratic strength was centered in the big cities and along the coasts, and liberal interest groups had taken over the party. Neither party tried as hard to reach out to the ideologically diverse.

Atrios is right to slam Thomas for soft-pedaling the composition of the Democratic Party before civil rights in this passage, but the problems with his analysis run much deeper. What Thomas fails to realize is that the bipartisan era was a historical aberration built on conservative Democrats who remained in their party due to the history of race in the South. Once they and like-minded constituents became Republicans, the political system returned to the historical norm of partisanship and polarization.

This point needs to be made again and again because so few elites grasp it. Indeed, Paul Krugman makes the same error as Thomas in The Conscience of a Liberal, which attributes the polarization of contemporary American politics to movement conservatism. In fact, while movement conservatism may be the proximate cause, there’s a good argument to be made that the re-polarization of American politics was an inevitable result of the party realignment on race in the 1960s and 1970s. Movement conservatives made the first move, but the process of re-polarization is still ongoing.

So when you hear someone touting how great bipartisanship was in the old days, ask them if they believe the price we paid was worth it.