Brendan Nyhan

Let me recommend Greg Marx’s critique of the AP’s Going Rogue “fact check”, which illustrates how the paradigm can go horribly wrong.

As Marx notes, the AP critique frequently targets claims that fall short of the standard we tried to uphold at Spinsanity — statements that are false or blatantly misleading. In some cases, the claims in question are simply standard political rhetoric — like almost every politician, Sarah Palin frames herself positively and makes her opponents look bad while omitting arguably relevant context. In others, the AP objects to statements (Alaskans don’t want help from government, her political career wasn’t driven by ambition) that can’t be directly falsified.

In the past, I’ve noted similarly ill-conceived fact-checks at Factcheck.org (here and here) and the Washington Post. After working on Spinsanity, I understand the temptation to publish an article after investing a lot of time in research and the pressure to produce content on a schedule, but it’s important to reserve fact-checks for claims that are truly objectionable.

The best parallel here is Michael Moore’s Sicko. As my former Spinsanity co-editor Ben Fritz and I wrote, Moore’s previous dissembling led to extensive fact-checking of the film (just as with Palin). Despite finding relatively few mistakes (especially in comparison with Moore’s previous work), several outlets published highly nitpicky critiques of the film anyway (as the AP did with Palin):

The mainstream media has started fact-checking Michael Moore one movie too late.

As veteran fact-checkers of Michael Moore, we should be taking a victory lap in the wake of “Sicko.” The liberal icon’s latest film has been aggressively fact-checked by major outlets including CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, the Associated Press, and USA Today.

However, the media has decided to pounce on Moore just when he seems to be addressing his problems with accuracy. As a result, they have little to say — indeed, the weakness of the criticism makes Moore look thoughtful and careful with his facts by comparison.

The primary focus of these analyses is to point out that he only tells one side of the story. That is undoubtedly true, as it has been in all his work, but also obvious. Despite Moore’s protestations to the contrary on NPR Monday, he is a propagandist. As such, he is under no obligation to present a balanced perspective.

The rest of the critiques — which focus on discrepancies in health care statistics — are so minor that even we can hardly protest…

So why are the media going after “Sicko” so aggressively?

… When it comes to fact-checking, the mainstream media tends to wait until the evidence (or the narrative) that someone is a serial dissembler becomes overwhelming… In our experience, outlets that want to seem “objective” rarely fact-check without some sort of strong pretext.

The same logic seems to apply to Moore. With “Stupid White Men” and “Bowling for Columbine,” we were one of the few sources documenting his mendacity. However, after “Fahrenheit,” several major media outlets began to wake up and question Moore’s facts, including Newsweek and USA Today.

With Moore’s reputation for dishonesty growing along with his profile, we weren’t surprised that CNN, USA Today and the AP thought it was worth devoting their resources to checking the facts in “Sicko.” We did the same, assuming Moore would continue his pattern of deception. When we didn’t find compelling evidence, we decided not to write about the topic. But the media outlets who had assigned the story apparently felt that they had to write something. As a result, they attempted to critique a movie whose greatest sin was simply being one-sided.

Marx’s final paragraph summarizes the problem eloquently:

This sort of thing matters because, in an increasingly contested political landscape and wide-open media environment, there really is a need for fact checking. There is value in forging a consensus across ideological lines that adherence to the facts is a prerequisite for public debate, and the AP is, theoretically, just the sort of institution that can help police politicians who mislead the public. But for the idea of fact checking to have any weight—and any hope of broad credibility—it must mean something more specific than “contesting a statement that we disagree with.” When Sarah Palin talks about “Obama’s ‘death panel,’” she’s spreading misinformation that needs to be repudiated. When she talks about being beckoned by purpose, she’s being a politician. We need to recognize the difference.

Update 11/23 8:39 AM: The AP trumpeted their success in an internal memo:

It was a literary treasure hunt. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” was perhaps the most anticipated memoir of the year, the pre-order alone placing it at the top of some best-seller lists, and leading newspapers, Web sites and television outlets were clamoring for an early copy…

…[T]he AP was determined to get the first copy.

Finally, they learned that a store had inadvertently placed the book on sale five days before its official Nov. 17 release date.

They bought a copy, ripped it from its spine and scanned it into the system so it could be read and electronically searched. A NewsNow moved within 40 minutes, followed quickly by multiple leads as details were gleaned from the 413-page manuscript.

The story commanded massive play, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal.com and USA Today, the three major television networks, and major Web sites and portals Yahoo, Google, Huffington Post and Politico. The Washington Post did a separate story about how the publisher’s carefully orchestrated rollout was foiled, and Palin herself, not happily, noted the scoop on Facebook.

It’s a classic example of how the chase for “breaking news” lowers standards. The AP was determined to be first and devoted a huge amount of resources to beating other outlets to the story. This counts as a win according to the strange rules of journalism in which being first is more important than being right. (The quality and content of the story received no attention in the memo.)

Newsweek’s decision to run a picture from Sarah Palin’s ill-advised Runner’s World photo shoot on its cover is being condemned as sexist by everyone from Palin herself to Media Matters, and rightfully so.* Some conservatives have also condemned the cover as demonstrating Newsweek’s liberal bias, which may also be true.

However, I think the most convincing explanation of the cover decision is not sexism or liberal bias, but economics. Newsweek is losing money and struggling to remain relevant in a 24/7 media culture. Running provocative covers is one of the few remaining ways that the magazine can create buzz, which should boost single-copy sales among marginal readers and increase readership (and consumption of advertising) among subscribers.

* Even more offensive is the the magazine’s decision to include a picture of a doll portraying Palin as a slutty schoolgirl inside the magazine.

National Journal’s Ron Brownstein makes an important point about health care — even if the Democratic reform bill is signed into law, Republicans are likely to try to repeal it if they take back the White House in 2013:

If Obama does sign a reform bill, which appears more likely than not, Republicans will face a momentous choice between consolidation and repudiation — between accepting the new program and seeking to dismantle it. The alternative paths are neatly captured by the GOP’s contrasting reactions to the two central cords of America’s existing social safety net. After FDR got Social Security approved in 1935, Alf Landon, his Republican challenger in 1936, denounced it as “unjust … stupidly drafted [and] … folly.” Roosevelt’s landslide victory over Landon (and subsequent re-elections) provided Social Security the time to build impregnable support. But many congressional Republicans kept fighting the program until President Eisenhower, a Republican, declared a truce after his election in 1952.

By contrast, Republicans largely accepted Medicare soon after President Johnson signed it into law in 1965. Although conservative Republicans such as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan had fiercely condemned the program before its creation, Nixon during the 1968 campaign spared Medicare from his criticism of the Great Society’s cost. Once elected, he quickly “became a strong supporter of Medicare” and effectively ended challenges to its existence, Morone notes.

Which path might Republicans follow if Obama signs universal health care? Several factors point toward confrontation. The GOP accepted Medicare so quiescently partly because the program began dispensing benefits just one year after passage and rapidly became too popular to assail. Social Security, though, was phased in over many years–as health care reform is slated to be. Such delay can invite “fierce and protracted … guerrilla war,” notes Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol.

Also encouraging confrontation is the breadth of Republican opposition. Almost all House Republicans at the time voted to derail Medicare and Social Security by “recommitting” the bills to committee. But once those challenges failed, about half of House Republicans backed Medicare on final passage and four-fifths supported Social Security. House Republicans last week voted 176-1 against the health care bill.

Some senior House Republicans have already pledged to repeal any health care bill if they regain the majority. And many GOP challengers in 2010 will surely echo them. But with Obama holding a veto pen, Republicans probably couldn’t mount a real threat unless they won the White House in 2012. One top adviser to a possible 2012 GOP presidential contender says that, given the GOP base’s hostility to the reform plan and independents’ unease, it is likely that “most potential [Republican] candidates will argue for wholesale replacement with their own version of health care reform.”

If Obama passes health reform and Republicans then seek its repeal, the next presidential election could lastingly redefine America’s social safety net. Like 1936 and 1968, 2012 looms as a crossroads in the relationship between Americans and their government.

Specifically, the bill defers the insurance subsidy system and the health insurance exchange until 2013, From a political perspective, it would presumably make more sense to deliver all of the bill’s benefits before the election that could decide its fate. So why is the bill structured this way? Here are a few possible reasons:

1. Deferring implementation until 2013 limits the costs of the bill under Congressional budget rules.

2. It avoids embarrassing implementation problems taking place during the campaign.

3. Setting up the health insurance exchanges is technically difficult and will take several years.

4. Despite the plan’s bad poll numbers, Democrats want the 2012 election to be about health care (a traditionally favorable issue).

In any case, even if Republicans gain ground in Congress and take back the White House in 2012, they would still have to defeat a Democratic filibuster in the Senate to repeal the bill. The odds of all those things happening aren’t especially high. But given the strength of the conservative base, we should expect a long GOP guerrilla war to try to weaken and undermine the program if it does in fact pass. This issue isn’t going away any time soon.

Update 11/17 12:46 PM: Matthew Yglesias clarifies an important point that I wasn’t clear about — a GOP effort to “repeal” health care reform wouldn’t necessarily eliminate every provision of the enacted legislation. However, from the standpoint of Democrats and advocates of reform, the changes Republicans are likely to propose would almost surely be seen as gutting the legislation.

Update 11/18 5:16 PM: The Kaiser Family Foundation has posted a useful summary of the House bill that includes implementation dates for key provisions.

Least plausible political argument I’ve seen today — Matthew Continetti’s Wall Street Journal op-ed claiming
Sarah Palin’s “poll numbers among independents are strong enough to give her a chance” to make a comeback (coincidentally, he wrote a book defending her). Here’s the key passage on Palin’s poll numbers:

Ms. Palin’s unpopularity—the result of horrendous media coverage and her role as the McCain campaign’s pitbull—is a major political obstacle. Her unfavorable rating hovers around 50%, the point at which most politicians would reach for the Valium.

An October Gallup poll put Ms. Palin’s favorable number at 40%, her lowest rating to date. In a November Gallup survey, 63% of all voters said they wouldn’t seriously consider supporting her for the presidency.

Yet Ms. Palin isn’t as unpopular as John Edwards, and she has a higher approval rating than Nancy Pelosi. As Hillary Clinton’s career shows, public perception changes over time. Ms. Palin remains highly popular among Republicans (69% favorable). But the Democrats’ striking antipathy to the former governor—she has a 72% unfavorable rating among them—drives down her overall approval.

Independents are a different story. These are the folks who decide presidential elections, and they are divided on Ms. Palin. In last month’s Gallup poll, Ms. Palin had a 48% unfavorable and 41% favorable rating among independents. Not good, but not insurmountable. Flip those percentages, and they could be serving moose burgers in the White House in 2013.

What drives independents’ uncertainty is their feeling that Ms. Palin isn’t up to the job. Independents blanch at her perceived lack of expertise on issues unrelated to energy or abortion. They look at Ms. Palin’s disappointing interview with Katie Couric last year, or laugh at Tina Fey’s impression on “Saturday Night Live.” Her resignation—still not fully explained—stokes their worst fears.

Continetti goes on to outline a strategy that he believes Palin could use to rehabilitate her image. But Palin’s reputational problems are more profound than he admits. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, perceptions of Palin’s qualifications for the presidency are shockingly low for a former presidential/VP nominee — there’s been no one comparable to her since Dan Quayle. As such, while it may be true that independents are “divided” in their feelings toward Palin (41% favorable, 48% unfavorable), they tilt heavily toward viewing her as unqualified. Continetti doesn’t mention any polls on the subject, but a Gallup survey released last week found that only 28% of independents (and 58% of Republicans!) believe Palin is qualified to be president — significantly lower than the other prominent Republicans included in the survey (Huckabee, Romney, Gingrich). Given how much people already know about her and how much negative attention she draws from Democrats and the press, it’s extremely unlikely she will turn around those numbers. In other words, keep the moose burgers on ice.

PS Note to Continetti: It’s a bad sign when you have to clarify that Palin is more popular with John Edwards, a man who cheated on his wife while she was battling cancer.

Update 11/18 9:46 AM: This post was cited in a Christian Science Monitor story on Palin’s 2012 prospects.

(Cross-posted to Pollster.com)

In addition to imitating white Republicans like Eddie Murphy and creating a blog that was briefly called “What Up?”, RNC chairman Michael Steele also became the first major political figure to use the Wayne’s World “Not!” catchphrase as a debating tactic on Sunday (via my friend Ben Fritz):

STEPHANOPOULOS: When you hear Governor Kaine talk about it, [the health care bill that passed the House] sounds pretty good…

STEELE: Well, it sounds good…

(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: … only one Republican voted for it.

STEELE: … Not! No, look, you know, Teddy Roosevelt probably didn’t have this in mind. And certainly, this would have been one of those things he would have hunted on the big — big range and shot dead.

Maybe the RNC should consider bringing in Dana Carvey or Mike Myers (they’re available!) — it’s hard to imagine them doing much worse than Steele.

Conservative elites continue to exploit the misperception that President Obama is a Muslim. The latest offender is Fox’s Sean Hannity, who suggested Monday night that President Obama was somehow responsible for the Fort Hood shooting:

This Fort Hood situation is really beginning to disturb me and should disturb everybody. And that is that there is a chance our government knew all about this guy Hasan and did nothing because nobody wanted to be called an Islamophobe. We’re not talking about Islam, we’re talking about radical Islam. You know, this guy going in there, god is great, etc., etc., and all the things he’s saying. But everybody hat worked with him, Bob, knew ahead of time, our government apparently knew and did nothing. Now, this is a terrorist act, if in fact this was motivated in such a way. What does it say about Barack Obama and our government?

By stating that “our government apparently knew and did nothing” about “a terrorist act” and then asking “What does it say about Barack Obama and our government?,” Hannity implies that Obama is sympathetic to Islamic terrorism.

Other, more fringe figures also tried to link Obama to the Fort Hood massacre:

-Leading birther Orly Taitz nonsensically invoked the shooting as a rationale for her groundless lawsuit challenging Obama’s eligibility for office.

-Jerome Corsi falsely claimed the alleged Fort Hood shooter advised the Obama presidential transition in a World Net Daily article.

These are only the latest in a long series of attacks on Obama that capitalize on false perceptions about his religious beliefs (building on a related series of attacks during the campaign):

-Hannity misconstrued the statements of a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships as a claim that Americans support Sharia law in Muslim countries.

–A New York Post op-ed and other sources previously made the unsupported claim that President Obama’s nominee to serve as legal advisor to the State Department wants to institute Sharia law in this country’s courts.

-Conservative pundit Frank Gaffney has claimed “there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself,” suggested that Obama’s apparent bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was “code” telling “our Muslim enemies that you are willing to submit to them,” and said Obama is “pursuing [an agenda] that is indistinguishable in important respects from that of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission ladies and gentlemen… is to quote to destroy Western civilization from within by its own miserable hand.”

-On the Lou Dobbs radio show, substitute host Tom Marr said “I have to believe that there is still an inner Muslim within this man that has some sense of sympathy towards the number one enemy of freedom and democracy in the world today, and that is Islamic terrorism.”

-Former Washington Times editor Wes Pruden wrote that Obama’s speech in Cairo was a “revelation of his ‘inner Muslim’…”

-Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich alleged that there is a “weird pattern” in which Obama administration officials were “prepared to take huge risks with Americans in order to defend terrorists” and claimed that the Obama administration’s “highest priority” is to “find some way to defend terrorists.”

-Senator James Inhofe called Obama’s Cairo speech “un-American” and said “I just don’t know whose side he’s on.”

I’ve added several of these quotes to my timeline of smears against Obama’s loyalty.

I tend to believe that many elites who promote misinformation don’t actually believe what they’re saying, but it’s rare that you see someone being as candid about it as Dick Armey:

Armey prides himself on his intellect and rationality, but his years in Washington have taught him the political uses of irrationality and even outright fantasy. He told me he does not believe some of the most extreme charges that emerged in the debate over health care reform — for example, that “death panels” will tell elderly people when it’s time to die — but he welcomes the energy and passion that such beliefs bring to his side. “You know that expression: The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” he asked. “Are their fears exaggerated? Yeah, probably. But are Obama’s promises exaggerated? I may think it’s silly, but if people want to believe that,” he said, referring to death panels, “it’s O.K. with me.”

But back in September, Armey appeared to defend the “death panel” claim after President Obama called it “a lie”:

Dick Armey, the former House leader who organized the rally, added his own patriot: “Patrick Henry said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ Well, Barack Obama is trying to make good on that.”

Approached by a reporter after the speeches, Armey said that what [South Carolina Rep.] Wilson did [shouting “You lie!” during President Obama’s speech to Congress] was no worse than what Obama did in calling the death-panel myth “a lie, plain and simple.” Wilson’s fault, Armey said, was that “he should not have expressed himself so clearly and openly as he did.”

“I mean, give ol’ Joe Wilson a break here,” Armey said. For an opposition party trying to harness public furor, it was the only option.

The bottom line is clear — for Armey, the ends (stopping health care reform) justify the means (misleading people about the proposed legislation).

Breaking new ground in the use of props on the floor of Congress, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) dispensed with Robin Hood quotes and cartoon dragons. Instead, he took the even classier route of holding up a baby and putting words into her mouth (via NPR):

As member of the House debated the health care reform bill on Saturday, one Congressman used an unique approach in opposition of the bill’s passage.

Holding a baby, Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) spoke for her, saying that she does not want government-run health care.

“This is Maddie. Maddie likes America because we have freedom here and Maddie believes in patient choice health care. She has come here to say she doesn’t want government to take over health care. She wants to keep her plan,” Rep. Shadegg said.

“Maddie knows if this bill passes, she knows her mom’s health care will go away and won’t be around for five years. If the bill passes then no more health care for her mom because it has to change. Maddie wants patient choice,” Rep. Shadegg said.

“She doesn’t want her mom’s premiums to go up. She doesn’t want her mom’s taxes to go up by $730 billion, do you, Mattie?”

“She wants America’s health insurance companies to have to compete with each other. She believes in choices, but most of all, she says, don’t tax me to pay for health care that you guys want. If you want health care, pay for it yourself, because it’s not fair to pass your health care bills on to me and my grandchildren,” Rep. Shadegg said.

I don’t think Shadegg wants to be Speaker — I think he wants to be Jeff Dunham:

PS Maddie, I’m sorry!

Since people seemed to like my post on the Coburn amendment, here are some political science visualizations of the 220-215 final passage vote on the House health care bill.

First, here is Royce Carrol’s auto-generated plot of the vote using Lewis-Poole optimal classification estimates:

The cutting line, which represents the best-fitting line separating yes from no votes, performs extremely well (414 of 435 votes are correctly predicted). Its orientation (not far from vertical) indicates that the vote was largely driven by the left-right ideological divide.

Similarly, here is a one-dimensional visualization of the vote from Simon Jackman’s blog using Clinton-Jackman-Rivers estimates of member ideal points (members are arrayed from liberal to conservative as you move from left to right; click on the graphic for a larger version):

Jackman also created a nice plot of the relationship between Obama’s vote share by House district and Democratic members’ votes on final passage:

For more on the House Democrats who voted no, see this interactive graphic from the New York Times and this CQ Politics analysis.

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