Brendan Nyhan

One of the highlights of my Sunday was seeing Barack Obama rebut the phony Hillary “experience” meme on “Meet the Press”:

MR. RUSSERT: Hillary Clinton was first lady in Arkansas, first lady at the White House for eight years, U.S. senator for seven years. Can you compete with that?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, you know, if you’re comparing how long I’ve been in public office, I’ve actually been in public office longer than her. [Zing!] I think that Senator Clinton is a capable and, and intelligent person. I think she’s been a fine senator from New York. But when it comes to the issues that are really moving the American people right now—healthcare, energy, how we deal with a shifting economy—those are all issues that I’ve been working with at every level of government.

According to new studies sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, ad watch coverage by newspapers and local TV increased in 2006 (PDF). I haven’t read the reports closely, but the finding is encouraging.

The Nation’s Chris Hayes and PolitiFact have details on a smear circulating about Barack Obama by email. Here’s Politifact:

A chain e-mail says a photograph shows Barack Obama is unpatriotic because he “refused” to say the Pledge of Allegiance and did not put his hand over his heart. But the photo was taken during the national anthem, not the Pledge.

In the photograph, Barack Obama is standing in front of an American flag with his hands clasped just below his waist. Beside him are Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton, with their hands on their hearts.

The e-mail notes that Obama’s middle name is “Hussein” and says he “REFUSED TO NOT ONLY PUT HIS HAND ON HIS HEART DURING THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE, BUT REFUSED TO SAY THE PLEDGE…..how in the hell can a man like this expect to be our next Commander-in-Chief????”

…Obama said the e-mail was false and that the picture was taken during the anthem.

“My grandfather taught me how to say the Pledge of Allegiance when I was 2,” Obama said at campaign stop in Burlington, Iowa. “During the Pledge of Allegiance you put your hand over your heart. During the national anthem you sing.”

He called the e-mail “irritating” and likened it to others that have falsely accused him of being a Muslim.

Keep an eye out and send a corrective link in reply if you get it. These under-the-radar smears are especially insidious.

John Edwards has followed up on his silly and probably unconstitutional promise to cut off health insurance for members of Congress if they don’t pass universal health care by promising to do the same for members of his cabinet:

In his speech at Iowa’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner tonight, John Edwards vowed that if his administration doesn’t pass universal health care within six months of his inauguration, he’ll cut off health care coverage for his cabinet officers.

Unlike the previous threat, Edwards probably could carry this one out. I guess we know which of the two Americans his cabinet will come from…

There’s a simple answer to the David Brooks/Paul Krugman fight.

Brooks seems to be correct in pointing out that the frequently circulated tale of Ronald Reagan appealing to racism during a campaign visit to Philadelphia, MS — which appears in Krugman’s new book — has been exaggerated.

Krugman’s response is to provide a laundry list of inflammatory rhetoric and coded racial appeals used by Reagan during his political career.

But can’t both of them be right? The Philadelphia, MS anecdote has been exaggerated and oversimplified, but it remains true that Reagan exploited the issue of race in various ugly ways during his political career. Was that so hard?

Update 11/12 4:06 PM: Brad DeLong links to a History News Network article by historian Joseph Crespino, which cites various aspects of Reagan’s campaign that might have reinforced anti-black sentiment among Mississippi voters. However, none of them directly support the simplified account of the Philadelphia, MS speech that Krugman apparently tells repeatedly in his book The Conscience of a Liberal and in his column (here and here).

For more on how the standard liberal account of the speech is oversimplified, see Kevin Drum and Bruce Bartlett.

Update 11/13 10:40 AM: I’ve written a new post with more details — please click here for more.

Ezra Klein praises a Washington Post article on Rudy Giuliani’s health care dissembling:

This is the headline and first paragraph of an article in The Washington Post:

Giuliani Is Still Standing By Questionable Figures

The former New York mayor would have us believe that he was off by one percentage point at most in calculating his chances of surviving prostate cancer in Britain. In fact, he was spectacularly wrong the first time and equally wrong the second time. Epidemiologists say that his claim rests on a faulty statistical methodology that would not earn a passing grade at top medical schools in the United States.

The first graf of the article is pretty good work. Indeed, the whole article is pretty good work. I’d like to see it on A1 rather than A6, and I’d like to see Giuliani’s lies get mentioned in everyday coverage of the candidate, but baby steps.

That said, most people will still only real the headline. And the headline does not accurately convey the article’s conclusions. Giuliani is not “standing by questionable figures.’ He’s continually “lying about American health care.” There’s a big difference.

The media really has to get comfortable saying the “L” word.

Klein is right to call for more prominent and frequent coverage of Giuliani’s dissembling, but he should be careful what he wishes for in terms of the word “lying.” The problem is that the word implies an intention to mislead that can never be proven (that’s why we avoided using it in All the President’s Spin).

More importantly, speculation about motives is one of the worst features of the modern political journalism and not something we should be requesting more of. Reporters and pundits love to attribute motives to actions taken by politicians based on prevailing narratives about the candidates. As a result, the statements recognized as “lies” tend to be those that reinforce narratives of candidate dishonesty (see Gore, Al), which have been disproportionately attached to Democrats in recent years.

In short, calling for more denunciations of “lies” is, in practice, a call for more narrative-based speculation about motives. There’s an easier way: the media needs to state, flatly, that Giuliani is wrong in the context of regular news coverage. It’s that simple.

How not to run Congress 101:

Maybe now we know what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) meant when she said impeachment was “off the table.”

Lawmakers’ voting cards on the issue were literally just that — off the table — during Tuesday’s brouhaha when Republicans briefly hijacked control of the chamber with a procedural maneuver and thrust the Democrats perilously close to debating a resolution on impeaching Vice President Cheney.

Offered by long-shot presidential candidate Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), the unusual resolution would have resulted in the shortest impeachment debate ever — one hour — followed by a final vote on impeaching the unpopular vice president. Knowing how little Democratic leaders wanted to handle Kucinich’s hot potato, Republicans began switching their votes late in the process, hoping to shame Pelosi and Co. into a debate that the GOP believed would expose the radical left in the chamber.

Republicans began siding with Kucinich against the tabling of his resolution, resulting in scores of GOP members lining up to switch their votes. With the House’s electronic voting system shut down as the tally neared its final minutes, the only way for Republican lawmakers to change their position was to use old-fashioned voting cards, which, of course, slowed the proceedings further.

And then something happened purely by accident during the nearly two-hour disruption that helped gum up the works even more: A stack of red voting cards fell between a crack in two adjoining desks on the dais. (Red cards signify a switch to a “nay” vote; the green ones mean “yea.”) Clerks used rulers, pencils and anything else they could find to fish the cards out so the vote could be concluded.

The House clerk’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment about the tie-up, but a Republican aide who was privy to the mishap said: “Accidents happen, but accidents in the middle of votes to debate impeachment don’t happen every day. Unfortunately for the Democrats, it was that kind of day.”

To paraphrase Will Rogers, it’s not an organized political party, it’s the Democrats.

Via Jonah Goldberg, did you know that Linda Hirshman compared boycotting Fox News and NBC to standing up to the Nazis back in January?

Last summer the Nevada Democrats pulled out of a debate sponsored by Fox News. Loaded, racist and all the rest, the Dems decided it was incoherent for them to pretend Fox was a media outlet like any other.

Tim Russert is worse, because he has the mantle of the venerable NBC, network of Nipper, the radio dog. Bulletin to Democrats: Just Say No to Russert.

…Oh, and for you Obama and Edwards supporters, remember the story about the man who didn’t stand up to the Nazis when they came for his neighbors.

I didn’t. And, needless to say, the analogy is bizarre and inappropriate.

Roy Blount is the latest prominent Republican to suggest that Democrats want to “surrender” in Iraq — a word with implications of treason:

On the Iraq war, the Democrats prepared to offer the administration $50 billion but with strings attached, including a goal to withdraw troops by December 2008. Republicans quickly accused them of threatening to cut off money needed to support American troops.

“This bill is deja vu all over again,” said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip in the House. “The last time Democrats tried to tie funding for our troops to a date for surrender, they failed. And that was before the marked turnaround we’ve witnessed on the ground over the past several months.”

I’ve included an updated version of my timeline of GOP attacks on dissent below the fold.

(more…)

Amidst the silly flap over whether Hillary Clinton’s campaign left a tip at a restaurant in Iowa, it’s great to see one of the waitresses who served the candidate keeping her head about what’s really important:

Ms. Esterday said she did not understand what all the commotion was about.
“You people are really nuts,” she told a reporter during a phone interview. “There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.”

And Esterday doesn’t remember a tip being left! (Other reports indicate that the campaign left $100.)