"Serious" Culpability on the Debt Ceiling Hostage Situation

The American national media's main failing during the recent debt ceiling hostage situation was its frequent refusal to describe it accurately, instead insisting that 'both sides are equally to blame.' However, some supposedly sober, responsible "serious" journalists and political players not only failed to halt the madness – they joined the far-right and urged it on.

Jonathan Chait identifies some of the culprits in "The Debt Ceiling Crisis And The Failure Of The Establishment" (7/29/11). The "pro-hostage-taking" crowd included the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Concord Coalition, and The Washington Post editorial board. Head over to Chait's post for the evidence and links. As he observes (my emphasis):

The basic problem [with Megan McArdle's analysis] is that Wall Street has massively underestimated the loony determination of the Republican right. McArdle's description reminded me of Ellis, the financial hot shot in "Die Hard" who thinks he can deal with the terrorists the way he deals with corporate takeovers in his regular work…

The failure to understand the crisis we were entering was widely shared among centrist types. When Republicans first proposed tying a debt ceiling hike to a measure to reduce the deficit, President Obama instead proposed a traditional, clean debt ceiling hike. He found this position politically untenable for many reasons, one of them being that deficit scolds insisted that using the debt ceiling to force a fiscal adjustment was a terrific idea, and that connecting the deficit debate to a potentially cataclysmic financial event was the mark of seriousness.

The political assumptions here turned out to be badly wrong. The main problem is that the Republican Party does not actually care very much about the deficit. It cares about, in order: Low taxes for high-income earners; reducing social spending, especially for the poor; protecting the defense budget; and low deficits. The Obama administration and many Democrats actually do care about the deficit and are willing to sacrifice their priorities in order to achieve it, a desire that was on full display during the health care reform debate. Republicans care about deficit reduction only to the extent that it can be undertaken without impeding upon other, higher priorities. Primarily "deficit reduction" is a framing device for their opposition to social spending, as opposed to a genuine belief that revenue and outlays ought to bear some relationship to each other.

The Post has since published a series of increasingly terrified-sounding editorials pleading for a debt ceiling hike backing away from its bold hopes that the debt ceiling would produce a bipartisan compromise. In retrospect, they now see what should have been obvious: Increasing the political leverage of the Republican Party made a Grand Bargain less, not more, likely. Moreover, the deficit hawks who represent the center of Washington establishment thought badly underestimated the danger entailed by tying high stakes negotiations involving the Republican Party to a cataclysmic event. Happy visions of Bob Dole and Tip O'Neill danced in their heads, oblivious to the reality of what they were facing.

Paul Krugman comments on the piece and the mindset of the Very Serious People (VSPs):

This was terrible policy, even if it had worked: now is not the time for fiscal austerity, and the way the VSPs have shifted the whole conversation away from jobs and toward deficits is a major reason we’re stuck in the Lesser Depression.

But it also showed awesome political naivete. As Chait says, the first thing you need to understand is that modern Republicans don’t care about deficits. They only pretend to care when they believe that deficit hawkery can be used to dismantle social programs; as soon as the conversation turns to taxes, or anything else that would require them and their friends to make even the smallest sacrifice, deficits don’t matter at all.

I can’t help but notice that Chait’s list of chumps is basically the same as the list of people who puffed up Paul Ryan and gave him an award for fiscal responsibility. Enough said.

What’s really awesome here is the blindness. Anyone reading the newspapers with an open mind had a pretty good idea of what would happen in the debt fight; only Washington insiders managed to fool themselves.

But they’re Very Serious.

Let's recap. These Very Serious People somehow completely ignored the lessons of the Great Depression, one of the seminal events of the 20th Century, and they don't understand the Keynesian economic principles that drove America's recovery. They're hardly alone in that, with austerity being all the rage these days (for the lower classes only, of course). However, it's further proof that the Beltway Conventional Wisdom is often pretty dumb, and the chattering class just does not know or care much about policy – even if that policy is absolutely crucial. They actually thought (and still think) that cutting government spending in a recession is a great idea.

These Very Serious People also thought that taking a routine but vital action, raising the debt ceiling, and holding it hostage, was a good idea. Seriously. They thought threatening the very functioning of the government and the American economy was a good idea.

The Very Serious People also thought, somehow, against a mountain of evidence, that the Republican Party was at its heart reasonable, and would never actually go all the way through with their threat – a threat the VSPs were cheering on. Even though many of these people are paid to cover politics, they completely misread GOP inflexibility and insanity, which is nothing but, oh, the major political development of the past 10-30 years.

Lastly, the Very Serious People refused to report the debt ceiling situation accurately, continually insisting that "both sides are equally to blame." This made the situation even worse. Needless to say, they also ignored their own culpability in egging it on.

In rough stupid-evil-crazy terms, that would be a whole mess of stupidity, followed by astounding recklessness and irresponsibility, followed by are-you-fucking-kidding-me stupidity, followed by gutlessness and dishonesty.

Unfortunately, this is a recurring pattern, in general terms, at least. Most glaringly, consider media conduct leading up to the Iraq War and afterward. The chattering class does not value policy. That would take time. Plus, as a privileged class, most policies that hurt the middle class will not after the political class much. This means they've both unable and unwilling to make fact-based, qualitative judgments about most political issues. Others will suffer, not them.

Meanwhile, even if they're not right-wing, or don't identify themselves as such, they are often simpatico with the right-wing's goals. At the very least, they are strangely indulgent of, oh, threatening the government's basic ability to function, cutting tax cuts further for the rich and calling war skeptics traitors.

Finally, they whitewash their own role in creating these messes. How many Iraq War cheerleaders have truly repented, and detailed how they were wrong? I can think of a handful, but not many. Many reporters offered unduly rosy accounts of Iraq years after the invasion, I suspect because they thought it would somehow vindicate their colossally poor judgment. They were likewise subservient in the coverage of the Bush administration's torture regime. Similarly, even now, many reporters are reluctant to point out exactly how disastrous the Bush administration was economically.

So, how many supposedly "serious" and "objective" cheerleaders for the debt ceiling hostage situation – an inexcusably irresponsible move – have owned up to their role in manufacturing that crisis? I'm guessing that number is about nil.

It's a Herculean struggle to get accurate media coverage due to journalists' dishonest, shallow, continual insistence that "both sides are equally to blame." But what makes that struggle downright Sisyphean at times is that very often, the media is also to blame for creating the mess itself. If there's one thing harder to say for a pundit to say than "conservatives deserve the overwhelming share of the blame on this," it's "I was completely, utterly wrong." The conservative base is mean, crazy and dumb, while the chattering class is mostly dumb, decadent, craven and vain. They view themselves as savvy, worldly and smart, of course. Upton Sinclair said that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." That's true, and it's also true that it's hard to get someone to admit error, even (or especially) a glaring one, when that will shatter their entire self-image.

(Related posts: "Extremism in Defense of Nihilism is a Vice" and "Partisanship, Policy and Bullshit.")

Addendum: Chait's piece isn't the whole story. Digby points out that Obama wanted to make a "grand bargain" cutting programs to at least some degree, and wasn't forced as much as Chait portrays. David Dayen adds more to the picture, exploring how conservative "blue dog" Dems played a key role in introducing the horribly irresponsible notion of a debt ceiling standoff. Meanwhile, driftglass takes Chait to task for his "magical thinking" in a related post. I find Chait to be a mixed bag (and perhaps that's fodder for another post) but it's certainly possible for someone to write well on some subjects but not on others, or to make both good and poor points in the same piece. Hey, give credit where and when it's due, critique with what's sincerely offered but inaccurate, and challenge the outright bullshit.

Political Aristocracy

Glenn Greenwald posted a good piece back on 12/3/08 on "Nepotistic succession in the political class." Digby linked it and two of her older posts on the subject, "Populist Monarchs and Subjects" and "Noble Neocons." Do check them out.

I'll add an overdue follow-up to my similarly-themed "Cokie's World," on social mores inside the Beltway and kinship ties. I had been wondering about Cokie Roberts' relationship with Al Gore, given their similar Beltway pedigrees and the press savaging of Gore during his presidential campaign for 2000. Naturally enough, Bob Somerby's covered the subject, including Cokie Roberts perpetuating a misleading account of Al Gore and Love Story, and Roberts falsely accusing Gore of distorting Bill Bradley's record.

My favorite, though, is a segment from October 2000 on ABC's This Week. As Somerby writes, "In this segment, Cokie starts by reciting the Standard Press Theme: Al Gore doesn’t know who he is. The requisite mockery about Dingell-Norwood followed close behind." Here's the relevant transcript (via Somerby, with his emphasis):

DONALDSON (10/22/00): Cokie, who's the real Gore?

ROBERTS: Well, who knows? And I'm not sure he does, and that's the other problem is that not only is he—was he—did he come across as unlikable in the debates, which was a problem—you say, a messenger problem, it's that his message can't get through because of the messenger. But it's also that he did come across as sort of changeable and all of that so that people couldn't—couldn't figure out who he was. And—and I think that—that in the long run, it's clear that they heard him, even though everybody says he won them, that—that in the long run, that he was heard. But George is right. Bush sits at our poll, for instance, right at 48. Every day he's at 48 percent.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Never moves.

ROBERTS: And Gore's numbers go up and down, up and down, up and down. Now maybe at some point, he goes over that 48 and wins.

DONALDSON: Well, you talk about the message. I mean, remember during the last debate, Gore kept talking about “the Dingell/Norwood bill, the Dingell/Norwood bill?” And we thought, as a public service, we'd just show you who Dingell and Norwood are. Let us tell you about them.

Representatives Dingell and Norwood introduced the Patients' Bill of Rights favored by Gore in the House of Representatives. John Dingell, from Michigan, is the longest-serving Democrat in the House. His father, who was a House member before him, was a sponsor of Social Security in the '30s, and pioneered the idea of national health insurance back in 1943. Charlie Norwood from Georgia, a Republican, is a dentist. He served in Vietnam and was first elected to the House in 1994 as part of the Republican revolution. So that's who Dingell and Norwood are. Now I'll tell you—

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the important—

ROBERTS: Yeah, but—

DONALDSON: But there's a guy named Greg Ganske who's also on the bill. It's actually the Dingell/Norwood/Ganske bill.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the important—the important point—

DONALDSON: But I don't have time to start telling you about him.

ROBERTS: He's from Iowa.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The important point there is that George Bush didn't answer the question about the Dingell/Norwood bill, which is a Patients' Bill of Rights that allows people to—the right to sue.

ROBERTS: Actually, I don't think that is the important point there.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why not?

ROBERTS: Because that's not what comes across when you're watching the debate. What comes across when you're watching the debate is this guy from Washington doing Washington-speak.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it's—

ROBERTS: And you know, it's having an effect not just at the presidential level, but at the congressional level as well. Because the Republicans did a very smart thing, which is that they voted for their version of a Patients' Bill of Rights, and they voted for their version of prescription drug coverage. So they get to go out and tout all these issues, and then the Democrats are left saying, “But you didn't do Dingell and Norwood.”

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, then they—but what gets lost there—wait a second, what gets lost there is that George Bush did oppose a Patients' Bill of Rights in the state of Texas. And he did—and he's not for the Dingell/Norwood bill.

ROBERTS: It was lost, because Al Gore didn't say it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yeah, well, he did say it, actually, in the course of the debate.

DONALDSON: This is very cerebral. George Will, you are, but it doesn't be—helping Gore.

WILL: It's not helping Gore in part because people find him overbearing and off-putting and all the rest. But also the fact—I think the issues are beginning to break, finally, for George W. Bush...

It's no surprise as to which style of "journalism" triumphed and still dominates. (Facts, policies and competency versus psycho-babble and marketing spin? Please!) Cokie Roberts' attitude toward Gore suggests that pedigree and kinship ties alone don't always lead to Beltway acceptance. However, as looked at in the earlier post, that may be a special case due to so many Beltway insiders being scandalized by Bill Clinton's affair, and determined to punish Gore for it until he denounced Clinton. It's an ongoing struggle to make our system more of a meritocracy. And as it currently stands, of all the rules of the game, the appearance of propriety still seems to reign supreme.

(Cross-posted at Blue Herald)

Obama VP Drama

Silly or asinine coverage is nothing new, but I was struck last night by a few mind-numbing passages in Obama-VP pieces. Those concerns have been eclipsed by Ron Fournier's AP hit piece today, though. Still, there's a continuity in that the press continues to insert themselves into the story, and for the ill.

First up, let's look at this one from The Politico, running on Yahoo:

Obama's striptease may be risky

Fred Barbash
Fri Aug 22, 7:08 PM ET

In dragging out the announcement of his vice presidential nominee to almost the eve of the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama has at once demonstrated his willingness to defy conventional political expectations — and to hold the news media in his thrall while doing it.

By keeping the “who will it be?” drama going all week — and at least a couple days past when many media commentators and political operatives thought the answer would become known — Obama discarded a widespread belief in political circles that a vice president should be picked far enough in advance that a nominee can enjoy several days of massive publicity about the ticket.

Delay brings two potential risks for Obama.

As it now stands, his announcement will land on a weekend and bleed right into the nominating convention — a time when a nominee can already expect to be dominating national attention.

What’s more, by keeping expectations hanging for so long, Obama makes it harder to deliver on all the anticipation. A weeks-long strip tease, ending with a naked Joe Biden or Evan Bayh — or some other safe but unsexy choice — might prove deflating.

It goes on. I don't know whether Barbash or his editor came up with article title – I suspect Barbash, based on the fifth paragraph - but "striptease"? They're comparing the Democratic presidential candidate to a stripper now? Nothing against strippers, but it's a rather odd comparison.

Read that second paragraph again. There's a bit of pissy threat in there, I think: 'Obama's defied conventional wisdom and the will of the press corps, and we might make him pay for it.'

"Dominating," "anticipation," "strip tease," "naked Joe Biden" "safe but unsexy," "deflating"... Is this a political analysis piece, or a Viagra ad? There's nothing wrong with having a little fun, but our political press corps is disturbingly sex-obssessed in their attitudes toward politicians. I really don't care about what reporters do in the personal lives but it'd be nice if a political non-story wasn't covered through the lens of their sexual frustration.

The piece overall is exactly that – a non-story. It's not entirely horrible as such pieces go and I imagine they just wanted or needed to file copy. But Obama hadn't announced yet, and there was no actual news - never mind that Obama would announce soon enough and there would be. So on the Friday night before the announcement, The Politico churned out a process story about the lack of news (make that a momentary lack of news) and its great significance... to their libidos. Yikes. Normally I'd call this masturbatory coverage, but given the frustration angle, in this case that would be slightly inaccurate.

On to our second piece, "Obama taps Biden to be running mate," by the AP's Liz Sidoti and Nedra Pickler, which contains this gem about the Obama text message being scooped by the press:

Michael Silberman, a partner at online communications firm EchoDitto, said the campaign gambled when they made such a high-stakes promise and find themselves in a precarious situation where they could risk a great deal of trust with supporters.

"For Obama supporters, this is like finding out from your neighbor instead of your sister that she's engaged — not how you want or expect the news to be delivered," Silberman said.

You have to be friggin' kidding me. To be fair, the AP piece is decent overall, and this section appears quite late in it. Maybe Silberman said a bunch of brilliant things that didn't make the piece, but this take strikes me as pretty ridiculous, without legitimate journalistic value. Obama was a stripper in the first piece, and now Obama supporters are emotionally fragile family members. I've read accounts from a few Obama supporters who expressed disappointment, although in at least one case it was because the message didn't go through, probably due to overloaded circuits (network activity was at 225% of normal according to one piece). I've yet to see any Obama supporter say anything approaching, "I used to trust Obama, but now that despite his best efforts the press leaked his pick a few hours early so the west coast found out about it before I did, I don't know how I can every trust him again!!!" Even if Obama supporters were somehow that emotionally distraught, in this account reporters' own glaring culpability is completely absolved! They destroyed the event for some people, Obama didn't! E.J. Dionne correctly noted on NPR on Friday the high degree of discipline the Obama campaign had shown on the matter. The press squawking over the harm done by their own leak is like a burglar chiding his victims: "Despite their alarms and the safe, I was able to rob the family's jewelry. I'm just not sure I can ever feel safe in their house again."

I'm really hoping this idiotic meme doesn't spread too far, although DDay spotted another instance and had a similar reaction:

Setting aside the merits of Joe Biden for a second (short take: he fits the traditional attack-dog model of a Vice President to a T), late last night as the news nets were announcing the pick David Shuster said something like "Barack Obama has now betrayed his supporters by not giving them the first opportunity to hear his choice..."

Simply an amazing statement on a variety of levels. Actually, who betrayed the public is you, the media, again, because you just couldn't stand not being insiders for ten minutes and waiting out the pick and maybe using those resources of staking out potential candidates' homes and working the phones on, I don't know, illegal wars and torture. The press only breaks out their investigative skills every four years so they can scoop their competition by 20 seconds. Would it have killed them to embargo the story and let the campaign play it out the way they wanted? Would it have mattered to anyone?

This secret was so tantalizing to them, making it necessary to marshal the full resources of the American media, while eight years of secret government and secret law received no such attention. The discovery of the pick was an end in itself, justifying their clubby, insider self-images as the coolest kids in the room. And then, after they've undermined the rollout, they blame the candidate.

It's going to get lost because it happened so late at night, but it was a shining example of how the media works.

Again, for the press, the press often is the story. They were jilted. They didn't get what they wanted when they wanted it, an advance look at the prime gossip (and for some, a dose of Viagra). And they shall have vengeance for it!

And lo, their agent of vengeance shall ride a pale horse, and his name shall be Ron Fournier of the AP:

Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence

By RON FOURNIER, Associated Press Writer
Sat Aug 23, 2:12 AM ET

DENVER - The candidate of change went with the status quo.

In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness — inexperience in office and on foreign policy — rather than underscore his strength as a new-generation candidate defying political conventions.

In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness — inexperience in office and on foreign policy — rather than underscore his strength as a new-generation candidate defying political conventions.

He picked a 35-year veteran of the Senate — the ultimate insider — rather than a candidate from outside Washington, such as Govs. Tim Kaine of Virginia or Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas; or from outside his party, such as Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; or from outside the mostly white male club of vice presidential candidates. Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't even make his short list.

The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn't beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Biden pick is the next logistical step in an Obama campaign that has become more negative — a strategic decision that may be necessary but threatens to run counter to his image.

Democratic strategists, fretting over polls that showed McCain erasing Obama's lead this summer, welcomed the move. They, too, worried that Obama needed a more conventional — read: tougher — approach to McCain...

So the question is whether Biden's depth counters Obama's inexperience — or highlights it?

Do read the rest if you can stand it, but that's probably my favorite bit, the last sentence of this excerpt, Fournier pretending to ask a question after he's just spent ten paragraphs and a headline giving us his answer.

Clinton did make Obama's short list by many accounts, depending on how "short" one's making it, and Obama's repeatedly praised her, but Fournier's trying to sell the idea that Obama has shown her disrespect. (Vote McCain, Clinton diehards!) It's also pretty funny that Fournier, given his GOP ties, is smacking Obama around for choosing from the "white male club." I guess Obama's campaign just isn't historic enough for Fournier on its own; yet again, Obama's either too scary or just not black enough for some white guy.

The other pieces may be annoying in parts, but it's hacks like Fournier that really endanger the Obama campaign. You've probably seen Eric Boehlert's piece on Fournier, that the McCain campaign tried to hire Fornier, and he praised the Bush administration in flowery language in e-mails to Karl Rove. You may know that the decline of the AP directly corresponds to Fournier's rise in power there. And while Fournier is biased and unfair, he's on the presidential beat for the AP. It's ridiculous. If he were just another hack like Krauthammer writing sneering op-eds, it wouldn't be quite so bad, but he's pretending to be an actual, somewhat objective journalist.

Steve Benen and Digby have pieces on the Fournier piece, Crooks and Liars' piece has contact information for complaining to the AP, and FireDogLake has set up a way to write your local papers about carrying Fournier. An avalanche of "polite but firm" e-mails would be great.

Let's be honest – regardless of who Obama picked, Fournier was going to write a hit piece. He quotes a few Democrats to give him cover, but the key message he's trying to sell is the same one the GOP has been trying to sell for over a month now: Obama is scared of McCain, and he's weak. It's bullshit, of course, but the GOP can only win if they can obscure how lockstep McCain has been with Bush, and make the election a referendum on Obama. We're going to see a lot more of this crap, and the more we can push back on it, the better.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Broder Implications

We have some great political reporters in America. We also have a large number of vapid, shallow, gossipy twits, with the percentage going way up among TV journalists (and even higher among cable TV journalists). No offense to the good reporters, but there are times that I despise our political press corps as a whole with the heat of, well, maybe not a thousand suns, but a solid nine hundred. Now is such a time.

For a while now, David Gregory has been trumpeting alarm over Obama's prospects with little cause, often uncritically repeating Republican talking points to do so. Still, trying to tag the Edwards affair on Obama is quite a stretch and a new low. As Media Matters reports, on Friday, 8/8/08, Gregory said:

"Tonight, more on Edwards and the fallout from his admission today about a sexual affair: Is this another skeleton in the Democratic closet that Barack Obama must struggle to overcome?" Gregory also said that, "now, questions about his [Edwards'] future abound in the party and whether this creates another shadow over Barack Obama as he gets ready for the conventions."

Of course the Edwards affair is going to be covered. But this treatment is weak, insipid stuff worthy of the sex-obsessed David Broder or Maureen Dowd, and sure seems to be an attempt to try to justify covering a tabloid story as legitimate campaign news, when of course it isn't. Meanwhile, it just happens to smear the entire Democratic Party and their nominee. Gregory's approach is symptomatic of a wider problem.

It's funny, because for just one example, during the Mark Foley scandal, the press sure covered it, but I don't remember many of them pointing out the legitimate issues absent with Edwards: that Foley was abusing power since he had been overseeing pages he was hitting on, that the Republican leadership knew about this and did nothing, and that Dennis Hastert and his office issued contradictory lies in rapid succession. Most of all, I don't remember the press dwelling on the scandal as indicative of widespread corruption in the Republican party (although for some voters, it was the final straw).

In reaction to Gregory, John Amato came up with a good list of his own:

From the email inbox:

David Gregory just said young people were inspired by him and are let down…and questioned whether it will have “broader implications for the party.” during the election. This week, Ron Suskind’s book revealed the Bush team knew Iraq didn’t have WMD, forged letters, paid hush money, and lied us into war. (Chirp, chirp…) Any broader implications for the Republican party there? How about instead of us buying into all the clamoring to analyze Edwards betrayal (wait, no, BETRAYAL!) we analyze the absurdity of a media culture where THIS is what passes for holding politicians accountable.

Broader implication for the party. OK, let’s talk party.

McClellan said that FOX News got talking points from the White House

Bush authorized rendition.

Bush authorized torture. Yes, that means waterboarding.

Bush authorized a war based on lies resulting in millions of innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilian deaths as well as an ethnic cleansing.

Thousands of our troops have been killed or seriously injured.

The US dollar is in the tank.

The housing/mortgage crisis has almost caused a depression.

How about the trampling of our Constitution with warrantless wiretapping?

Laptops are being confiscated at airports and the border.

Under Bush, oil companies are raking in record profits while Americans suffer.

The US attorney scandal.

A health care epidemic.

Monica Goodling

A standing ovation in Congress for David Vitter’s return.

Military TV Analysts/Generals scandal.

Larry Craig’s bathroom adventure.

And many, many more.

Would any of this have “broader implications” to the Republican party during the election if the media did its job?

Newt Gingrich STILL gets on TV every other day and everyone KNOWS he had affairs, even dumping his wife right after cancer surgery. And yet all these MSM types are wringing their hands about what this means to the Democratic Party. Ridiculous. Throw a stone in DC and try not to hit some one with a little something on the side, and that includes those in the press corps.

And they have the nerve to talk about betrayal of Edwards to the media and his wife — in that order. Why aren’t they more outraged about the betrayal of the White House to get us into a war?

What screwed up priorities.

Let's see, then there's bourgeois concern troll Cokie Roberts attacking Obama for spending a brief vacation in Hawaii where he grew up and where his grandmother lives versus going to Myrtle Beach. There's Fred Hiatt's selective quoting to claim that the Bush administration didn't lie in making its case for war, a claim so blatantly divorced from reality he should have been fired or put on leave immediately. There's Richard Cohen and other hawks still claiming they had it right on Iraq, and Broder and Cohen justifying McCain's reversals (repeatedly), with Cohen even asserting that McCain's stint as a P.O.W. makes it all excusable.

Moving to the "Dean of the Press Corps" Broder alone, his most recent column, "Rivals in Search of Trust," examines whether Obama and McCain like each other .(Who gives a shit? It might be of some interest, but Broder won't cover their policy differences.) Meanwhile his piece before that argues that McCain's been forced to go negative against Obama against his will because he hasn't been getting coverage through town hall debates, or some such bullshit. Earlier this year, Broder argued that the key difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates was a lack of executive experience on the part of the Democrats, implicitly arguing that the massive differences between their policies were irrelevant. (But then, Broder always seems to come up with novel ideas for why you shouldn't vote for a Democrat.) Broder also wrote about the Clinton marriage less than a month after saying he wouldn't. Perhaps worst of all, Broder's also claimed that most of the public doesn't care about the Bush administration's pre-war lies, ignoring evidence to the contrary, and still asserts that Clinton should have resigned for office over his affair, but that Bush shouldn't be impeached. That really says it all about his intellect, perception and moral compass. What screwed up priorities, indeed.

It's no surprise the Edwards affair is being covered. I don't begrudge that. But sadly, it's also little surprise that Gregory would cover it in such ridiculous fashion, since our so-called "liberal" corporate press has a long pattern of such "reporting." It's galling enough to think that these people possess positions of power and are paid large sums of money despite being twits, but even more galling to realize they possess positions of power and are paid large sums of money to be twits. Even so, that would be merely annoying if it weren't for the dire consequences these people have enabled and in some cases the horrendous policies they've advocated for. There are reporters who do feel differently than Broder, Gregory, Dowd, Cohen, Cokie Roberts and their ilk, but it's that crowd who dictate the Beltway chattering class' conventional wisdom, which is almost unfailingly shallow and off the mark. No respect is due to people who still have no real problem with a war of choice, with lying to the public to start a war, with war profiteering, with unprecedented fiscal mismanagement, with spying on Americans without a warrant, with holding innocents for years without charges, with torturing people, and myriad of other assaults on core American values. As HTML Mencken puts it, they care about incivility, but not indecency. As many liberal bloggers have put it in various words (including Blue Gal, Driftglass, Thers, Digby, Atrios), they obsess about obscene language but are very accepting or even defensive about obscene actions. It would also be nice if this crew at least actually tried to justify their positions with, y'know, facts, or a coherent argument, versus merely asserting le droit de seigneur. If I or other bloggers occasionally despise this crew, it's because they are, in fact, despicable. They'll continue to stay mute about blatant villainy, unnecessary death and torture, but fuck someone without their permission, and their goddam heads explode.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Irish Reporter Carol Coleman's Interview with Bush in 2004

I think I first read about this interview in Dan Froomkin's column back when it occurred, but Crooks and Liars posted the video. It's really quite remarkable:



I think my favorite part might be when Bush stops speaking, Coleman says something, and then he testily gives another round of "Let me finish!"

Several aspects are striking. It's refreshing to see the sadly rare sight of someone just not buying the bullshit Bush is selling. Bush acts as if Coleman is being rude, when his own behavior is brusque, and his answers are themselves insulting, because they are so simplistic, misleading, non-responsive or flatly false. I think Bush actually believes much of the crap he's shilling here. But it's interesting that he's positively indignant that anyone could possibly view things differently – and that he would have to converse with them. His bubble has always been pretty strong, exactly as he and his handlers have wanted. Most of all, this interview shows a Bush who simply cannot believe that someone would dare ask him to speak as an adult to adults about important matters.

Of course, this is far from the only time we've seen this side of Bush. You may remember the video of then candidate Bush, quizzed on foreign leaders back in 1999:



He doesn't know, it sure seems like he doesn't give a shit that he doesn't know, and he's pissed that anyone expects him to know or has the gall to ask. That, and a number of other incidents, should have made our mainstream journalists sound the alarm bells rather than making excuses for Bush's ignorance. It's not as if Bush has ever hit the books since, either. But then, who needs to know basic facts about a country, even months after one's decided to invade it, or respond to urgent national security threats?

Bush also got very testy with NBC's Richard Engel earlier this year when Engel pushed him. Dan Froomkin has a very good rundown on the interview and the White House's attempted retribution in "The President vs. the Peacock" (we covered this interview and Bush's denials earlier in "Brave Cowboys of the Junior High Lunch Room").

Here's the full, unedited 15 minute interview:





Via Froomkin's piece, here's the edited version NBC aired, the same unedited version NBC posted on their own website for viewers, and the White House's transcript. I'll also throw in Engel's teaser piece and Keith Olbermann on Countdown evaluating the White House's attacks on Engel and NBC over the piece. (I'm also reminded of journalist Nir Rosen discussing "the surge" with persistent hawk Frederick Kagan.)

As Froomkin observed:

It doesn't take a trained psychologist to observe that Bush got angrier and angrier as the Engel interview went on. That obviously had nothing to do with the editing; it had to do with Engel's questions.

Bush typically sits down with interviewers from Fox News -- or, more recently, Politico-- where he can count on more than his share of ingratiating softballs. But Engel, a fluent Arabic speaker who has logged more time in Iraq than any other television correspondent, assertively confronted Bush with the ramifications of his actions in the Middle East.

When Bush doesn't get petulant over serious questions, his other chief dodge is to joke his way out. For just one example, here's a college student asking Bush whether the Uniform Code of Military Justice applies to military contractors in Iraq back in 2006.

Bush is entitled to his views, of course. But the public is entitled to serious answers. If Bush wants to make the case for war, or continued occupation, fine, but let him make it honestly. Let him do it seriously. Let him actually address realities rather than painting rosy fantasies and offering trite slogans. It's a grave problem that Bush, his administration and his allies have implemented such dangerous and disastrous policies, and it's a grave problem they've offered so much bullshit in their rhetoric. Bush leaving office can't come soon enough. But we still have the media to deal with regardless. Kudos to those like Engel and Coleman, but as a whole journalists in America have not followed their lead. They have not made Bush and his allies ever have to make a honest and serious case for virtually anything. Bullshit, even when it cost hundreds of thousands of lives, depletes our resources and devastates our economy, is still perfectly acceptable to them.


(A typical hard-hitting MSM interview of our serious preznit.)

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

The Unrelenting Tapper

(Ace ABC reporter Jake Tapper, hot on a lead.)

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."

Poe's "The Raven."

What the MSM lacks in accuracy, it makes up for in persistence.

You may have caught Jake Tapper's atrocious rewriting of Bill Clinton not long ago. Sadly, No! has the best write-up I've seen, and I'd recommend reading it first, but I'll provide a basic recap. Tapper's headline was "What Did Bill Clinton Mean By "We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy" to Fight Global Warming?" Tapper wrote:

In a long, and interesting speech, [Bill Clinton] characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.” At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”? I don’t really think there’s much debate that, at least initially, a full commitment to reduce greenhouse gases would slow down the economy….So was this a moment of candor?

Well, actually, there's plenty of argument that going "green" would help the economy, even in the short term (Seattle's prospered by adopting Kyoto protocols), but Jake's pretty content to run with the Republican line. Still, the "slow down our economy" was obviously the real eye-grabber of Tapper's piece. Meanwhile, here's what Clinton actually said (emphasis added):

“Everybody knows that global warming is real,” Mr. Clinton said, giving a shout-out to Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, “but we cannot solve it alone.”

“And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, ‘OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that.

“But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.

That's really bad journalism by Tapper, who's a "Senior National Correspondent" for ABC. He claimed Clinton said the opposite of what he actually said.

What's worse is that Tapper then offered an astonishing lame, defensive response when the Clinton campaign and several bloggers contacted him, when he should have just owned up to his gaffe, apologized and corrected the record. Here's that apology (and yet again, here's the Sadly, No! post critiquing Tapper).

Hilzoy provided a great dissection of Tapper, with a fun contest to invent one's own Tapper Rules™. But the bigger problem with this whole debacle is that it didn't stop. Greg Sargent noted that ABC kept up Tapper's original, false headline. Steve Benen observed that even some right-wing bloggers were defending Clinton on this one — while the RNC and TownHall.com spread the lie (as did a conservative "comedy" video — watch it at your own risk).

It didn't stop there. Crooks and Liars reported that Drudge and Limbaugh ran with it. Greg Sargent noted that a Philadelphia newspaper picked it up, as well as Investor's Business Daily.

Nor did Tapper stop. He also wrote about Obama (falsely) being the most liberal Senator (at least he could point to an article there, although he didn't bother to verify it, not that there's anything wrong with being liberal). Tapper has also since written about Obama supporters being a cult, and he had to update that one, too.

Still, perhaps my favorite aspect of this story is New York Times' Andrew Revkin blaming bloggers for all the hoopla — but why let those pesky facts get in the way of scolding the rabble? It fits perfectly with ABC deleting comments to Tapper's "correction," such as the one I left:

Boy, really impressive. You took a line out of context to suggest that Bill Clinton advocated a policy he clearly opposes. I have to agree with Gromit's comment above, and this take:

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/8637.html

Mr. Tapper, this was simply horrible reporting. Why not own up to it, rather than pretending that people just didn't like your take? Why does the Clinton campaign need to "explain" a statement when you could have simply read it, rather than plucking a single sentence out of context? It really wasn't "confusing." Your lame defensiveness also isn't becoming of a professional journalist, let alone a "senior" national correspondent. As Moynihan said many times, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. I would hope that ABC as a whole has higher standards than you apparently do. Of course, you still could issue a correction. I await with bated breath to see whether journalistic integrity or personal vanity holds more sway with you.

Now, that's pretty biting (or snotty), but it also raised serious issues, and I'd say (snottily) that Tapper's update was itself pretty insulting. ABC had no commenting policy that I could find (I was wondering if including a link had been the problem). But the critical-but-polite comment by Gromit I referred to had been removed as well. "You're an idiot," was deemed acceptable, but several more detailed critiques were deleted. Tapper wrote in a new post that he wasn't responsible for any deleted comments, but couldn't say what the ABC commenting policy was, although he suspected "personal attacks and cursing" were off-limits. You can decide whether my comment qualified, but Obsidian Wings reader KinDC had two comments deleted, as did Mark D, who claimed his "totally, 100%, profane-free, legitimate comment... was deleted a DOZEN times." I believe them, since I can attest that most other ObWi readers are far more classy than I.

So, in summary, Jake Tapper is a lousy reporter, he loves loaded and misleading headlines (browse his blog for more examples), he doesn't have the honesty to make a simple correction, and he or someone at ABC deletes on-target criticism. Now that's classy.

As Bob Somerby's often written, in other professions, people are fired for this sort of malfeasance. As Hilzoy writes, the episode is:

...A sad illustration of the costs of social promotion: one Jake Tapper. Tapper ought to be failing his second grade Language Arts class for the thirty-fourth consecutive year, but thanks to the soft bigotry of low expectations, he ended up as ABC's Senior National Correspondent instead. If he had gotten out of school without the ability to do basic math and had ended up as a NASA engineer, his ignorance would harm people in direct and obvious ways. The fact that he's a journalist without basic reading comprehension skills means that the damage he can do is less obvious than a rocket flaming out in mid-descent. But it does not make that damage less real.

Brad at Sadly, No! hits on motive in his response to Tapper's lame "apology":

No, you should apologize for taking what was an absurdly clear statement and intentionally mucking it up just to draw the oh-so-coveted Drudge Report traffic to your page. You should also apologize for giving the Republicans yet another set of bogus “Al-Gore-said-he-invented-the-Internet!!!11!!1!” talking points to use against Democratic candidates, which you dutifully reprinted on your blog shortly after they were posted.

And Sargent drives the point home further:

Let's not kid ourselves here. We all -- Tapper included -- know how the freak show works. If that quote hadn't been torn out of context like that, there wouldn't have been any story -- and no link on Drudge, either.

Bingo. Tapper's job, after all, isn't accurate reporting. He's practicing hatchet job journalism to get traffic from Drudge and his ilk. At best, he's delivering a commercial product with flecks of real news in it.

Tapper will continue to pen such horror stories as long as he gets positive attention from his bosses and crap merchants for doing so. Ah, remember if you can, a professional media where reporters corrected such glaring mistakes, or else earned a stern reprimand, perhaps a demotion or loss of job. Dream of a country where the press focused on accuracy and substance versus spreading gossip that isn't even true. Imagine if you will such a world. It shall come — nevermore.


Still from The Raven (1963).

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

That Fragrant Horse Race Coverage

Horse Shit Cigarettes are made from the finest grade of domestic and imported horse shit obtainable. Only fresh midd horse shit is used. NOT MULE SHIT. And they are roasted to keep that mild, sweet taste.

If you like the taste of Horse Shit Cigarettes, you might want to try a genuine Horse Shit Cigar. Each one lasts an hour, perfect for watching an episode of Hardball, especially since each one smells like a mix of Aqua Velva and Chris Matthews. Mmm-mmm! That's some mighty fine Horse Shit!

(Okay, the second paragraph doesn't appear on the package. But it should.)

The problem with a horse race is that it produces a lot of horse shit. Sure, it's fun to mock the boastful swells in the press box for losing all their bets on New Hampshire, but they've been wrong plenty of times before in this election season alone, and it's not as if they all learn their lesson. A day after Chris Matthews said he'd "never underestimate Hillary Clinton again," he said that the reason she was elected senator was because "her husband messed around." Of course, in addition to peddling his own special brand of horse shit, Matthews is virulently anti-Clinton, a sexist who often seems delusional. But he's far from the only prominent pundit with a short memory or no shame. As one of Matthews' colleagues observed:

"The pirouettes are amazing," says Brokaw, who was analyzing the campaign on MSNBC. "The utter confidence with which everyone had been wrong 20 minutes earlier, they have the same utter confidence about what produced this surprise. It's intellectually dishonest."

On a similar note:

Mark Feldstein, a George Washington University journalism professor, describes political reporters as "superficial sportswriters. Covering the campaign is almost like joining a cult, with a cocoonlike bubble as you travel from event to event. There's a lemminglike quality."

Of course, sportswriters have their share of fawners, but most are much more honest and accurate than the majority of our political chattering class. The herd mentality of our talking heads leads to poor, shallow coverage, which is incredibly annoying. Even a blogger whose work I've enjoyed in the past, boldly predicted the whole thing, the whole election, for Obama after Iowa — and it was written in an authoritative tone. Good lord. Needless to say, we bloggers shouldn't repeat the worst faults of the mainstream, corporate, vapid media. There can be great value in noting political realities of the race, but I must confess irritation when anyone seems to celebrate a badly flawed system.

Some of the dissection of the New Hampshire primary was good, at least. Speaking of fawners, Howard Kurtz often pens flattering tributes to television reporters and has a demonstrated conservative bias in his coverage and outlook, but occasionally, he does a pretty good job, as he did last week in three columns detailing the breakdown: "Media Blow It Again, " "The Media's Katrina?" and "Running Against the Media." Jeff Greenfield, political analyst for Slate, offered an admirable mea culpa, as did The Politico and some other outlets and pundits. NPR and PBS have had pretty good election coverage overall. The Washington Post had a decent breakdown, and Countdown examined whether it was the polling or the reporting that broke down. Steve Benen wrote a short piece "In Defense of Pollsters" and has provided good analysis on the results of each contest. Of course, it helps that he's waited until the voters actually, y'know, voted.

Here's my favorite line of the lot (courtesy of the second Kurtz piece), about the shift in New Hampshire coverage:

And then, at 10:31, MSNBC projected Hillary as the winner. CNN and Fox followed suit 15 minutes later, and the scrambling began. Spin was modified, explanations revised.

"One of the greatest political upsets in American political history," Russert said.

Umm, no. Not at all. It was the goddam New Hampshire primary, not "Dewey Defeats Truman" or even Jim Webb defeating George Allen. And New Hampshire often picks someone other than the eventual winner (Bill Clinton came in second in 1992, as did George W. Bush in 2000). It's a tiny contest of outrageously inflated consequence. This is just Russert's mammoth, oversized ego blathering here. It appears that in his mind, the only way he could have possibly made such an error in judgment is due to an upset of 'historic' proportions.

In fact, although Russert had plenty of company, he could have avoided being so wrong quite easily by merely noting the actual poll information. In its series of New Hampshire stories the day after, NPR reported that as many as 20% of voters were undecided on the day of the election. The aforementioned Countdown program did a more detailed breakdown along the same lines. With that large a number of undecided and uncommitted voters, nothing was guaranteed. It was fair to be a bit surprised by Clinton's victory in New Hampshire, that such a large proportion of undecided voters would break for her, but all of the pundits (and even most if not all of the campaigns) ignored how many undecided voters there actually were. They could have easily checked their egos and hedged their bets by citing the actual polls they so belove. They could have abstained from sweeping prognostications to demonstrate how very clever they are. But that is not their nature. "Nobody knows anything," as William Goldman sagely observed — but even people who quote Goldman often pretend they know it all anyway.

The truth is, Iowa and New Hampshire only matter so much for two reasons: one, the press' obsession with them, and two, money, specifically fund-raising. Neither of these have to be the way they are currently, and I'd argue neither should be celebrated. Both states are tiny and unrepresentative of the nation as a whole. Yet every goddam election cycle, pundits work themselves into a frenzy that these two early contests actually mean something more than they do (or at the very least, mean more than they should).

It's wise to keep it all in perspective. Iowa and New Hampshire do play a legitimate role in trimming the herd, as they have this year, with some candidates earning one to three percent dropping out. Others persevere, despite a paucity of funds compounded by the drop in coverage. The current system abounds with self-fulfilling prophecies. But there simply isn't a good reason for strong candidates who aren't leading to drop out so early. Even if the press wants them to, they have no obligation to comply. Mitt Romney's fund-raising may be hurt if he doesn't come in first in one of the upcoming primaries, and many pundits are opining that he needs to win Michigan. However, even if he doesn't, Romney has the money, ambition and ego to continue to Super Tuesday and beyond if he wants to. Besides, as of this morning, Romney has 19 delegates to Huckabee's 31 and McCain's 7.

Similarly, John Edwards isn't in the ideal position to win the Democratic nomination, but still has an outside chance, and his national numbers have steadily grown the more people have heard him. As of this morning, he has 50 delegates to Obama's 89 and Clinton's 197. Edwards has said he's in until at least Super Tuesday, 2/5/08. (It's telling that the press, Hillary Clinton and to a lesser degree Obama, are ignoring Edwards, despite polling showing he's the strongest general election candidate. Edwards has easily gotten the least coverage, and least favorable coverage, of all major candidates in both parties. Or call it the most undeserved negative coverage, if you prefer.) Kucinich, Paul and others will likely continue regardless of their prospects. The nomination for both parties may not be set until after Super Tuesday, which is less than a month away. Surely that's not too long to wait. One would think pundits obsessed with horse race coverage wouldn't want their party to end. Personally, I find the undecided nature of the race quite exciting, most of all that my primary vote and the primary votes of many Americans might actually be allowed to make a difference for a change. Democracy. Ain't it grand?

Let's take a look at what Iowa and New Hampshire actually mean in terms of the nation as a whole — or what they should mean, if ours were a sane, fair system. According to the U.S. Government, Iowa has a population of just under 3 million, or approximately 1% of our national population of roughly 301 million. Annoyingly, the Iowa Democratic Party does not release the actual number of voters who participate in the caucus, but they report that "statewide, more than 236,000 Democrats caucused," while 118,691 Republicans voted in the GOP's Iowa caucus. The turnout for both parties absolutely shattered previous records (participation was "fewer than 6 percent of eligible voters in 2004"), but for all that, those approximately 356,000 Iowans still amount to a mere 16% of eligible voters (download or open the CIRCLE release on the linked page for the breakdown; the large increase in youth turnout is good news, though). Iowa's convoluted caucus system has many problems, and "just as nonrepresentative as Iowa is of the country, Iowa caucusgoers are nonrepresentative of Iowa as a whole.” Regardless, Obama won 38% of Iowa's Democratic delegates, so without getting into all of the arcane rules of the caucus, that effectively amounts to close to 90,000 Iowans voting for Obama, or 3% of all Iowans statewide. That in turn is a miniscule 0.03% of all Americans. (Please pass on any more accurate stats if you have them, or any illuminating perspectives.)

Granted, polls can be very predictive, and not everyone in America votes in presidential elections. Obama's tally in Iowa did exceed expectations. Still, calling the Democratic nominee (let alone the presidency, as some folks did) when 99% of the country hasn't even had the chance to weigh in is just ridiculous and insulting.

That's not to mention that Iowa hardly has a record of being an accurate predictor of the eventual nominee, at least for Democrats. As Jon Swift satirically noted in "Iowa Caucus Results Explained," before the New Hampshire vote was in (emphasis mine):

The biggest loser of all was Hillary Clinton. If she can't win in Iowa, where can she win? In every contested race since 1972 (Bill Clinton ran unopposed in 1996), the winner of the Iowa caucuses for the Democrats has gone on to be elected President, except for 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2004 when the winner did not go on to be elected President. Iowans have an uncanny ability to predict which Democrat can win in the general election, which means Hillary's campaign may be doomed. Look for members of the party establishment to start looking for another candidate, maybe even going outside the party to someone like McCain who could win both the Republican and Democrat nominations and run on a unity ticket with Mike Bloomberg or Joe Lieberman as his vice president, sparing voters the burden of having to make a hard choice in November. David Broder and his friends are already ecstatic at the prospect.

In other words, the pundits on TV know that Iowa results are not necessarily predictive, or should know. Yet every election cycle, they whip themselves into a frenzy pretending otherwise.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, a pretty impressive 517,226 out of roughly 1.3 million residents voted in the Democratic and Republican primaries. Apparently, that's an overall turnout rate of 53% of eligible voters (with a 43% participation rate among voters under 30, up from 18% in 2004, cause to celebrate). Regardless, combine the New Hampshire turnout with Iowa's (throw in some estimate of the Wyoming Republican primary as well, if you like, although annoyingly, The Wyoming Republican Party did not release the vote totals, not that it's a populous state). Not many Americans have actually voted, in the ballpark of one million, probably a bit less. Looking at those states' populations, less than 2% of Americans have even had the opportunity to vote in a primary or caucus so far. (Again, please feel free to pass on any more accurate statistics if you have them.)

Horse race coverage can be done, and done well, but must be keep in proportion and constrained by common sense. It's not news that such rationality rarely prevails. As a Project for Excellence in Journalism study on political coverage, covering a five month period near the start of 2007, reported in late October:

63 percent of the stories focused on political strategy and 17 percent on the candidates' backgrounds, compared with 15 percent on their proposals and 1 percent on their records. The remaining 4 percent dealt with miscellaneous topics.

Meanwhile, Harvard's Center for Public Leadership National Leadership Index has an ongoing survey on public attitudes toward the press. As of December 2007, as Eric Boehlert observed that, among the public:

* 88 percent agree that the news media focuses too much on trivial rather than important issues.

* 92 percent say that it is important that the news media provide information on candidates' specific policy plans, but 61 percent believe that the news media is not providing enough coverage of policy plans

* 67 percent say that coverage of embarrassing incidents or mistakes that make a candidate look bad is not important, but 68 percent say the news media is providing too much coverage of embarrassing incidents and mistakes

The conclusion was painfully obvious: Citizens claimed they were getting "exactly the type of campaign coverage that they want the least," according to the report. [Emphasis added.]

In other words, news consumers want issues, issues, issues, while the press obsesses over tactics, tactics, tactics.

Even if the numbers aren't exact, the conclusions are consistent with many other studies. Even a recent online poll for CNN had 94% of viewers complaining about shallow coverage.

Even respected outlets such as The Washington Post, which typically features some great reporting along with the dross, delivers this sort of empty product far too often. Their series "The Front-Runners," was embarrassingly shallow. As Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler wrote back in December about one installment:

Today, the victim is Candidate Edwards. As with Clinton, as with Romney, the Post’s profile contains four parts:

1. An insipid attempt at psycho-biography, written by one of the world’s dumbest people.

2. A piece called “How He’s Running.” (According to Kornblut, who writes today’s piece, “Edwards is running as ‘the son of a millworker.’”)

3. A piece called “How He Looks” (Robin Givhan).

4. A piece called “How He Talks” (Dana Milbank).

That’s right! In this morning’s Post, there's a full report about John Edwards’ clothes—but no report about his proposals! Nowhere in these “front-runner” profiles does the Post explain what the candidates have proposed in the course of their White House campaigns.

It's not really a secret why horse race coverage persists, either. As long as we're doing lists, I see three reasons:

1) It's easy. It's much, much easier than policy analysis or fact-checking. It's pundit laziness.

2) It can be presented as neutral. Horse race coverage can play off new polls, but is solely descriptive, a quantitative versus qualatitative approach. Reporters can more easily avoid charges of bias.

3) They enjoy it. While some political reporters are fantastic, far too many are shallow, vapid people, bored by policy, self-absorbed, and persistently unwilling to acknowledge that time and time again, the average citizen wants far more substance from politicians than they as reporters apparently do.

Much of the liberal blogosphere has delved into these dynamics for some time, but if you think I'm being unfair, I suggest you read through the Daily Howler archives. At least read through this recent Daily Howler entry for a characteristic glimpse of how reporters repeatedly show contempt for politicians who have the gall to answer questions posed to them by citizens.

As Jeff Greenfield notes, "bad conversation tends to drive out good conversation." There's far too much hogwash and bullshit in our national discourse, but for one more glimpse of horse race horse shit, check out this excerpt from "Merchants of Trivia" by Matt Taibbi (via MBR):

Every reporter who spends any real time on the campaign trail gets wrapped up in the horse race. It's inevitable. You tell me how you can spend nearly two years watching the dullest speeches known to man and not spend most of your time wondering about the one surefire interesting moment the whole thing has to offer: the ending.

Stripped of its prognosticating element, most campaign journalism is essentially a clerical job, and not a particularly noble one at that. On the trail, we reporters aren't watching politics in action: The real stuff happens behind closed doors, where armies of faceless fund-raising pros are glad-handing equally faceless members of the political donor class, collecting hundreds of millions of dollars that will be paid off in very specific favors over the course of the next four years. That's the real high-stakes poker game in this business, and we don't get to sit at that table.

Instead, we get to be herded day after day into one completely controlled environment after another, where we listen to an array of ideologically similar politicians deliver professionally crafted advertising messages that we, in turn, have the privilege of delivering to the public free of charge. We rarely get to ask the candidates real questions, and even when we do, they almost never answer.

If you could train a chimpanzee to sit still through a Joe Biden speech, it could probably do the job. The only thing that elevates this work above monkey level is that we get to guess who wins.

For most of us, this is a guilty pleasure. But some of us get so used to being asked who should be running the world that our brains start to ferment. I've seen it happen. The first few times a newbie comes on the campaign trail, he's watching all the flag-waving and the soldier-humping and he's writing it all down with this stunned expression, as if to say, "Jesus, I went to college for this?" Two months later, he's doing six hits a day on MSNBC as a Senior Political Analyst and he's got this weirdly pissed-off look on his face, like he's mad that the world woke up and forgot to kiss his ass that morning. This same meek rookie you saw bent over a steno book just months ago is suddenly talking about how Hillary Clinton needs to do this, Barack Obama needs to do that — and he's serious! He's not kidding! Next thing you know, he's got an eight-figure book deal and a ten-foot pole up his crack, and he's wearing a tie and loafers to bed. In other words, he's Jonathan Alter.

I call it the Revenge of the Nerds effect. Give an army of proud professionals nothing but a silly horse race to cover, and inevitably they'll elevate even the most meaningless details of that horse race to cosmic importance.

This is how you end up getting candidates bludgeoned to death on the altar of such trivialities as "rookie mistakes" and "lack of warmth"; it's how you end up getting elections decided because candidates like John Kerry are unable to overcome adjectives like "looks French" and "long-faced Easter Island statue."

That's what happened in Iowa. For once, voters tried to say that they were perfectly capable of choosing a president without us, that they could do without any of this nonsense. But they were wrong. Nonsense would have its day!

Indeed it will. And after a long day of spouting nonsense in print and on air, there's nothing that hits the spot quite like a fine Horse Shit Cigarette.


(Remember, corporations say it's good for you.)

Update: I was able to find more definitive numbers that eluded me late last night, and have revised two paragraphs accordingly, including some new links. I've also added one quotation and edited for clarity.

Update 1/30/08: CIRCLE has updated its information, so I've updated that statistic and the link accordingly.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

The Benefits of Online Chats

Every weekday The Washington Post hosts several online chats, from the serious to the silly. Apparently, The Post leads the field by far in terms of the sheer hours of chats it hosts (something like 60 hours per week, likely more). Add in several excellent online-only columns, and you have a nice model for what the modern newspaper can be. No paper is perfect. The Post was the most prominent paper I know of to botch coverage of the West Virginia miners, printing that they had been found alive when in fact most had died (the perils of a midnight deadline). Still, The Post’s own media critic Howard Kurtz skewered The Post for this (in his online column and his weekly chat), and surely it’s a healthy sign that this is possible (personally, I do not completely blame The Post on this, but they should have made their sources of information clear in the article itself and issued a brief front page apology/explanation the next day).

Similarly, many of The Post’s columnists and reporters host chats, and this allows for frequent interchanges with readers. This builds on and in some cases improves on the letters-to-the-editor and ombudsman mechanisms in place at major papers. Reporters will clarify points in articles, admit mistakes, and offer new insights. Comments raging in the blogosphere about a given issue — or a journalist’s latest piece — will often actually get a response. The Post also gives a Technorati link so that online readers can see what registered blogs have linked to a given article and read what they’re saying. The chats with filmmakers and authors are very welcome, but the chats with journalists really adds to, and improves, the dialogue occurring online in newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

One of the best chats I’ve read was Editor-in-Chief Len Downie responding to readers about Bob Woodward’s belated disclosure that Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity had been revealed to him as well. Woodward, Downie and The Post kept credibility in my eyes for several reasons (whereas Judy Miller and Viveca Novak do not). The first is that Woodward admitted his mistakes and apologized. The second is that Downie publicly scolded Woodward for his actions but also expressed his overall support for him as a journalist, and spoke of steps both men agreed to to avoid a repeat performance. Finally, Downie held the chat and addressed reader concerns directly, including correcting himself about a mistake he made earlier in the chat.

The chats can also be revealing in other ways. The Post’s polling editor, Richard Morin, got inexplicably mad in a chat because many, many readers wanted him to ask a poll question about public support for impeaching Bush. As he correctly stated, with a Republican Congress, the chances of Bush being impeached are highly unlikely. Still, that has little to do with the public’s feelings on the matter. I remember reading the chat and being taken aback by his anger — what was the big deal? If at least twenty people wrote in asking about the same issue, what was wrong with a poll question on the topic, especially when impeachment polls on Clinton were widespread immediately after the Lewinksy scandal broke? I liked the fact that other Post columnists later questioned the Morin's reaction as well.

Meanwhile, most revealingly, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to define torture in a chat (following up his op-ed on the Patriot Act) and also stressed how renewing the Patriot Act would respect civil liberties because one could not get a wiretap without a warrant. The very next day, Friday 12/16, The New York Times published its story on illegal NSA wiretaps. On Monday 12/19, Gonzales was on TV defending President Bush and the illegal wiretaps. The irony was almost as thick as the bullshit, but not quite.

UPDATED slightly on 1/12, mainly to add links.