April 2003 Archive

Knowing nothing about economics myself, I'd love to read a vigorous, intelligent debate on the Bush tax cut proposal and Paul Krugman's columns on the subject. But Donald Luskin's highly personal attacks on Mr. Krugman are completely irrelevant and just wrong.

[permanent link]

Ms. Levey's columns have always been mostly about cultural issues with only a few political references. But in last year's columns, she found a way to consistently use those issues to criticize Democrats and praise Republicans. But in her eight columns so far this year, she has hardly drawn any connection between an ecclectic set of issues (e.g. 70's music, the muscle car) and any political figures. The most political column so far concerned the smoking ban in New York City; it was mostly critical of Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It will be interesting to see where Ms. Levey goes from here.

[permanent link]

Since I complained vigorously about this war before it started, it's only fair for me to look back and acknowledge that many of the things that I -- along with other doves -- worried about didn't happen. So let's look back, examine the record and offer some preliminary accountability.

So the looting would have to do. Eleanor Clift wondered whether the United States might face war crimes accusations over its failure adequately to protect the antiquities in the National Museum of Iraq. NPR commentator Daniel Schorr quoted critics of the White House with approval and added: "The administration doesn't like the word occupation,' preferring to speak of liberation. Call it what you will; when you take over a country, you have a certain responsibility for protecting its heritage." The Boston Globe editorialized, "The awful truth is that the U.S. government bears a shameful responsibility for not preventing this crime against history." And The Washington Post gave prominent attention to two resignations from a body it was pleased to call "Bush's panel."

The references in red italics are negative Republican references; those in plain red text are neutral, and those in bold red are positive. Later in the column, she refers to more criticism, except that I evaluated them to be positive (sympathetic) Republican references, because she is clearly portraying the criticism as unfair:

The looting of the National Museum of Iraq was without doubt awful. But was it foreseeable, as the critics claim? The U.S. military certainly was careful in its targeting and war-fighting plans to avoid places of historical, religious or cultural importance. The Bush critics say the military showed more care for safeguarding oil than for ancient treasures. Sounds just like a Republican doesn't it? But in fact, if the looting was so foreseeable, did the members of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property foresee it? If so, where are the memos showing that they warned the U.S. military of the likelihood?

Regarding President Bush's $726 billion tax cut, scaled-down to $550 in a speech this week, Krugman took aim at the idea of any kind of tax cut at this time.

"The Bush administration is projecting budget deficits every year for the next 50 years, and those are over-optimistic projections," Krugman said. "We're no longer in a situation where there's any plausible route towards fiscal sanity, given the existing taxes, and here we are proposing more permanent tax cuts.

"They'll probably find ways to rationalize it," Krugman added, "but we have reached a point of outrage, a point of, 'Oh my God, how are we going to handle this thing?'"

I didn't see it myself, but his performance won backhanded praise from Mickey Kaus:

Paul Krugman was excellent on ABC's This Week today. It turns out that when he's in a room with high-status people who disagree with him he tones down his hyperbolic Bushies-are-evil last-angry-man foaming. Make him a regular! It's obviously good for him to get out of the house.

• 2: Number of positive references to "Republicans"
• 0: Number of negative references to "Republicans"
• 1: Number of positive references to "Democrats"
• 40: Number of negative references to "Democrats"

Ms. Coulter's tendency to make broad attacks on "liberals" (or "Democrats"; she seems to use both terms frequently and interchangeably) was noted by Spinsanity's Brendan Nyhan in a 2001 article; he described her as "The Jargon Vanguard":

. . Coulter's writing is full of the sweeping generalizations attacking liberals that are the stock in trade of many conservative pundits. These arguments take a particular case (often presented in a distorted way) and use it to attack all liberals, erasing any some/all distinction.

Among many examples of Ms. Coulter's scattershot approach, here's one from a January column entitled "War-torn Democrats":

The Democrats' jejune claim that Saddam Hussein is not a threat to our security presupposes they would care if he were. Who are they kidding? Democrats adore threats to the United States. Bush got a raucous standing ovation at his State of the Union address when he announced that "this year, for the first time, we are beginning to field a defense to protect this nation against ballistic missiles." The excitement was noticeably muted on the Democrats' side of the aisle. The vast majority of Democrats remained firmly in their seats, sullen at the thought that America would be protected from incoming ballistic missiles. To paraphrase George Bush: If this is not treason, then treason has no meaning.

This is an interesting question. Before it can be answered, however, one must deal with intention. What does a columnist intend to do?

From a rhetorician's perspective, I'm interested in the politics of intention. In other words, what changes to the hearts and minds of an audience does the columnist wish to make? Some such intention is always present. And, as I would argue, it is always political (if not always in the overt sense of partisanship).

I often challenge my students with this True/False assertion: Any rhetoric that works is good rhetoric. It takes them about 2 seconds to discover that this is more than an assertion about persuasion; this is an assertion about definition and moral philosophy.

What does a columnist intend to do? What fascinates me about your site is that you catalog columnists by partisanship and thereby call attention to what I would call overt political intentions, i.e. these folks want to overtly affect the political process for their party/ideology.

Now, if they succeed, if they gain a big and growing audience, if they sway public opinion, then I would suggest that, in terms of utility, they have achieved their intention and are then, by definition, good columnists.

But, what of the intention that inheres in professional practice? Are not columnists supposed to be journalists, opinionated to be sure, but still bound by certain professional practices? Such a question begins to muck up the "clarity" of my original assertion.

We might also question the morality of a columnist's ideology/political practice. More muck.

Prof. Anthony Downs demonstrated many years ago that people will seek out political information that offers the most utility, i.e. easy to get and easy to use. Partisan columnists play a large role in political utility.

Awarded to Colbert I. King of The Washington Post for his against-the-grain columns that speak to people in power with ferocity and wisdom.

The Post says this about Mr. King's weekly columns:

King, who also writes editorials for The Post, said he focuses on "the part of this town where people don't have power, they don't have much of a voice, they feel no one knows that they're there. I really try to put a megaphone there and let them speak about who they are." Through his column, he said, the young and the poor and minority-group members "feel a sense of ownership of the paper. They can talk back to us. They can talk back to the folks downtown."

Mr. King's weekly columns were analyzed last year, but he was changed to "inactive" this year because of his focus on local issues rather than national politics. This means that his columns appear on Lying in Ponds, but are not evaluated for partisanship.

[permanent link]

GOODBYE MICHAEL KELLY: I was terribly sorry to hear of the tragic death of Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly in Iraq on Friday, the victim of a Humvee accident. Mr. Kelly had covered the Gulf War as a reporter, and made a return trip to cover this war. His last several columns were non-political, written from Iraq. Mr. Kelly was a frequent target of criticism from Lying in Ponds because of his partisan commentary, but he was a brilliant and effective writer, and is widely credited with the revival of The Atlantic Monthly in his role as editor. Michael Kelly was married with two young sons -- please pray for his family.

The Washington Post reprinted a poignant Kelly column from 2001. Among the many touching tributes, here are a few from The Atlantic, Maureen Dowd, The New Republic, Peggy Noonan, Hanna Rosin, Andrew Sullivan (requires subscription or "day pass"), and the Washington Post.

[permanent link]

I guess we're simply looking for different things. You give two scenarios for Scheer, one where the underlying reality is that he's a partisan and one where the underlying reality is that he's a critic, and conclude that since the the different metrics give different answers, there's no reason to choose between them.

To me, the fact that underlying motives are difficult to discern means that underlying motives shouldn't be the basis for choosing the metrics. The goal should not be to determine whether the writer is personally partisan (chances are good that they are), but whether the columns are. The question isn't whether an asymmetric writer is personally as partisan as a symmetric one, but whether the columns are.

Maybe the motivation issue is muddying the water. I'm arguing that the current method (which doesn't require symmetry) is more likely to correctly identify when a set of columns should be considered to be partisan, meaning that I believe that this year's Robert Scheer columns (50 negative Republican references to every one Democratic reference) are likely to be just as effectively partisan (regardless of motivation) as they would be if they were evenly split between Republican criticism and Democratic praise.

I'm just very dubious that it's possible to be a sincerely non-partisan critic of one party while hardly mentioning the other party. As an example, how could an intellectually honest pundit berate Democrats in Congress for their war criticism of President Bush without at least discussing the similar criticism of President Clinton over Bosnia and Kosovo by Congressional Republicans just a few years ago? An independent columnist would try to put their criticism in historical context, consider contrary evidence, etc., and that would naturally lead to plenty of references to the other party.

[permanent link]

NATIONAL REVIEW ON KRUGMAN: Donald Luskin criticizes Paul Krugman for a recent column on Dick Cheney and the California energy crisis in a National Review Online article.

[permanent link]

To put it another way, if your point is to identify adherents, to identify those who turn journalism into advertising, a necessary factor would have to be approval of one party. It shouldn't be possible for someone to score more than 50% by writing solely about one party. It also shouldn't be possible for a few chance references to one party to have the same effect on an overall score as 150 references to the other.

To make the contrast clear, you say that Coulter moved into a near tie with Krugman. If you look at Coulter's numbers, however, you see that while she spends as much time bashing the Democrats as Krugman does the administration, she also devotes substantial portions of her columns to praising Republicans. That has to mean something.

I agree that it means something, and I agree that Mr. English's scenario -- a columnist who only criticizes one party yet does not have partisan motives -- is possible. But I'm not convinced that a methodology which tries to differentiate between the symmetric Ann Coulter and the "asymmetric" Paul Krugman makes sense. Since Mr. Krugman has been consistently favorable in his treatment of Democrats (in 2000, 2002 and 2003), let's use the even-more-asymmetric Robert Scheer as an example instead.

Consider how the following three columnists would fare under a scoring system which makes no distinction between Coulter and Scheer (the current one) and one which does (Mr. English's recommendation):

1. Ann Coulter: would get a high score (indicating partisanship) in either case.
2. Robert Scheer with partisan motives: would get a high score with the current method (right), but a lower score with a symmetric method (wrong).
3. Robert Scheer without partisan motives: would get a high score with the current method (wrong), but a lower score in a symmetric scoring system (right).

My point is that a columnist like Robert Scheer could in fact be a sincerely non-partisan administration critic (Mr. English's scenario) or a shrill partisan who simply chooses to "play offense" against the administration rather than spend time defending his own party. Each scoring method would be "correct" in one case and "incorrect" in the other. My conclusion is that the only way to resolve the question is to consider a long enough period of time (perhaps requiring several years, including a party change in the White House) to see whether a columnist consistently criticizes only one party whether they control the Executive Branch or not (see Paul Krugman's 2000 columns).

[permanent link]