Lying in Ponds

One would think that when a legendary free trade advocate such as Paul Krugman writes a column on free trade, he would take aim at the two Democratic presidential candidates who are currently attacking NAFTA. Nope. One would think that when Charles Krauthammer, who believes that “the sanctity of the Constitution trumps everything, even marriage”, writes about the proposed gay marriage amendment, he would take aim at the president who is currently supporting that amendment. Nope. Just two more examples of how creative columnists can manage to minimize criticism of their own party while writing about nearly any topic.

First Don Luskin noted that:

LIBERALS DEMAND NEW YORK TIMES CORRECTS COLUMNISTS …conservative ones, that is. Suddenly Salon is on the case, with William Safire’s pro-war columns in the cross-hairs. Funny, but the names Krugman and Dowd don’t seem to be mentioned.

Now Robert Cox calls attention to another example of the same thing:

Looks like David Corn is joining the fray over The Times columnist correction policy…coming at it in The Nation from Barry Lando’s Safire/Salon angle. Left, right, middle does not matter when the issue at hand is truth and accuracy in the media. Opinion columns are not a license to publish “material mistatements of fact.”

I couldn’t agree more; the ball is in Daniel Okrent’s court. David Corn’s indictment of William Safire makes the point admirably — Times pundits should not be exempt from the necessity to correct their errors:

If a newspaper columnist writes articles that defy the reality reported by the paper’s own correspondents, how should the paper’s editors and publisher respond? Should they question the columnist’s judgment and powers of evaluation? Should they print corrections? Columnists are certainly entitled to their views. They are free to speculate and suppose. They can draw–or suggest–connections that go beyond just-the-facts reporting. But Safire’s recent work–unburdened by factchecking, unchallenged by editors–shows he is more intent on manipulating than interpreting the available information. His February 11 masterpiece is evidence his commitment to scoring political points exceeds his commitment to the truth. Under the cover of opinion journalism, he is dishing out disinformation. How is that of service to the readers of The New York Times?

I made a programming mistake at the beginning of the month in the code which was supposed to recognize “crossover columns” in the daily boxscores and columnist pages. Now the problem is fixed and columns will be highlighted in yellow when they lean the opposite way of a pundit’s usual party orientation. As an attempt to exclude non-substantive (accidental or offhand references) efforts, a crossover column must also contain at least five non-neutral party references. So if a Republican pundit wrote a column with three positive Democratic and two negative Democratic references, that would count as a crossover column — a very lenient standard. Look at yesterday’s boxscore and you’ll see a Richard Cohen crossover column on Ralph Nader — it’s his second in a row, dropping him almost out of the Top Ten.

Happy Blogiversary to the priceless Susanna Cornett, who’s been out of the technological loop since moving to Alabama recently. But she promises that she’ll soon be “posting like a wild woman”!

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer shot up the partisanship chart into fifth place last week after a remarkably partisan column, accusing the Democratic presidential candidates of competing to see “who could be more hyperbolic in delineating the crimes of George W. Bush.”

I’ll be leaving early Wednesday morning on a business trip to upstate New York, so Wednesday’s columns will be late. Hopefully I can at least evaluate columns on a delayed schedule for the rest of the week. In the meantime, check out Dean Esmay on partisanship.

An examination of the partisanship rankings this early in the year plainly illustrates the effect of small sample size. Because of only a few consecutive Democratic-leaning columns, Washington Post columnist William Raspberry has moved into the Top Ten, even though he is clearly one of the least partisan pundits. Mr. Raspberry had only the 27th highest partisan score out of 33 columnists in 2003, and was 26th of 37 in 2002. He’ll soon drop off this year’s list, to be replaced by more reliably partisan colleagues.

Mr. Raspberry has long been one of my favorites, because he has always been willing to grapple honestly with difficult issues, addressing arguments on all sides without arrogance or vitriol. A couple of years ago I highlighted an excerpt from his commencement address here at NC State:

Yet we seldom take the effort to recruit allies from among those who hold views different from our own. Conservatives are (to liberals) people who don’t care about minorities, or women, or “the little people,” not decent men and women who have a different view of what works. Liberals are (to conservatives) people who want only to tax and spend the country into bankruptcy, not thoughtful men and women who want America to work for everyone. Each sees the other as enemy.

Surprisingly often, I have discovered, a focus on the problem, rather than on political enemies, could disclose common interests and lead to innovative solutions.

Yessss!

Match the columnist on the left with the correct Mickey Kaus description on the right (scroll down):

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer was recently presented with the Irving Kristol Award for 2004 from the American Enterprise Institute. Vice President Cheney spoke of Mr. Krauthammer (link via Matthew Yglesias):

By the early 1980s, Charles’s talent had been recognized by editors, and by readers in Washington and well beyond. And the most impressive aspect of his work is the sustained level of quality over a period of more than 20 years. This is not a columnist who merely fills space and meets deadlines. Charles Krauthammer always writes with care. In his columns and essays, there is always a powerful line of reasoning, and behind it the workings of a superior intellect. When you read his words, you know you are dealing with a serious person, who assumes the same of you.

I would like to believe that Mr. Krauthammer is a serious person and that he “writes with care”. But I find it difficult to square that description with the quote-doctoring incident of two months ago, and with his apparent unwillingness to address the issue.

Beginning last week, the daily boxscore lists partisan references in a different way, hopefully one which will make it easier for interested readers to see exactly which references have been evaluated as positive, negative or neutral. Here’s the old way, which simply listed each type of reference in order:

And now here’s the new way, which lists the references by paragraph, using bold (positive) and italics (negative) and blue (Democratic) and red (Republican) to indicate the type of reference:

So “Bush administration” and “White House” in the Samuelson paragraph which begins with “The most” were evaluated as negative Republican references:

The most revealing factoid about the Bush administration’s budget is this: After scouring the entire $2.4 trillion of federal spending, the White House found 65 programs that it deemed so unneeded or ineffective that they should be eliminated. How much do these programs cost? About $4.9 billion. Although that’s a lot of money, it’s only 0.2 percent of federal spending — two-tenths of 1 percent. This qualifies as an aggressive assault on government spending?

A few readers have e-mailed me in the past to question my evaluation of specific references. In some cases I had made a mistake or just agreed with the reader’s point and changed the evaluation; in others I’ve disagreed and stuck with my original decision. I welcome these kinds of comments — evaluating columns is subjective and sometimes difficult. Feel free to chip in your two cents . .

For the first time since Lying in Ponds began, the WSJ OpinionJournal does not have a columnist in the Top Ten partisanship rankings — not even in the top twenty! In 2002, five of the ten most partisan columnists were from the OJ, and in 2003 two of ten were. So what’s going on? Well, the OJ has gradually trimmed its list of those it classifies as regular columnists, dropping Collin Levey, Dorothy Rabinowitz, Kimberley Strassel, Thomas Bray and Tunku Varadarajan. Robert Bartley passed away late last year. I’ve classified John Fund (too political) and Claudia Rosett (too international) as “Inactive” and have dropped Pete du Pont (too infrequent). That leaves only Peggy Noonan, Daniel Henninger and Brendan Miniter to be evaluated, and they’ve all been fairly restrained so far. Even the OJ On the Editorial Page feature has dropped behind the NYT Lead Editorial in the rankings after a series of relatively balanced columns.

I think we’re just seeing the effect of several weeks of consistently unfavorable news for the Bush administration. Democratic pundits are energized, pounding on Republicans over Iraq and the economy, while Republican pundits are subdued, mixing criticism of Democratic presidential candidates with criticism of the president and Congress over federal spending. But one month of columns is just a snapshot; the premise here is that a year or more of punditry will allow enough time for the true partisans to settle to the bottom (and rise to the top of the rankings).

Brad DeLong has enlisted in Paul Krugman’s Army. Well, at least he has the T-shirt, which, interestingly, is sold on a Ninjas for Dean webpage.

Universal Press Syndicate columnist Ann Coulter, far from resting after last year’s partisanship championship, is building a big lead in 2004. In her six columns so far, she has made an amazing 189 negative Democratic references, an average of over 30 per column. These screeds have been extraordinarily nasty and personal, referring to various Democratic presidential candidates as a “pacifist scaredy-cat”, “crazier than a March hare”, a “two-faced weasel”, a “coward”, a “cad and a gigolo”, a “low-born poseur”, a “poodle to rich women”, and finally “boobs”. As Brendan Nyhan of Spinsanity has said, “Ann Coulter has driven the national discourse to a new low”.