Lying in Ponds

Molly Ivins has been battling cancer for some time; our thoughts and prayers are with her in her latest bout.

UPDATE (1/31/2007): I’m very sad to hear that Molly Ivins has passed away. Creators Syndicate has a tribute.

In the year-end summary, I pointed out that both Paul Krugman and Joe Conason wrote anti-Lieberman columns which qualified as “crossover columns” — a first for both of them (of the several years of columns evaluated here). Commenters Larryesq and Andrew Myers both made thoughtful objections, arguing that a column criticizing a Democratic heretic should not be considered a crossover.

Certainly they have a point — a column criticizing Joe Lieberman does not indicate non-partisanship to the same extent that one critical of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would be. But Mr. Conason’s crossover and the first of Mr. Krugman’s two anti-Lieberman crossovers were written during the primary campaign, while Joe Lieberman was a Democratic senator fighting for the Democratic nomination against another Democrat. In that situation, pundits have a wide range of options. The strongest partisan Democratic approach would be to praise both candidates, and the most partisan Republican approach would be to criticize both candidates. A pundit could praise one and criticize the other (or praise one and ignore the other, etc.), and their partisanship score would be somewhere in the middle. The Lying in Ponds approach is to simply count all of the references in an attempt to (imperfectly) quantify partisanship. Both Krugman and Conason spent much more time criticizing Lieberman than they did praising Ned Lamont, so their columns were counted as crossovers.

I think that designation is appropriate, because they could have easily chosen a far more partisan path. They could have chosen to play down any disagreement within the Democratic party, by lavishly praising Lamont and minimizing direct criticism of Lieberman. That’s exactly the approach Paul Krugman took in the 2004 Democratic primary season. He expressed a strong preference for Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, but avoided direct criticism of the other candidates. Then when John Kerry took the lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Krugman was more favorable toward Mr. Kerry than any of the other 33 pundits that year.

Writing a couple of crossover columns doesn’t mean that a columnist has become David Broder. Mr. Krugman and Mr. Conason are both extremely partisan columnists, indicated by thousands of individual references in the hundreds of columns I’ve evaluated here. But they’re not perfectly partisan, and in the case of Joe Lieberman, they chose to directly attack a Democratic heretic rather than simply ignore him or praise his primary opponent. So they get some credit for that.

I do think that I should begin considering Joe Lieberman references to be non-partisan, since he has officially changed his status:

In 2006, Senator Lieberman was elected to a fourth term as an Independent, because of the strength of his record and his accomplishments for the state. He won the general election by more than 100,000 votes. He remains committed to caucusing with Senate Democrats, but will be identified as an Independent Democrat (ID-CT).

I’ll make the change beginning now.

2006 was the fifth year of Lying in Ponds, and the partisanship rankings reflected a significant shift in the national political landscape. Republicans were in complete control of the White House and both houses of Congress, but their political standing fell to such low levels that it clearly affected the behavior of both Democratic and Republican pundits. My interpretation is that this lopsided environment has driven even some of the most partisan Republican pundits past a kind of tipping point, where they consider the White House and Congressional leadership to be a lost cause. These columnists have then been more willing to criticize their allies directly, perhaps hoping to influence the future direction of the party, where they had slavishly defended them in the past. At the bottom of the rankings, Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks actually shifted enough that their partisanship scores ended up slightly on the Democratic side. Similarly, with the Democratic Party in ascendance, even some of the most partisan Democratic pundits have relaxed to the point where they consider it safe to take time to criticize the least favorite members of their own party (e.g. Joe Lieberman), where they would have previously either criticized them tepidly, defended them or avoided the subject.

So with Republicans reeling, some of the most partisan Democratic pundits continued their usual criticism of Republicans, but also became marginally more willing to criticize Democrats. In January, Molly Ivins wrote her first crossover column after 270 columns, sharply criticizing Hillary Clinton. She had a couple of other crossovers, even one praising John McCain, Lindsay Graham and John Warner. But the usual extreme partisanship of the rest of her columns was enough to lead the rest of the Democratic pundits, after finishing near the top in previous years. Her partisanship score was a little lower this year (69) than last year (74), but enough to win as the rest of the field moderated more than she did.

That means that for the first time in the five years I’ve been analyzing columns, Paul Krugman was not the most partisan Democratic pundit. Lightning struck in May, when he wrote his first ever crossover column after more than five years and 592 New York Times columns. His first crossover contained 16 negative references to Joe Lieberman, which are more than his total number of negative Democratic references of all kinds in some entire previous years, and Mr. Krugman later wrote one more anti-Lieberman crossover.

Joe Conason also wrote his first crossover in three years, also directed at Joe Lieberman. In May, Mr. Conason objected to being compared to Ann Coulter, and I responded by looking at the issues of civility and partisanship.

On the Republican side, Ann Coulter seemed to reach the tipping point a year earlier. Her ratio of positive to negative Republican references was an remarkable 7.8 in 2004 (467 positive to 60 negative), but dropped precipitously to 1.7 in 2005 and then increased somewhat to 2.4 in 2006. She wrote five crossover columns criticizing Republicans, but her usual allotment of anti-Democratic rants (458 negative and 21 positive Democratic references) kept her partisanship rating high enough to lead all Republican pundits for the third time (out of four years). In addition to partisanship, Ms. Coulter continued her tradition of wishing for the death of her political opponents, by titling a column “They Shot the Wrong Lincoln” (referring to liberal Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee).

Michelle Malkin bucked the general trend; she criticized Republicans similarly in 2005 and 2006 (frequently on immigration and national security), but her criticism of Democrats was much sharper in 2006. She had 172 negative to 11 positive references (15.6) in 2006, compared to 103 negative to 23 positive (4.5) in 2005. The only explanation I can see for that anomaly is that she wrote a series of especially partisan columns in the weeks before and after the midterm elections (sample titles: “Blabbermouth media, blabbermouth Dems”, “The Democrats’ military disdain”).

Mark Steyn was the most partisan Republican pundit in 2005, based on six months of columns. This year, his contempt for Democrats remained undimmed (216 negative to 9 positive Democratic references), but substantial criticism of various Republicans led to five crossover columns and he therefore slipped to third place in the Republican rankings. His references to Republicans were 112 positive to 31 negative in 2005 (3.6), but only 93 positive to 89 negative in 2006 (1.0).

I enjoyed analyzing the columns as usual, but a severe lack of time led to even less commentary than last year. I’m sorry about that, but with job and family responsibilities as likely to increase as decrease, I’m expecting the struggle to continue. But I’ll keep up the partisanship rankings, and I’ll continue to try to document predictions and corrections. Thanks as usual to readers and friends like the soon to be bridge Grand Life Master Peg Kaplan!