Partisan Punditry 2007
In last year’s summary, I wrote about a national political shift away from the Bush administration and toward the Democrats, and the way that pundits on both sides seemed to respond by being somewhat more willing to criticize their own parties. That tendency continued and strengthened this year — even the most partisan columnists had several crossover columns. Nearing the end of the Bush administration, Republican pundits feel free to sharply criticize the administration at times, and also to choose sides in the wide-open Republican presidential race. Democratic pundits who once concentrated their fire on the Republican White House and Congress, are now willing to occasionally criticize the Democratic Congress and their least-favorite Democratic presidential candidates.
Ann Coulter had the highest partisanship score in 2007, because of her off-the-charts contempt for Democrats, with 516 negative references to only 10 positive references. That 51-1 ratio is by far the most extreme of any of our pundits toward either party. Her most common positive Democratic reference (2 of 10) was to FDR; it’s an obvious sign of partisanship when a member of the opposite party that has been dead for over 60 years is high on the praise list. Ms. Coulter has been critical of Republicans on immigration, and she is not a fan of Mike Huckabee. The rest of our Republican pundits have lower partisanship scores, because they also criticize the Bush administration and their criticism of Democrats is less excessive.
Last year, Joe Conason and Paul Krugman were virtually tied for second behind Molly Ivins as the most partisan Democratic pundit, and this year they’re virtually tied for first, with Joe Conason slightly ahead. This year I evaluated Mr. Conason’s columns from both The New York Observer and Salon, and his high partisanship score resulted from a 14-1 ratio of negative to positive Republican references and about a 3-1 ratio of positive to negative Democratic references. The biggest story though, was that both Mr. Krugman and Mr. Conason sharply criticized Democrats in a few crossover columns, particularly at the end of the year when they both attacked Barack Obama. For Mr. Krugman, this represents a departure from four years ago, when he avoided criticism of any of the Democratic candidates.
It will be interesting to see if 2008 will be similar to 2004, when the presidential election seemed to generally increase pundit partisanship, particularly for some of the columnists (e.g. Charles Krauthammer) whose scores spiked upwards. My “free time” to work on this website continues to be nearly non-existent, so I’ll just have to keep plugging away to maintain it at a minimal level.
