Semi-Daily Journal

Actually the motivation for the article (get more leaks from Karl Rove) is so clear that the article might actually help NYT readers understand the truth (which is obviously bad for Karl Rove). It is clear that he is not only dishonest but also vain requiring praise for himself in exchange for scoops. This is a class A felony in any White House. The quote from Scully clearly means "I am lying and since we are all liars around here you might as well quote me".

Is Bumiller a very sly extremely dangerous enemy of Rove ? Just a thought (my main aim was to be the first to comment for once).

If ever there was an item which didn't pass the smell test, it's the claim that Bush understood all the ramifications of the Medicare bill. He might (might, I say) understand the important parts of the energy bill (give my guys subsidies). Sheesh.

>>Actually the motivation for the article (get more leaks from Karl Rove) is so clear that the article might actually help NYT readers understand the truth (which is obviously bad for Karl Rove). It is clear that he is not only dishonest but also vain requiring praise for himself in exchange for scoops. This is a class A felony in any White House. The quote from Scully clearly means "I am lying and since we are all liars around here you might as well quote me". Is Bumiller a very sly extremely dangerous enemy of Rove ? Just a thought (my main aim was to be the first to comment for once).<<

This was how William Greider justified publishing similar stories about David Stockman and the 1981 Reagan tax cut--that it was clear to everybody what he *really* *meant*.

And then he was astonished to discover that he was wrong: that almost everybody had taken his stories at face value.

Perhaps Elizabeth Bumiller is telling the same kinds of fairy tales to herself, perhaps she's just a bad person. I don't know.

My guess is that bumiller is a credit to her family and a very nice person to have dinner with; she is simply another example of how peer pressure and living in the d.c. bubble distorts the thinking of washington reporters. (I often wonder what washington reporters do all day, since they clearly don't spend any time actually learning something about the issues they write about.)

This is, of course, why the idea that the media has a "liberal" bias is so inane: every single day, stories like this appear, in which politics is reduced to a game of winning and losing and positioning, and content becomes irrelevant.

However, i have no doubt that bill keller is a bad person, and i have no doubt that he thought this story was swell....

As I cast around for villains, I end up blaming inside-baseball cynics like Bumiller and the people at Salon, Slate, TNR, etc., the most. I think that most of them know better, and certainly all of them are capable of knowing better. But they're terrified of being uncool.

I think that much of the younger generation of media is totally zombified. They've grown up with the idea that "it's just a job" with no idea whatever of citizenship or professionalism. The job is to give the boss what he wants. The guy who insists on trying to get the inconvenient truth out is a sucker and a fool. And the boss wants plausible deniability so you should try to guess what he wants.

OT, but at my URL Juan Cole expresses my thoughts about things in general more credibly than I can.

Or here:
http://www.juancole.com/2003_11_01_juancole_archive.html#106961080587368896

"[...] if you write such a story Karl Rove won't talk to you for a month."

Maybe...it doesn't matter? If he's mostly lying anyway? Perhaps there are better places to find news.

But why should you have a better press corps?

The business of media is to deliver the audience to the advertisers. Majority of the readers expect the news media to confirm or at least not to challenge their views anyway - or they stop reading. You do not build the business on turning away the consumers.

In this particular case, this Medicare bill was sold to American public as something for nothing. If you want to make a counter-argument you should not say that it can increase budget deficit under certain assumptions - few people will understand you. You should say "you will only be able to sell your house for half the price". The better argument yet: "your savings will be ground to nothing" or "your Toyota Corrolla will cost $100,000".

Where does the idea that people at Slate or TNR are terrified of "being uncool" come from? Uncool to who? Karl Rove? I promise you that no one at Slate worries about what Karl Rove -- or any Washington politician -- thinks of them. And who is "the boss"? Jake Weisberg, who just co-wrote Robert Rubin's memoir? (Maybe Rubin is now beyond the pale, too.)Peter Beinarts, who's about 28 and has, I feel certain, no interest in "plausible deniability" (whatever that means in this context)?

In any case, have Mike Kinsley's last twenty-five columns or so really not been anti-Bush enough for you? Jonathan Chait's front-page story about his hatred for Bush: was that really too tepid? How about Jack Shafer's repeated demolitions of Judith Miller's WMD reporting in the Times? Josh Hammer's recent piece that ran with the subhed: "The Bush administration says the press only tells the bad news from Iraq. But there's a reason: That's the important story"?

Here's TNR on Friday, calling the Medicare bill the second biggest scam in Washington (I assume the energy bill was the first): http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=999.

Or how about:

John Judis and Spencer Ackerman's cover story on how Tenet had sold out the CIA's credibility to curry favor with Bush: https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20030922&s=ackermanjudis092203.

Judis and Ackerman's cover story on how the White House sold the war to the American public: https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20030630&s=ackermanjudis063003.

Michael Crowley's fantastic piece, "Oppressed Minority," on the way the Republicans have essentially shut the Democrats out of the law-making process: https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20030623&s=crowley062303

Seriously, what is it that these magazines are supposed to be doing? In answering that, you can't start from the premise that all non-cowardly, intelligent people should agree with you about all of the evils you perceive in the world. Nor is it a definitive sign of zombification or sell-out if people don't believe that our democracy is under imminent threat of destruction. Intelligent, brave people can disagree with each other. In fact, the whole point of democracy is that, when you lose, you don't assume or act as if the other guy is evil. To generalize wildly, Slate and TNR writers are Clinton Democrats. Is that no longer a respectable position?

The idea that Slate and TNR writers don't care about being citizens or professionals is appallingly false. I can't imagine what it's like to feel self-righteous enough to denounce, without a trace of evidence, serious people as moral imbeciles and cowards.

Our hosts writes:

Why not write a straight story about how Bush, Frist, and DeLay are trying to move two bullshit-filled pork-laden bills that are bad for the country through the Congress at the end of the session?

I think she almost did that. IMHO she made it crystal crear that the idea is to have two bills on which to run. She didn't emphasize nearly enough how bad they are, but the political angle was obvious. The story said: "Participants said Mr. Bush started out intent on ``doing the right thing,'' but as the negotiations intensified late this year he emphasized his desire for a bill to run on in 2004.

Matthew Yglesias writes:

If passing two pork-laden bills that are opposed by every principled person in the country will get you to the high ground, then I suppose it's safe to say that the high road leads somewhere else.

Just so. Nothing is more obvious than that what is meant is high ground in the sense of artillery, not morality.

The depressing thing is that the Bushies are probably write. Two bills which should get everyone associated with them thrown out on their ears will instead help them get re-elected.

Our hosts writes:

Why not write a straight story about how Bush, Frist, and DeLay are trying to move two bullshit-filled pork-laden bills that are bad for the country through the Congress at the end of the session?

I think she almost did that. IMHO she made it crystal crear that the idea is to have two bills on which to run. She didn't emphasize nearly enough how bad they are, but the political angle was obvious. The story said: "Participants said Mr. Bush started out intent on ``doing the right thing,'' but as the negotiations intensified late this year he emphasized his desire for a bill to run on in 2004.

Matthew Yglesias writes:

If passing two pork-laden bills that are opposed by every principled person in the country will get you to the high ground, then I suppose it's safe to say that the high road leads somewhere else.

Just so. Nothing is more obvious than that what is meant is high ground in the sense of artillery, not morality.

The depressing thing is that the Bushies are probably write. Two bills which should get everyone associated with them thrown out on their ears will instead help them get re-elected.

"Paging Paul Krugman. Paging Paul Krugman." OK, here is a task worth undertaking. Take Bumiller's piece as an example of how "atmospherics" and selective use of quotes (Bush mixing it up with wonk? Sheesh!) can turn political reporting into pap. Then go on to make the point that his employer has fallen well below the journalistic standard set by the WSJ (budget issues), USA Today (Iraq war issues), CSM (Iraq and international relations in general) during the Bush administration. Or, at less risk to his position, just make the point (for those who have missed it) that the press in the US in general has given Bush an objectively easy ride while the "conservative" side of the British press has done a better job at being even-handed in reporting on US politics.

Another:

"[...] if you write such a story Karl Rove won't talk to you for a month."

Randolph Fritz:

"Maybe...it doesn't matter? If he's mostly lying anyway? Perhaps there are better places to find news."

I think that you're thinking of 'news' as facts, or something like that. If you think of 'news' as 'easily publishable words, with a news-like appearance', it makes more sense.

It's like taking a press release, filing the serial numbers off, and printing as if you went out and gathered the information yourself. Much, much easier than actual reporting.

Meanwhile, on the issue of passing controversial legislation, the Washington Post is sounding a bit unnerved about the final days of this session:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8763-2003Nov23.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8790-2003Nov23.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8734-2003Nov23.html

How does Bumiller come to conclude such behavior leads to the "high ground"? Maybe she meant high ground as in "the creek is rising, head for higher ground".

Americans should remind themselves every day that their Senate leader, Bill Frist, is the main owner of Hospital Corporation of America, a criminal enterprise which has recently paid a $1.5 billion, with a B, fine for stealing from the taxpayer.

Slate, TNR, and Salon are not uniformly bad. Neither are the other media. But they don't have to guts to do what Krugman does and take the heat for it. Read Kristoff in the NYT. His terror at being treated the way Krugman is is palpable. "I'm a liberal, but...."

Slate, Salon, and TNR writers will publish a few good articles. then they'll stop, look at themselves, and say "Oh! we're being partisan! People will think that we're liberal hacks!". And then they'll publish something snarky and stupid (Slate and Salon) or "counter-intuitive liberal" (TNR) to cleanse themselves of the liberal cooties and the Democrat cooties.

The TNR gave us Michael Kelly, Krauthammer, Kaus, and Andy Sullivan. TNR was supposedly pro-Gore, but the damage they did to Clinton wounded Gore seriously. But at least they were balanced.

Krugman (who actually is a very moderate Democrat on the issues) doesn't play that game. He gets a lot of flak for his stance, even here and even from liberals, but I think that he deserves special respect for the guts he's showing. Sometimes I think that liberals are doomed to lose because they haven't got any idea what game it is they're playing.

"I can't imagine what it's like to feel self-righteous enough to denounce, without a trace of evidence, serious people as moral imbeciles and cowards." Blah blah blah. A deficiency of your imagination, I guess.

Zizka, you do realize that Krugman wrote for Slate, don't you?

"To generalize wildly, Slate and TNR writers are Clinton Democrats. Is that no longer a respectable position?"

Among a significant portion of the left, no, it never was.

Some people seem to not understand that all these magazines have a pool of quite diverse writers. TNR has always had at least one or a few token conservatives (and with Michael Kelly they veered into a genuine conservative chief editor). Salon is very polarized, with Talbot himself being farther to the left than these other magazines but including (and being friends with) at Salon a handful of wingnut writers like David Horowitz. Slate's got Mickey Kaus, who's (sadly) been steadily moving to the right; and some others that veer that way every once in a while. In all these cases there are particular writers with ideological biases that don't reflect the overall editorial bias of the magazine; and as a result there are going to occasionally be pretty rightward-leaning articles. Zizka seems to think there's a single editorial mind churning out all these articles; but it's not like that. These three magazines all pride themselves on allowing their writers a great deal of ideological freedom.

And, yes, they each play the contrarian card too often. People like controversy, it sells magazines.

In general, the real problem here is that if you watch the political process long enough and closely enough, it's very difficult not to start seeing it in terms of power and not policy. This isn't necessarily invalid: the sorry truth is that it really is about power more than it's about policy. But there's a catch-22 involved in trying to change this.

First of all, I'm not really the best pwrson to critique Salon, Slate, and TNR because I don't read any of them regularly for the reasons I just gave. But my understanding (based on pieces that pop up elsewhere) is that not only the magizines as a whole, but many individual writers, play that balancing game where they basically feel obligated to match one good article with one bad one (my evaluation, of course).

It would not be a bad thing at all, but in fact a very good thing, if one of those publications (or all of them) transformed itself into a consistently partisan journal with a consistent point of view. There still could be a range of opinion. You'd just have get rid of the conservatives and the cheesy, snarky "moderate" cynicism.

The conservative, libertarian, and Republican journals are politically and ideologically consistent and effective. People think of the three journals I mentioned as representing the liberal point of view, but they don't, and they really make a point of refusing to do so.

I don't know what the Krugman comparison is supposed to demonstrate. Slate was where he got his start, and I'm sure they'd be happy to still have him had the Times not lured him away. More to the point, what about Kinsley, who is Slate's (and TNR's, for that matter) spiritual leader and who just about every week at least since before the war began has been slamming Bush steadily. That column's not a sideshow -- it's called "Readme for a reason -- so where is this idea that "the boss" wants the kids to be jaded?

It is true that Slate and TNR don't relentlessly hammer home the idea that our democracy is under imminent peril of being overrun by the forces of the dark lord Sauron. I think that's probably because they don't believe it, and that they probably believe the American people have enough sense to stand up and stop real brownshirts if they see them coming. Maybe that's wrong, but I don't think it makes them cowards or "villains" to believe it.

I also think they know that all work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy. And yes, they'd probably write a column pointing out that for all the wailing about the Republicans' backdoor machinations to try to push through the energy bill, the only reason the bill had a chance of passing was because thirteen Democrats voted for it -- and voted to break the filibuster -- including Daschle, Conrad, Dorgan, and Harkin. I don't think Krugman would ever write that column now. But there's no doubt he should.

Some people don't think the world is as morally clear as you do. Fine. Disagree with them. Tell them they're making a mistake. Show them that Tommy Franks is, in fact, laying the groundwork for a "Seven Days in May" scenario. But stop attacking their souls. You're just talking nonsense.

But then that's what I love about the blogosphere. You can label people, in the space of three sentences, ethical zombies, cynics, suckups, and moral cowards who care nothing about their country, but god forbid anyone suggest there might be something wrong with this. And "blah blah blah" is just a perfect, cynical "what are you so worked up about?" response from someone who's slamming writers for their imagined snarkiness.

James, some people are not as complacent and self-congratulatory as you. Deal with it. Who's this "Sauron" character? Is he some kind of bad person?

I think that it is clear from what I wrote that criticizing Democrats for voting with the Republicans is not the kind of snarkiness I was talking about. It's when they split the difference and pump out bland, cute middle-of-the-road trimming that I get mad.

I been convinced for some time the TNR/Peretz's prime goal is to defeat the left wing of the Democratic party, whether or not he defeats the Democratic party in the process.

If any of the three publications has changed since I last paid attention, then I'm wrong. In my experience they all publish too much crappy stuff.

Surowiecki's comments are right on.

As for the two bills, is the Medicare bill really as evil as the energy bill? Is /everyone/ who favors it "unprincipled?" Other than the far-off, limited demonstration projects, isn't it actually pretty close to what the liberal wing of the Democratic Party has wished for devoutly for years? Isn't it the really just the reviled "Clinton Democrats" who care about fiscal responsibility, and not a large swathe of the Democratic base?

And I love the stuff about the "principled Republicans" opposing the bill. Many of them are the "starve-the-beast" small-government enthusiasts who'd love to repeal the New Deal.

Seems to me a lot of what's going on in the bitter fulminations about the Medicare bill is sour graps mixed with panic. The Bushes just co-opted one of the Democrats' most cherished and long-standing issues--and did it pretty briliantly. When the Democratic leadership tries to trash AARP as part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, what are it's many millions of member left to conclude?

Look: The Brookings Institution people don't like the Medicare bill, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities people don't like the Medicare bill, the Cato people don't like the Medicare bill. I can't find anybody unbought with half a brain who will stand up and say, "Yes, this is an improvement over the current situation."

Hey, Zizka --

Ignore the last few sentences of that last post. I was writing that while you were responding to Keith, and the tone doesn't fit the moderation of your response to him. As long as you don't attack the Slate writers' souls while I'm writing this, apologies.

ML,

The Washington Post has the same problem figuring out whether the Medicare bill is unprincipled. Employers are given $86 bln in incentives to offer health benefits that many already provide. This is at least partly in response to intense lobbying by private sector concerns for just such assistance. Health care providers, meanwhile, will get a pay boost from Medicare, also exactly what they have been lobbying for. Some of that goes to boost payments to HMOs (which are supposed to be a lower cost alternative, due to the rationing of services) to the same level as fee-for-service providers. If not an example of an "unprincipled" response to lobbying, it is at least rather odd, and certainly not consistent with cost containment efforts. The point was to move beneficiaries into private plans, like HMOs, to lower costs to the program. Now, we are trying to move beneficiaries into private programs, but it likely won't result in a cost savings.

Brad--

That may make every person who's in favor of the bill wrong. It doesn't neccessarily make them, as Yglesias (and many others) say, unprincipled, or even, as you suggest, mean that they've all either been bought or have less than half a brain.

The New Republic repeatedly undermines Democratic office holders, candidates, and policies. I have not bothered to read a TNR article for months and may never read another.

Republicans know who are friends. Democrats need to learn. The best trick of Republicans is to criticize Democrats as partisan and cause Democrats to beg forgivenss. These Republicans are the most partisan and radical group of politicians.

http://www.cbpp.org/11-18-03health2.htm

The Medicare Bill is quite awful, a betrayal of the principles of the program. AARP's leadership understands this, but AARP's leadership is indeed in line with Newt Gingrich in the desire to turn the program to private insurance and to reap the benefits for AARP insurance and drug businesses.

The President of AARP is a Republican buddy of Newt Gingrich. Get it?

KH--

Don't get me wrong. I don't much like the Medicare bill either, and I take all your points. I don't like much about the whole direction the medical-care business in general has been moving for the past 25 years. It seems pretty obvious to me that it needs real reform--starting with it's basic flaw, that it's largely employer provided. But that's something virtually nobody has talked about since the Clinton Adminstration's disastrous effort.

Are any of the Democratic presidential candidates saying anything about it? The Republicans certainly aren't.

Maiden Lane: From what I remember, isn't there a tax deduction for employer-based health insurance? If the Bushies were serious about tax reform, something has to be done about that distortion. Personally, I think that the whole concept of insurance has to be reexamined--zero marginal cost can't lead to an optimal outcome.

Think of all-you-can-eat buffets and the waste that goes on there. Not to mention the adverse selection of the customers--not too many size-32 pants in the joint, I can tell you that.

I don't know what a good answer is, by the way. Single-payer terrifies me because it doesn't solve the zero-MC problem (long lines, rationing, terrible service and facilities) and because it would probably stifle innovation. But private systems have adverse selection problems or, in a compulsory system, have really complicated funding schemes. All of this makes me want to become Christian Scientist.

Lise: I think that a better theory is that the AARP butters up whoever's in power in order to extract rent. People are afraid of them and they know it. I remember the AARP supporting Clinton in a lot of budget fights and opposing any word of serious Medicare reform from the Republicans. This was back when the Republicans at least pretended to care about fiscal responsibility.

As far as I'm concerned the AARP is a bunch of opportunists, just as bad as the steelmakers, agribusiness, and public service unions. And Congress is playing their game. Unless you wear black socks with sandals and eat dinner at 3 PM, you lose.

"It doesn't neccessarily make them, as Yglesias (and many others) say, unprincipled, ..."

What would be the principle, then? I'm sure there's quite a few people besides me reading these comments who'd very much like to know, so that we can avoid the inevitable incivil thoughts about 'half a brain'.