If John Boeher is “outstandingly bad at his job,” what does that say about Barack Obama, who got his astral projections kicked in last Friday’s budget settlement? (Many big liberals have advanced that view. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/11/11.)
What does it say about congressional Democrats? Last fall, they avoided passing a 2011 budget, creating the need for the tedious struggle which came to an end last week.
For ourselves, we’d be less hard on Obama than many liberals have been. You see, we have a long historical perspective—a perspective which stretches all the way back to November 2010! Beyond that, we’ve heard that more elections will be held at some point in 2012. And not only that—we’ve looked at some of the recent polling, in which the public was saying, early last week, that Democrats weren’t cutting the budget enough.
Such perspectives have largely been AWOL as liberals have rent their garments about last week’s budget deal. On the One True Liberal Channel, Rachel Maddow seemed semi-clueless about these matters last night. Here’s how she explained Obama’s cave to the hapless Boehner—to a man who supposedly has “the opposite of the Midas touch:”
MADDOW (4/11/11): Thirty-eight and a half [billion dollars]. Not only did Democrats give Republicans more than they originally asked for, they also stopped saying that what Republicans wanted was a bad idea.
I mean, Chris Van Hollen was right in economic terms. Taking $32 billion out of the demand side of the economy right now, while we’re still trying to recover from a great recession, probably will slow down the economy. It probably will result in fewer jobs. It probably will result in the recovery taking longer and going slower and unemployment staying higher. That’s the way this works, economically speaking.
So even if the Democrats felt like they had to be the adults in the room, they had to stop the Republicans from shutting the government down, they could have done so while also saying, “Hey, we didn’t really want to do this! What the Republicans want is wrong. It’s bad for the economy. It’s bad for the country. We had to give them this thing that’s bad for the country in order to stop thing even worse that they wanted to do. But it’s a bad idea.”Democrats could have said that. Instead, they said this.
OBAMA (videotape): This agreement between Democrats and Republicans, on behalf of all Americans, is on a budget that invests in our future while making the largest annual spending cut in our history.
We agree—the deal was bad on the merits. We agree—it was grating to see Obama praising a bad budget deal. And Maddow is hardly alone in her perspective. Many other liberal pundits have construed the budget agreement the way she did.
But why did Democrats cave on the deal? How did we get from $32 billion in proposed cuts to $38 billion—“more than they originally asked for?” Note the way Maddow explains it. She imagines only one explanation, the explanation which is natural to a tribal true believer:
Our Glorious Leaders caved on the deal because they “felt like they had to be the adults in the room.” They felt they “had to stop the Republicans from shutting the government down.” In this way, Maddow pictures events in a way which pleases tribal vanity. In standard fashion, she excludes another possible motive:
Possible motive: Obama caved because polling showed that the public agreed with the need for larger cuts.
Was that part of the reason Obama caved, thereby getting his aspirin kicked by the hapless Boehner? We have no way of knowing. But this possibility never occurred to Maddow, who framed the rest of the discussion around the way she feeds her whiny dog, who represented Republican leaders. As usual, Maddow complained about “the Beltway media”—and then, she introduced Chris Hayes, who instantly noted that he himself is part of that very same group. “Well, you are ‘Beltway’ in the sense that you’re geographically located inside that freeway,” Maddow brightly observed.
When it comes to domestic politics, Hayes is sharper than Maddow. In his first comment, he brought the public’s views into the mix, while framing his remarks in a way which reinforced liberal vanity:
HAYES: I think— Here’s what I think: I think there’s an asymmetry of zealotry between both sides, which is to say that there are more zealots, and they are more zealous, on the right right now.
If you looked at what people wanted in the polling before this deal went through, a majority of Democrats polled and a majority of independents wanted—I forget what the phrasing of the poll was—a compromise to avoid a government shutdown, even if it means giving up things you want, something like that.
And the majority of Republicans wanted a shutdown. And that was true of the representatives they sent to Congress and everyone knew that. And so, when Boehner was negotiating, he was negotiating with the added leverage of the fact that he had a caucus that was willing to shut it down and that caucus was supported by a base that wanted to see the government shut down.
In the polling out today, two-thirds of Democrats and two-thirds of independents approve of the deal struck on Friday, whereas the Republicans, who ate everyone else’s cake, they’re divided on it because they didn’t get enough. So I think it comes down to where actually people’s opinions are in the two camps.
According to Hayes, the incompetent Boehner ate Obama’s cake. But how in the world could that have happened? More to the point, how could something like that be explained on a program like Maddow’s?
The other side has more “zealots,” Hayes said, semantically putting Our Side in the right. (He also seemed to say that Republicans wanted a shutdown, failing to explain why they agreed not to have one.) But when he discussed “what people wanted in the polling before this deal went through,” he failed to mention an unfortunate fact—he failed to mention the Gallup poll in which 47 percent of respondents said that Democrats weren’t offering big enough cuts. (Only 15 percent said that Dems should offer smaller cuts. To review Gallup’s poll, just click here.) But in that final highlighted passage, he took us to the heart of the current problem, without ever quite explaining what that problem is.
Alas! Let’s explain what that highlighted passage might be taken to mean:
Here’s what that highlighted passage might be taken to mean: Democratic voters approve of bad policy—policy that is bad on the merits. Independents approve the bad policy too—and Republican voters would only approve if the policy somehow got worse! That’s an argumentative reading of a poll whose questions were so imprecise that it’s hard to know just what its responses meant. (To review all poll questions, click this.) But public opinion is part of the field on which Obama and Dems are now competing. And let’s be frank: From the progressive perspective, public opinion is very shaky on these issues—has been for a very long time.
According to Gallup, the public wanted Democrats to offer bigger cuts! And people, things can get worse. Earlier, Maddow showed results of a poll in which respondents disapproved “the Republicans’ exact proposal to kill Medicare by turning it into a coupon system.” But the public disapproved by an amazingly narrow margin, 44 to 50 percent.
Needless to say, Maddow thought those numbers were great. (“Your ancestors have to have been very, very good people in their lifetimes for you, in your lifetime, to have earned the luck of being the political opponent of the Republicans this year.”) We think those numbers are extremely troubling.
Can progressives compete on the current field? Here’s what happened when Maddow imagined a bit more zealotry on our side—when she imagined fiery liberals rising to bully Obama:
MADDOW (continuing directly): Well, what— Could the Democratic base, could the liberals among the Democratic Party’s base provide that same kind of leverage to President Obama? Could they say to him, “Listen, very publicly, we are not going to accept it if you let the Bush tax cuts go again, or if you touch a hair on Medicare’s head?” And then the—that would allow the president to say, “Listen, it’s these crazy liberals over here. I just can’t go anywhere on Medicare.”
HAYES: Yes. I think that is where the force sort of has to come. And it has to come from, if liberals do care about this, you know, making that demand felt. And remember, this doesn’t all happen in the negotiations in the two weeks. There is precedent here in the dreaded primary that every Republican member of the House and the Senate is terrified of, a Tea Party primary.
So they have already been kind of kept in check prospectively by the round of primaries that happened in 2010. So you can’t do this overnight. This is a sort of long-standing thing that’s built up that has ceded more and more power to the ultraconservative, ultra-reactionary right wing of the party.
That’s something that you can put in place on the liberal side, but it takes time. It’s not an instant thing. You can’t show up tomorrow and say, “Now we’re going to break you,” because that threat has to be credible.
Maddow imagined doing nothing to Medicare, though almost everyone seems to agree that Medicare is in fact the source of a large future problem. In his response, Hayes described an unfortunate fact: Within our American politics, there is a large, long-standing, aggressive drive in favor of bad policy views. There is a much weaker force pushing better ideas.
The right has been at this a very long time. The left? Nowhere near as much! Sorry, but the left and center-left have been doing as little as humanly possible for a great many years.
What will Obama say on Wednesday when he lays out his own budget plan? We have no idea, nor can we mind-read his motives. Hayes said he is “terrified;” we think he has every right. But please understand: Presumably, Obama’s plan will have been shaped, in part, by his desire to get re-elected—by his desire to get in line with a set of ideas the public will buy.
And by the way: If Obama doesn’t get re-elected? After that, the deluge?
Presumably, Obama will try to keep his plan in line with ideas the public will find acceptable. But the public’s views on these matters are very shaky—have been so for a very long time. The public has no earthly idea how the budget works—has no idea whose budget claims are true/bogus/false/just plain stupid. And the public’s head is full of ideas which have been driven by disinformation campaigns of the past thirty years—disinformation campaigns your liberal leaders and liberal sectors have widely accepted.
Maddow cited other polling data in which the public rejects cuts to Medicare. But we the people are clueless on all such matters, much like Mark Twain’s ineffectual mob. The public’s views can change overnight in response to bogus claims—and the public’s views can change for the worse. This seems to have happened in the recent budget fight, if Gallup’s polls can be believed. (By April, more people thought the Dems should accept bigger cuts, even after two straight months in which the Dems gave ground.)
And so, we reach a basic question: Who lost the public? How have we reached the point where the public has no idea what’s in the budget—where the public thinks all sorts of ludicrous things which derive from conservative disinformation campaigns? However we have reached this point, political possibilities are defined by the public’s beliefs—and the public’s beliefs are quite shaky.
We’ll stop here, though more should be said. But at Rachel’s site, the headline for her segment with Hayes says it all: “Obama tactics baffle, disappoint left.” Could it be that we liberals are “baffled” because we don’t understand American politics? Don’t understand the public’s outlook? Don’t know, don’t even want to know about the public’s beliefs?
Tomorrow: Your leaders won’t tell you the truth
PART 3—HOW WE GOT HERE (permalink): As we asked in yesterday’s HOWLER: Who lost the public?
Asking a slightly different question, how have we liberals permitted so much disinformation to become so widespread, so ingrained?
Just yesterday, Kevin Drum alluded to this problem. He discussed the public’s current reaction to the need to increase the federal debt limit. Refusing to raise the limit would be a catastrophe—but so what? By a wide margin, the public has said, “Bring it on!”
Why has the public responded that way? Kevin gave part of the answer:
DRUM (4/12/11): [L]ike it or not, liberals have long since lost the public opinion battle over the deficit. Poll after poll makes it clear that most people want to cut federal spending and don't want to raise the debt ceiling. Sure, it's a vague sentiment, and it falls apart when you ask them what they want to cut, but the fact remains that the public is largely on the Republican side of this battle right now. I happen to agree with Chait and others that Obama would be better off sticking to his guns and demanding a clean bill, but it's also worth acknowledging that this strategy starts from the bottom of a pretty deep hole. As usual, the liberal community has done a crappy job of selling the public on our perspective. Now we're paying the price.
In this matter, as in so many others, “liberals have long since lost the public opinion battle.” And it gets worse: “As usual,” Kevin says, “the liberal community has done a crappy job of selling the public on our perspective.”
How have we failed to sell the public on our (various) perspectives? Have we spent too much time clowning with millionaire darlings, pleasing ourselves with low-IQ twaddle about what an idiot John Boehner is? In the end, do we even have a perspective? Are we just here for the fun?
To a rational person, it’s tempting to blame the whole hinky thing on the nightly clowning of Maddow. But Rachel Maddow’s nightly nonsense is a recent development in the long, enduring history of progressive/liberal failure. We liberals have been doing that “crappy job” for a very long time. The current political landscape is part of the proof.
Let’s be fair. We the people would have dumb ideas even if liberals had behaved admirably. But “liberals” haven’t behaved that way—and it’s very hard to get modern liberals to see the sources of our failure.
Who lost the public? Let’s mention a few of the basic ways that “crappy job” has come to pass:
Liberal leaders may seem to like money: On Sunday, the New York Times ran a long profile of Peter Peterson, a decades-long leader in the crusades against federal debt and deficits. For ourselves, we wouldn’t demonize Peterson in the way Digby does; more on that sort of thing tomorrow. But we couldn’t help noticing this minor point late in Alan Feuer’s profile:
FEUER (4/10/11): The Peterson Foundation specializes in savvy, if somewhat corny, media campaigns that seek to popularize the issue of the debt…
Its most effective use of its founder’s fortune may be the millions of dollars in grants it has given over the years to think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Center for American Progress, run by John Podesta, Mr. Clinton’s former chief of staff. “Everyone I know in the ‘budget community’ is trying to get Peterson money,” said Stan Collender, a longtime budget expert at the consulting firm Qorvis Communications.
According to Feuer’s piece, “everyone…is trying to get Peterson money.” That “everyone” would seem to include the Center for American Progress, one of the liberal world’s leading think tanks. And wouldn’t you know it? In Diane Ravitch’s recent book about public education, she noted that “everyone” is trying to get Bill Gates money! There too, the CAP and other liberal orgs were cited for their receipt of funds from the “Billionaire Boys Club.”
We have no idea how CAP is funded. We have no idea how it reaches its policy stances. But make no mistake: Massive conservative money is washing all about in the policy world. And career liberal leaders, including your heroes, do seem to love the fancy meals you can buy in the priciest restaurants—the kinds of restaurants you can support if you drag in enough donations.
Big money washed through the Democratic Party long ago. Big Money corrupts large parts of the career left, though this influence isn’t easy to track.
Liberal leaders may seem to like good jobs with “centrist” or “Serious” news orgs: Why is Ezra Klein saying those things? We have no way of knowing, but patterns do tend to emerge. It’s very hard to get career liberals to tell it straight about the big mainstream press. Consider the ridiculous thing Jonathan Chait said last week.
Chait is smart, and he has a good sense of humor. He has been doing good policy work (see below). But good lord! Last week, Paul Ryan received fawning tribute from many key media players (not all). For reasons only he can explain, Chait penned this ginormous howler:
CHAIT (4/8/11): The Paul Ryan Myth
Paul Ryan is a remarkable politician. It is rare in this day and age to find an elected official so carefully craft an image that is distinctly at odds with reality and yet have the media cooperate so thoroughly and willingly in his image making.
[…]
If you haven't already, do check out James Downie's piece excerpting some of the media slobbering. The questions Ryan is asked almost never pierce his crafted image, they merely reinforce it— Won't the Democrats attack you for this? Why are you so brave? Etc. It's amazing.
For the record, Downie’s piece was pure crap. But was Chait kidding?
Are you kidding? It’s rare to find the establishment media cooperate in such image campaigns? When it comes to a string of Major Republicans, this sort of fawning character coverage is the well-established norm. For a very long time, John McCain was the world’s most honest man, even when it was clear that he wasn’t. (Chait himself was involved in this nonsense.) George W. Bush was a plain-spoken person, the kind of guy who says what he thinks. Colin Powell was a master of rectitude, even after he wowed the UN with the biggest pile of crap ever gathered on earth. (Rachel Maddow was still kissing Powell’s keister, and that of his top aide, right through last year.) Before that, Bob Dole was scripted as the man of high character in the 1996 White House race. And in most of these dramas, the Republican—the man of high probity—was scripted against a dishonest Dem. Al Gore was well-known as the world’s biggest liar, not unlike Bill Clinton before him. John Kerry was a comically feckless flip-flopper—even though, in mere fact, he was not.
How is it possible that major liberals have failed to establish this obvious theme for the American people? How is it that major liberals have failed to tell the public about this? (Even Krugman is soft in this area—has been soft several times in just the past week.) How is it possible that major liberals can still type such absolute nonsense—can still be surprised when this “slobbering” frame is slipped around Honest Paul’s neck? Can Chait really believe that crap—or was he playing you for career advantage? Prior mystery: In 2007, Chait wrote a book, The Big Con, in which he pretended that the New York Times only turned against Candidate Gore in October 2000.
Chait’s account of the Times’ 2000 coverage may be the most ridiculous account we’ve ever seen of any major public event. And just last week, we noted that Chait was being published by the Times—and no, not for the first time! Is that why Chait has worked so hard to be so clueless about the Times’ conduct? We have no way of knowing. But career liberal players have worked hard, for years, to keep the public barefoot and clueless about the way big mainstream organs have gone after Major Dems, especially Clinton and Gore. Many of these willing idiots have ended up at the Post and the Times—have ended up as players of Hardball, after covering up for Chris Matthews.
You have been played this way, again and again, when it comes to the mainstream press corps’ conduct. This is one of the ways “the liberal community has done a crappy job of selling the public on our perspective”—an amazingly crappy job.
Liberal leaders snooze and snore about major policy matters: Chait has done some good policy work—about the possible advantages of restoring all the Clinton tax rates, to cite one ongoing example. But mainstream career liberal leaders have long tended to hang back, sleeping and snoring the decades away. In this way, they have allowed a deeply ludicrous public discourse to develop down through the years.
How in the world have we managed to do it? How have we allowed so much disinformation to rule our public debates? In one area after another, the public has been disinformed in relentless, well-organized ways. But just as your career liberal leaders have tip-toed around that “Honest Republican/Dishonest Democrat” fetish, they have failed to go to the public and tell them they’re being disinformed.
The failures are overpowering. One example: We are thirty years into a disinformation campaign concerning Social Security. The other side has simple, well-crafted points of disinformation—deceptions everyone has heard. (The money isn’t there—we’ve already spent it! The left hand is borrowing from the right! Look out for that very large pile of worthless IOUs!) To this day, your side has made no real attempt to develop rebuttals the public can follow. We have made no effort whatsoever. Your “intellectual leaders” have slept, dozed, snoozed, burbled, slumbered and snored as this nonsense rules the debate. Non-career liberals have sat around accepting this slovenly conduct.
We liberals simply aren’t very smart—and we just luvv our celebrity leaders! Those leaders have often played us for fools as they build their safe, well-paid careers.
Like the followers of a famous emperor, we tend to sit there blindly and take it. Then again, we’ve found other ways of doing that “crappy job”—the crappy job that leaves Chris Hayes sensibly trembling about tonight’s address.
Tomorrow: Advancing the other side’s vision!
INTERLUDE—WHO LOST TAXES (permalink): Was Walter Mondale courageous?
In 1984, the fiery candidate ingested a snootful. He then spoke the truth to the people
“Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I,” Mondale said, accepting nomination at the Democratic convention. “He won't tell you. I just did.”
Sure enough! The re-elected Reagan went on to raise taxes, just as Mondale said. But did telling the truth on that vast public stage make Walter Mondale courageous? In this morning’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof briefly alludes to that famous moment:
Walter Mondale’s accurate statement was listed with George Allen’s “macaca” moment, with Don Imus’ thoughtful remarks about those “nappy-headed hos.”
(The list was inspired by Helen Thomas’ statement that people in Israel—or perhaps in the settlements—should just go home to Poland. Today, as then, we can find no link to this unsigned, high-profile feature.)
Alas! In July 1984, Mondale made his accurate statement at the start of a highly novelized era—an era in which a string of majorRepublican figures would be lionized, in mainstream press novels, for their courage, their boldness, their honesty. (Starting with Clinton, Major Dems were big liars, feckless flip-floppers.) Paul Ryan is just the latest example; he has been widely praised for the courage it took to offer a kooky-con budget plan which seems to be based on some ludicrous numbers. This morning, Kristof calls for a return to the Clinton tax rates, saying “that single step would solve three-quarters of the deficit for the next five years or so.”
Quite sensibly, Kristof calls for higher taxes. But he understands the way this idea tends to play in our American politics.
In the wake of Obama’s speech, this raises a question: Who lost taxes? What makes it so hard for Democrats to call for higher taxes, even when it’s fairly obvious that higher taxes are needed? If a simple return to the Clinton tax rates would solve so much of our deficit problem, why can’t Obama simply propose it? And oh yes: Why haven’t you seen this possibility promoted by a string of Big Major Pundits? (It has been promoted on blogs.)
Who lost taxes? For ourselves, we’re not sure that an instant return to the Clinton tax rates would be the greatest idea. We’re not even sure that this would be part of a “best possible” long-range plan. But why would it be so hard to return to rates which obtained just a few years ago? Why haven’t you seen this idea more widely debated?
Partial answer: Here, as in so many areas, we liberals have lost the national debate. To use the words of the firebrand Drum: Liberal leaders have done “a crappy job” advancing the progressive views in this area.
Good God, but our “intellectual leaders” have been inept through the years! Is there any area where they have succeeded in keeping hope—and sound understanding—alive? Yesterday, in the course of his speech, Obama did a darn good job advancing aprogressive view of society. He advanced a picture which helps explain and justify the possible need for higher taxes:
Question: Do we really “share a community” with a bunch of “our fellow citizens?” As citizens, do we “share a future” with 300 million others, many of whom we don’t know? The answer to that isn’t obvious. There is also an atomized vision of our society—a vision in which each person, each family, each local community must simply fend for itself. And by the way: The instincts which produce that vision are bred deep in the American bone. Starting even before the Mayflower, this country has a pioneer tradition, in which various folk struck out on their own, taking their personal chances.
Conservatives have pushed very hard in the last thirty years to advance that atomized vision. Nor is it obvious that their vision ain’t basically “right.” But as conservatives have pushed and clawed to advance that vision, we liberals have slumbered, snoozed, snored and failed. When have you seen major liberal intellectual leaders approaching the American people with the vision that we actually are a people? (When have you seen major liberal intellectual leaders approach the people at all?) Don’t we spend a great deal more time telling various parts of the public that they’re racist, stupid, very bad people? Doesn’t this undermine the notion that we’re a community? That we’re all in the same big national tribe? That we’re all part of each other?
Tomorrow, we’ll turn to Mark Twain’s ineffectual mob, recalling the way the liberal world has managed to lose so many debates. And by the way: Who lost taxes? In 2007, Candidate Obama took the pledge, just as Candidate George H. W. Bush did in 1988.
“No new taxes,” Obama said, except on income above a quarter million dollars.
We don’t blame Obama for having taken the pledge—but it showed that we’d lost one more debate. Today, the New York Times editorial board advances a truly clueless idea: In his speech, Obama should have “remind[ed] those in the middle class that their income taxes remain low and will need to go up.”
Please. If Obama had proposed such a thing, you would hear cries of “Read my lips” for the next two years. Barack Obama took the pledge, like the Republican Bush before him. This represented the fact that we liberals had lost one more debate.
(Note: December 2012 would be the perfect time for Obama to break that pledge by letting the Bush tax rates expire, thus restoring the Clinton rates.)
Someone did “a crappy job” in letting us lose that latest debate, the debate about the role of taxes. Tomorrow, we’ll visit an ineffectual mob which came from the mind of Mark Twain.
We’ve often thought of that mob in the past few years—often, when our side is talking.
When Mondale spoke truth to people: Mondale told the truth about taxes. But at the pre-addled New York Times, that wasnot the big story.
In 1999, Gay Jervey quoted former Times honcho Bill Kovach about that very same night. The ex-Timesman recalled Maureen Dowd’s keen eye on that historic occasion:
Who lost taxes? At the beginning, Maureen Dowd was there. Mondale wasn’t courageous.
INTERLUDE—HOW DOES DAVID BROOKS KNOW THAT (permalink): David Brooks has special powers (click here). How else could David Brooks know this?
How can David Brooks possibly know what the president “genuinely does believe?”
How can he possibly know if he is being cynical in this, that or three other things? We have no idea, but Brooks can read Paul Ryan’s mind too! Like Obama, Ryan is one of “the most admirable men in Washington,” Brooks says at the start of his column. Along the way, he helps us know what Ryansincerely believes.
How can David Brooks know these things? Simple! Brooks has been cast in the role of a major journalist—and “major journalists” have adopted the novelist’s posture over the past many years. They know who the good and the bad people are, and they’re eager to help us rubes understand. They will even invent bogus tales to help us spot the Big Liars!
Alas! When it comes to politicians’ character, their judgments have turned out to be grotesquely wrong again and again and again. But so what? They never stop pimping their character tales—novels then tend to type and recite as a guild, as a clan, as a well-scripted group.
In modern times, this sort of thing dates at least to the late David Broder’s remarkable conduct in 1972, when he and some “journalistic” pals decided that Edmund Muskie’s bad temper disqualified him for the White House. (They had reached this judgment playing cards with Muskie. No, we’re not making this up!) Broder then concocted a story about the way the furious Muskie boo-hoo-hooed in public. This ballyhooed story badly damaged Candidate Muskie’s White House campaign.
Fifteen years later, Journalist Broder basically said that he pretty much made the tale up.
In 1987, Broder wrote this: “In retrospect, though, there were a few problems with the Muskie story. First, it is unclear whether Muskie did cry.” For a longer account of this truly astonishing conduct, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/28/07. (Note: A certain major liberal blogger has come a long way since then.)
Broder and his fellow “journalists” could see Ed Muskie’s soul. This morning, Brooks displays the same power. Did we mention the fact that these novelists have routinely been wrong in their supremely confident assessments of character?
Whatever! Brooks has massively clowned in the past two weeks. He has ceaselessly fawned over Ryan’s high character; today, he mind-reads (and loves) Obama too! But along the way, we think he got one thing quite right. On Tuesday, Brooks helped us see what happens when our store-bought liberal “intellectual leaders” keep lazily losing major debates. Long ago, we liberals lost the public debate about taxes—about the nature of community. Who lost taxes? The liberal world did! Last Friday, Brooks explained where that big defeat leaves us:
This morning, Paul Krugman presents his own view about future taxes. (“Over the longer run, I believe that we’ll need modestly higher taxes on the middle class as well as the rich to pay for the kind of society we want.”) What does “modestly higher” mean? We have no idea. But it will be very hard to campaign on such an outrageous idea. Our side lost the debate on taxes a very long time ago.
Remember when Mondale made such a fool of himself, telling the public the truth about taxes? In 2010, the Post compared Mondale’s statement to Mayor Barry saying “Bitch set me up.”
How have we managed to lose these debates? Frankly, our liberal leaders have often been store-bought. They have had very good jobs, at very good wages, working at very Serious news orgs.
Our “intellectual leaders” have often been bought, but we rubes refuse to see it. If they aren’t working at Fox News, we justknow they’re on our side!
That is only part of the way our side has resembled Mark Twain’s hapless mob. We’ll review that mob’s pitiful conduct next week. But alas! On the topic of taxes, Brooks pretty much got it right.
As the world turns: Is the world finally turning against “no new taxes?” Go ahead—just click here.
Special report: Mark Twain’s ineffectual mob!
PART 3—HOW WE GOT HERE (permalink): As we asked in yesterday’s HOWLER: Who lost the public?
Asking a slightly different question, how have we liberals permitted so much disinformation to become so widespread, so ingrained?
Just yesterday, Kevin Drum alluded to this problem. He discussed the public’s current reaction to the need to increase the federal debt limit. Refusing to raise the limit would be a catastrophe—but so what? By a wide margin, the public has said, “Bring it on!”
Why has the public responded that way? Kevin gave part of the answer:
DRUM (4/12/11): [L]ike it or not, liberals have long since lost the public opinion battle over the deficit. Poll after poll makes it clear that most people want to cut federal spending and don't want to raise the debt ceiling. Sure, it's a vague sentiment, and it falls apart when you ask them what they want to cut, but the fact remains that the public is largely on the Republican side of this battle right now. I happen to agree with Chait and others that Obama would be better off sticking to his guns and demanding a clean bill, but it's also worth acknowledging that this strategy starts from the bottom of a pretty deep hole. As usual, the liberal community has done a crappy job of selling the public on our perspective. Now we're paying the price.
In this matter, as in so many others, “liberals have long since lost the public opinion battle.” And it gets worse: “As usual,” Kevin says, “the liberal community has done a crappy job of selling the public on our perspective.”
How have we failed to sell the public on our (various) perspectives? Have we spent too much time clowning with millionaire darlings, pleasing ourselves with low-IQ twaddle about what an idiot John Boehner is? In the end, do we even have a perspective? Are we just here for the fun?
To a rational person, it’s tempting to blame the whole hinky thing on the nightly clowning of Maddow. But Rachel Maddow’s nightly nonsense is a recent development in the long, enduring history of progressive/liberal failure. We liberals have been doing that “crappy job” for a very long time. The current political landscape is part of the proof.
Let’s be fair. We the people would have dumb ideas even if liberals had behaved admirably. But “liberals” haven’t behaved that way—and it’s very hard to get modern liberals to see the sources of our failure.
Who lost the public? Let’s mention a few of the basic ways that “crappy job” has come to pass:
Liberal leaders may seem to like money: On Sunday, the New York Times ran a long profile of Peter Peterson, a decades-long leader in the crusades against federal debt and deficits. For ourselves, we wouldn’t demonize Peterson in the way Digby does; more on that sort of thing tomorrow. But we couldn’t help noticing this minor point late in Alan Feuer’s profile:
FEUER (4/10/11): The Peterson Foundation specializes in savvy, if somewhat corny, media campaigns that seek to popularize the issue of the debt…
Its most effective use of its founder’s fortune may be the millions of dollars in grants it has given over the years to think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Center for American Progress, run by John Podesta, Mr. Clinton’s former chief of staff. “Everyone I know in the ‘budget community’ is trying to get Peterson money,” said Stan Collender, a longtime budget expert at the consulting firm Qorvis Communications.
According to Feuer’s piece, “everyone…is trying to get Peterson money.” That “everyone” would seem to include the Center for American Progress, one of the liberal world’s leading think tanks. And wouldn’t you know it? In Diane Ravitch’s recent book about public education, she noted that “everyone” is trying to get Bill Gates money! There too, the CAP and other liberal orgs were cited for their receipt of funds from the “Billionaire Boys Club.”
We have no idea how CAP is funded. We have no idea how it reaches its policy stances. But make no mistake: Massive conservative money is washing all about in the policy world. And career liberal leaders, including your heroes, do seem to love the fancy meals you can buy in the priciest restaurants—the kinds of restaurants you can support if you drag in enough donations.
Big money washed through the Democratic Party long ago. Big Money corrupts large parts of the career left, though this influence isn’t easy to track.
Liberal leaders may seem to like good jobs with “centrist” or “Serious” news orgs: Why is Ezra Klein saying those things? We have no way of knowing, but patterns do tend to emerge. It’s very hard to get career liberals to tell it straight about the big mainstream press. Consider the ridiculous thing Jonathan Chait said last week.
Chait is smart, and he has a good sense of humor. He has been doing good policy work (see below). But good lord! Last week, Paul Ryan received fawning tribute from many key media players (not all). For reasons only he can explain, Chait penned this ginormous howler:
CHAIT (4/8/11): The Paul Ryan Myth
Paul Ryan is a remarkable politician. It is rare in this day and age to find an elected official so carefully craft an image that is distinctly at odds with reality and yet have the media cooperate so thoroughly and willingly in his image making.
[…]
If you haven't already, do check out James Downie's piece excerpting some of the media slobbering. The questions Ryan is asked almost never pierce his crafted image, they merely reinforce it— Won't the Democrats attack you for this? Why are you so brave? Etc. It's amazing.
For the record, Downie’s piece was pure crap. But was Chait kidding?
Are you kidding? It’s rare to find the establishment media cooperate in such image campaigns? When it comes to a string of Major Republicans, this sort of fawning character coverage is the well-established norm. For a very long time, John McCain was the world’s most honest man, even when it was clear that he wasn’t. (Chait himself was involved in this nonsense.) George W. Bush was a plain-spoken person, the kind of guy who says what he thinks. Colin Powell was a master of rectitude, even after he wowed the UN with the biggest pile of crap ever gathered on earth. (Rachel Maddow was still kissing Powell’s keister, and that of his top aide, right through last year.) Before that, Bob Dole was scripted as the man of high character in the 1996 White House race. And in most of these dramas, the Republican—the man of high probity—was scripted against a dishonest Dem. Al Gore was well-known as the world’s biggest liar, not unlike Bill Clinton before him. John Kerry was a comically feckless flip-flopper—even though, in mere fact, he was not.
How is it possible that major liberals have failed to establish this obvious theme for the American people? How is it that major liberals have failed to tell the public about this? (Even Krugman is soft in this area—has been soft several times in just the past week.) How is it possible that major liberals can still type such absolute nonsense—can still be surprised when this “slobbering” frame is slipped around Honest Paul’s neck? Can Chait really believe that crap—or was he playing you for career advantage? Prior mystery: In 2007, Chait wrote a book, The Big Con, in which he pretended that the New York Times only turned against Candidate Gore in October 2000.
Chait’s account of the Times’ 2000 coverage may be the most ridiculous account we’ve ever seen of any major public event. And just last week, we noted that Chait was being published by the Times—and no, not for the first time! Is that why Chait has worked so hard to be so clueless about the Times’ conduct? We have no way of knowing. But career liberal players have worked hard, for years, to keep the public barefoot and clueless about the way big mainstream organs have gone after Major Dems, especially Clinton and Gore. Many of these willing idiots have ended up at the Post and the Times—have ended up as players of Hardball, after covering up for Chris Matthews.
You have been played this way, again and again, when it comes to the mainstream press corps’ conduct. This is one of the ways “the liberal community has done a crappy job of selling the public on our perspective”—an amazingly crappy job.
Liberal leaders snooze and snore about major policy matters: Chait has done some good policy work—about the possible advantages of restoring all the Clinton tax rates, to cite one ongoing example. But mainstream career liberal leaders have long tended to hang back, sleeping and snoring the decades away. In this way, they have allowed a deeply ludicrous public discourse to develop down through the years.
How in the world have we managed to do it? How have we allowed so much disinformation to rule our public debates? In one area after another, the public has been disinformed in relentless, well-organized ways. But just as your career liberal leaders have tip-toed around that “Honest Republican/Dishonest Democrat” fetish, they have failed to go to the public and tell them they’re being disinformed.
The failures are overpowering. One example: We are thirty years into a disinformation campaign concerning Social Security. The other side has simple, well-crafted points of disinformation—deceptions everyone has heard. (The money isn’t there—we’ve already spent it! The left hand is borrowing from the right! Look out for that very large pile of worthless IOUs!) To this day, your side has made no real attempt to develop rebuttals the public can follow. We have made no effort whatsoever. Your “intellectual leaders” have slept, dozed, snoozed, burbled, slumbered and snored as this nonsense rules the debate. Non-career liberals have sat around accepting this slovenly conduct.
We liberals simply aren’t very smart—and we just luvv our celebrity leaders! Those leaders have often played us for fools as they build their safe, well-paid careers.
Like the followers of a famous emperor, we tend to sit there blindly and take it. Then again, we’ve found other ways of doing that “crappy job”—the crappy job that leaves Chris Hayes sensibly trembling about tonight’s address.
Tomorrow: Advancing the other side’s vision!
Special report: Mark Twain’s ineffectual mob!
INTERLUDE—WHO LOST TAXES (permalink): Was Walter Mondale courageous?
In 1984, the fiery candidate ingested a snootful. He then spoke the truth to the people
.
“Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I,” Mondale said, accepting nomination at the Democratic convention. “He won't tell you. I just did.”
Sure enough! The re-elected Reagan went on to raise taxes, just as Mondale said. But did telling the truth on that vast public stage make Walter Mondale courageous? In this morning’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof briefly alludes to that famous moment:
KRISTOF (4/14/11): Ever since Walter Mondale publicly committed hara-kiri in 1984 by telling voters that he would raise their taxes, politicians have run from fiscal reality. As baby boomers age and require Social Security and Medicare, escapism will no longer suffice. We need to have a frank national discussion of painful steps ahead, and since I’m not a politician, let me be perfectly clear: raise my taxes!Sensibly enough, Kristof wants higher taxes—but he remembers what happened to Mondale in that year’s election. Back in June 2010, we noted what happened to Walter Mondale within the mainstream press (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/14/10). Down through the years, Mondale has often been mocked by big pundits for having told the truth to the people! On the occasion of our post, the Washington Post’s Sunday Outlook section had included Mondale’s accurate statement in a list of “spectacularly ill-advised, tone-deaf, insulting or untrue remark[s].” Mondale’s truthful statement was lumped in with Marion Barry’s “Bitch set me up”—with Bill Clinton’s claim that he did not “have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
Walter Mondale’s accurate statement was listed with George Allen’s “macaca” moment, with Don Imus’ thoughtful remarks about those “nappy-headed hos.”
(The list was inspired by Helen Thomas’ statement that people in Israel—or perhaps in the settlements—should just go home to Poland. Today, as then, we can find no link to this unsigned, high-profile feature.)
Alas! In July 1984, Mondale made his accurate statement at the start of a highly novelized era—an era in which a string of majorRepublican figures would be lionized, in mainstream press novels, for their courage, their boldness, their honesty. (Starting with Clinton, Major Dems were big liars, feckless flip-floppers.) Paul Ryan is just the latest example; he has been widely praised for the courage it took to offer a kooky-con budget plan which seems to be based on some ludicrous numbers. This morning, Kristof calls for a return to the Clinton tax rates, saying “that single step would solve three-quarters of the deficit for the next five years or so.”
Quite sensibly, Kristof calls for higher taxes. But he understands the way this idea tends to play in our American politics.
In the wake of Obama’s speech, this raises a question: Who lost taxes? What makes it so hard for Democrats to call for higher taxes, even when it’s fairly obvious that higher taxes are needed? If a simple return to the Clinton tax rates would solve so much of our deficit problem, why can’t Obama simply propose it? And oh yes: Why haven’t you seen this possibility promoted by a string of Big Major Pundits? (It has been promoted on blogs.)
Who lost taxes? For ourselves, we’re not sure that an instant return to the Clinton tax rates would be the greatest idea. We’re not even sure that this would be part of a “best possible” long-range plan. But why would it be so hard to return to rates which obtained just a few years ago? Why haven’t you seen this idea more widely debated?
Partial answer: Here, as in so many areas, we liberals have lost the national debate. To use the words of the firebrand Drum: Liberal leaders have done “a crappy job” advancing the progressive views in this area.
Good God, but our “intellectual leaders” have been inept through the years! Is there any area where they have succeeded in keeping hope—and sound understanding—alive? Yesterday, in the course of his speech, Obama did a darn good job advancing aprogressive view of society. He advanced a picture which helps explain and justify the possible need for higher taxes:
OBAMA (4/13/11): The America I know is generous and compassionate. It's a land of opportunity and optimism. Yes,we take responsibility for ourselves, but we also take responsibility for each other, for the country we want and the future that we share.
We're a nation that built a railroad across a continent and brought light to communities shrouded in darkness. We sent a generation to college on the G.I. Bill and we saved millions of seniors from poverty with Social Security and Medicare.
We have led the world in scientific research and technological breakthroughs that have transformed millions of lives.Later, Obama extended this progressive vision, in which our nation is a community and we are an actual people. It’s a vision in which the word “we” is extended to all the people. “I will preserve these health care programs as a promise we make to each other,” he said (our emphasis). Later, he went to the heart of this vision: “We have to think about our fellow citizens with whom we share a community.”
That's who we are. This is the America that I know.
Question: Do we really “share a community” with a bunch of “our fellow citizens?” As citizens, do we “share a future” with 300 million others, many of whom we don’t know? The answer to that isn’t obvious. There is also an atomized vision of our society—a vision in which each person, each family, each local community must simply fend for itself. And by the way: The instincts which produce that vision are bred deep in the American bone. Starting even before the Mayflower, this country has a pioneer tradition, in which various folk struck out on their own, taking their personal chances.
Conservatives have pushed very hard in the last thirty years to advance that atomized vision. Nor is it obvious that their vision ain’t basically “right.” But as conservatives have pushed and clawed to advance that vision, we liberals have slumbered, snoozed, snored and failed. When have you seen major liberal intellectual leaders approaching the American people with the vision that we actually are a people? (When have you seen major liberal intellectual leaders approach the people at all?) Don’t we spend a great deal more time telling various parts of the public that they’re racist, stupid, very bad people? Doesn’t this undermine the notion that we’re a community? That we’re all in the same big national tribe? That we’re all part of each other?
Tomorrow, we’ll turn to Mark Twain’s ineffectual mob, recalling the way the liberal world has managed to lose so many debates. And by the way: Who lost taxes? In 2007, Candidate Obama took the pledge, just as Candidate George H. W. Bush did in 1988.
“No new taxes,” Obama said, except on income above a quarter million dollars.
We don’t blame Obama for having taken the pledge—but it showed that we’d lost one more debate. Today, the New York Times editorial board advances a truly clueless idea: In his speech, Obama should have “remind[ed] those in the middle class that their income taxes remain low and will need to go up.”
Please. If Obama had proposed such a thing, you would hear cries of “Read my lips” for the next two years. Barack Obama took the pledge, like the Republican Bush before him. This represented the fact that we liberals had lost one more debate.
(Note: December 2012 would be the perfect time for Obama to break that pledge by letting the Bush tax rates expire, thus restoring the Clinton rates.)
Someone did “a crappy job” in letting us lose that latest debate, the debate about the role of taxes. Tomorrow, we’ll visit an ineffectual mob which came from the mind of Mark Twain.
We’ve often thought of that mob in the past few years—often, when our side is talking.
When Mondale spoke truth to people: Mondale told the truth about taxes. But at the pre-addled New York Times, that wasnot the big story.
In 1999, Gay Jervey quoted former Times honcho Bill Kovach about that very same night. The ex-Timesman recalled Maureen Dowd’s keen eye on that historic occasion:
JERVEY (6/99): Even as a young reporter Dowd had an eye for telling detail and nuance... “We were on deadline,” Kovach explains. “Mondale and Ferraro had just been nominated... As the candidates stood on the platform, Maureen jumped up and grabbed me and said, ‘Look! Look! There is the story. Mondale doesn’t know whether to hug his wife or Ferraro. He doesn’t know what to do.’ She saw that signaled a new era, with women playing a whole new role in politics and men not quite knowing what to do.” That keen observation...crystallized for Kovach just how clairvoyant a reporter she was.Kovach never sued Jervey for what she wrote. (Her profile of Dowd appeared in Brill’s Content.) On that basis, we’ll have to assume that Kovach actually said those things.
Who lost taxes? At the beginning, Maureen Dowd was there. Mondale wasn’t courageous.
Special report: Mark Twain’s ineffectual mob!
INTERLUDE—HOW DOES DAVID BROOKS KNOW THAT (permalink): David Brooks has special powers (click here). How else could David Brooks know this?
BROOKS (4/15/11): The president, meanwhile, hit the political sweet spot with his speech this week. He made a sincere call to reduce debt, which will please independents, but he did not specify any tough choices. He called for defense cuts and asked the Pentagon to find some. He called for a reduction in tax credits but didn’t point to any that should actually go. He called for reductions in Medicare costs and asked his board of technocrats to come up with some.
These are exactly the sort of vague but well-intentioned policies that have sold well in election after election. The president is not being cynical about this. He genuinely does believe that seniors and the middle class can be spared from any shared sacrifice. He really does believe in calling together teams of experts to devise proper solutions. Obama’s sincere preferences happen to be more popular.
How can David Brooks possibly know what the president “genuinely does believe?”
How can he possibly know if he is being cynical in this, that or three other things? We have no idea, but Brooks can read Paul Ryan’s mind too! Like Obama, Ryan is one of “the most admirable men in Washington,” Brooks says at the start of his column. Along the way, he helps us know what Ryansincerely believes.
How can David Brooks know these things? Simple! Brooks has been cast in the role of a major journalist—and “major journalists” have adopted the novelist’s posture over the past many years. They know who the good and the bad people are, and they’re eager to help us rubes understand. They will even invent bogus tales to help us spot the Big Liars!
Alas! When it comes to politicians’ character, their judgments have turned out to be grotesquely wrong again and again and again. But so what? They never stop pimping their character tales—novels then tend to type and recite as a guild, as a clan, as a well-scripted group.
In modern times, this sort of thing dates at least to the late David Broder’s remarkable conduct in 1972, when he and some “journalistic” pals decided that Edmund Muskie’s bad temper disqualified him for the White House. (They had reached this judgment playing cards with Muskie. No, we’re not making this up!) Broder then concocted a story about the way the furious Muskie boo-hoo-hooed in public. This ballyhooed story badly damaged Candidate Muskie’s White House campaign.
Fifteen years later, Journalist Broder basically said that he pretty much made the tale up.
In 1987, Broder wrote this: “In retrospect, though, there were a few problems with the Muskie story. First, it is unclear whether Muskie did cry.” For a longer account of this truly astonishing conduct, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/28/07. (Note: A certain major liberal blogger has come a long way since then.)
Broder and his fellow “journalists” could see Ed Muskie’s soul. This morning, Brooks displays the same power. Did we mention the fact that these novelists have routinely been wrong in their supremely confident assessments of character?
Whatever! Brooks has massively clowned in the past two weeks. He has ceaselessly fawned over Ryan’s high character; today, he mind-reads (and loves) Obama too! But along the way, we think he got one thing quite right. On Tuesday, Brooks helped us see what happens when our store-bought liberal “intellectual leaders” keep lazily losing major debates. Long ago, we liberals lost the public debate about taxes—about the nature of community. Who lost taxes? The liberal world did! Last Friday, Brooks explained where that big defeat leaves us:
BROOKS (4/8/11): The Democrats are on defense because they are unwilling to ask voters to confront the implications of their choices. Democrats seem to believe that most Americans want to preserve the 20th-century welfare state programs. But they are unwilling to ask voters to pay for them, and they are unwilling to describe the tax increases that would be required to cover their exploding future costs.
Raising taxes on the rich will not do it. There aren’t enough rich people to generate the tens of trillions of dollars required to pay for Medicare, let alone all the other programs. Democrats, thus, face a fundamental choice. They can either reverse President Obama’s no-new-middle-class-taxes pledge, or they can learn to live with Paul Ryan’s version of government.On Monday, we’ll review the conduct of Mark Twain’s famous mob. For today, we think that passage by Brooks is still well worth considering.
Until they find a way to pay for the programs they support, they will not be serious players in this game.They will have no credible plans and will be in an angry but permanent retreat.
This morning, Paul Krugman presents his own view about future taxes. (“Over the longer run, I believe that we’ll need modestly higher taxes on the middle class as well as the rich to pay for the kind of society we want.”) What does “modestly higher” mean? We have no idea. But it will be very hard to campaign on such an outrageous idea. Our side lost the debate on taxes a very long time ago.
Remember when Mondale made such a fool of himself, telling the public the truth about taxes? In 2010, the Post compared Mondale’s statement to Mayor Barry saying “Bitch set me up.”
How have we managed to lose these debates? Frankly, our liberal leaders have often been store-bought. They have had very good jobs, at very good wages, working at very Serious news orgs.
Our “intellectual leaders” have often been bought, but we rubes refuse to see it. If they aren’t working at Fox News, we justknow they’re on our side!
That is only part of the way our side has resembled Mark Twain’s hapless mob. We’ll review that mob’s pitiful conduct next week. But alas! On the topic of taxes, Brooks pretty much got it right.
As the world turns: Is the world finally turning against “no new taxes?” Go ahead—just click here.
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