FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2011
: The press corps simply loves its scripts. One such script, about Newt Gingrich, is virtually mandated by the tenets of press corps Hard Pundit Law.
In yesterday’s Washington Post, Dan Balz reported on Gingrich’s entry into the presidential race. That mandated script appeared quite early in this front-page report:
BALZ (5/12/11): The tweet finally landed at 4:19 p.m. Wednesday. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a fixture in the Republican Party for three decades, became a candidate for president.
Though it was long expected, the announcement was something of a milestone in presidential politics—the first such declaration via Twitter, with the requisite link to his video statement.
Like others in the Republican field, Gingrich, 67, has been moving steadily toward a candidacy for months. But in formally declaring, he set himself on an uncertain journey that will test whether his assets can overcome his liabilities.
There are many questions he will confront. Gingrich is an idea-spewing machine, unlike anyone else in the Republican Party. But does America want a one-man think tank, particularly one with his history, as its president?
This report wasn’t a puff piece; it dealt with unflattering parts of Gingrich’s profile. But the mandated script appeared quite quickly:
Newt Gingrich is a one-man think tank! He’s constantly spewing ideas!
That’s a fully mandated script about Gingrich, much like the earlier “John McCain is a straight-talking maverick” shibboleth. That said, we’ve always been puzzled by this particular mandated press corps script.
What are Gingrich’s famous ideas? Plainly, there must be millions; when it comes to the spewing of ideas, the man is a stone-cold machine. But in all honesty, we can’t name any Gingrich ideas. Nor did Balz list a bunch of his best ideas. Perhaps there are simply too many.
Luckily, Balz included a link under the phrase “one-man think tank.” When we clicked the link, we received a lesson in the way press scripting works.
Balz linked to this video by Chris Cillizza, another ranking Post scribe. The video runs less than two minutes. Roughly twenty seconds in, Cillizza took us where the rubber kissed the road:
CILLIZZA: Is Gingrich a serious candidate for the nomination? He has considerable strengths. He’s universally known among Republican primary voters, is a proven fund-raiser, and is widely regarded as the brightest policy mind in the party. Those strengths are offset by equally large weaknesses.
That highlighted phrase represents Cillizza’s full discussion of Newt’s barrelful of ideas.
From this episode, we got a lesson in the logic of script confirmation:
Balz wanted to support his claim that Newt is a one-man think tank. How could he prove this claim was true? Simple! By standard press corps logic, his claim is true because some other journalist has recently said the same thing! Rather, that second journalist said that other people think the claim is true.
Balz can prove his claim is true; it’s true because Cillizza said it! We’re rarely seen a clearer display of this way this syndrome works.
This script includes an optional rider: As you will see in the next few weeks, this script permits a guild-sanctioned add-on. Displaying his expertise, Balz soon rattled it off:
BALZ: The knock on Gingrich, of course, is that he throws out ideas so rapidly that he can barely distinguish between good and bad ones. As the story goes, the staff at the National Republican Congressional Committee used to keep a file cabinet labeled "Newt's Ideas." Most of the space was reserved for "Newt's Bad Ideas."Gingrich has operated with the philosophy that it's better to have 25 things to say than one or two.
Full script about the newest contender: Newt Gingrich has a million ideas, most of which are bad.
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