324 MILLER RATS ON THE GUILD

On-line at the Washington Post, Matt Miller presents a truly superlative column concerning Republican opposition to raising the federal debt limit.

Miller recalls the famous scene from The Shining where we learn that the Jack Nicholson character is stark raving mad. Instead of writing an actual novel, he has been typing a single phrase over and over again. According to Miller, the GOP stance on raising the debt limit has left him equally crazed:

MILLER (4/20/11): Well, debt limit mania has driven me to a similar frenzied state. If my wife came across my manuscript it would read, “The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit. The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit.”

I thought about making this week’s column that one sentence printed over and over 30 times. It would have been the opinion page equivalent of a Dada-esque protest against the inanity of the debate—and a cry for every news outlet to focus on this simple, clarifying fact.

Miller nails this “inanity” very well. Under terms of the Ryan plan, debt will continue to rise for decades. For good or for ill, Ryan’s plan would require raising the limit again and again. And yet the GOP, from its leaders on down, rails against the very idea of raising the debt limit next month. “The Democrats’ plans are no better on the debt,” Miller writes. “But at least Democrats aren’t rattling markets by hypocritically holding the debt limit hostage while planning to add trillions in fresh debt themselves.”

Miller presents a clear exposition of the current foolishness. We think his column is truly superb—until he offers the following passage, in which he covers for the guild.

The GOP is behaving like fools. But uh-oh! Miller says he can’t understand why his press corps colleagues won’t say so! Except, as his excellent column continues, it’s fairly clear that he does understand. He understands very well:

MILLER: But there’s more to say. For the life of me I don’t understand why the press doesn’t shove this fact in front of every Republican who says the debt limit cannot be raised unless serious new spending cuts are put in place. The supposedly “courageous,” “visionary” Paul Ryan plan—which already contains everything Republicans can think of in terms of these spending cuts—would add more debt than we’ve ever seen over a 10-year period in American history. Yet Ryan and other House GOP leaders continue to make outrageous statements to the contrary.

[…]

It’s amazing how some memes, once established as conventional wisdom, are almost impossible to dislodge, however at odds they are with the facts. Griping about this to a Prominent Media Figure the other day, I suggested that maybe if I set myself on fire in Times Square while spouting the truth about Republican debt, the truth would break through.

“Maybe,” he said. “But then you’d be seen as the radical.”

Early in his column, Miller says he doesn’t understand why the press corps won’t criticize Republicans on this point. He doesn’t understand why they present Ryan as “courageous,” as “visionary.” And then, a mere six paragraphs later, Miller shows that hedoes understand! He says there’s a “meme,” a hunk of “conventional wisdom,” driving the press corps’ conduct. Miller doesn’t explain just what this “meme” is, nor does he explain how it got “established” as conventional wisdom. But presumably, he is referring to the Standard Press Novel in which Republican budget cutters like Ryan are inevitably said to be “courageous,” “bold” and “honest”—in which their contradictions and errors, no matter how severe, end up on the cutting-room floor.

These “memes” have been ruling much of our “journalism” for a good many years. To see this Standard Press Novel at work, just read through Jeff Zeleny’s “Political Memo” in today’s New York Times.

In this morning’s Political Memo, Zeleny goes on the road with the true honest Ryan—and the piece he creates is pure hackwork. Zeleny tramps though Wisconsin with modest pure Ryan, watching as constituents shower praise on his humble bowed head. (As the “memo” begins, one constituent begs Ryan to run for the White House. Modestly, Ryan blushes.) As he proceeds, Zeleny describes Ryan “draw[ing] applause when he explains that Medicare would not immediately end for older citizens;” he says the solon “received far more praise than grief” at his various town meetings. (Zeleny doesn’t mention the way Ryan was hooted down at one such meeting, though video of the incident has been all over the web.)

But the most remarkable fawning concerns the way the scribe adopts Ryan’s perspective about Obama’s impolite conduct. Brutish Obama has been very partisan; high-minded Ryan has been very noble. A long-standing “meme” is in effect as Zeleny produces this scutwork:

ZELENY (4/21/11): So far, the dueling arguments [by Obama and Ryan] are playing out on vastly different stages.

“He’s got the bully pulpit,” Mr. Ryan said, walking out of Clinton’s Village Hall on Tuesday afternoon. “But I think he’s bigger than this. I think he’s bigger than this moment, I think he’s bigger than his speech last week. I think he’ll come to realize that—at least that’s my hope.”

When the president delivered his rebuttal to the Republican plan last week in Washington, he invited Mr. Ryan to sit in the front row, where the congressman watched the president sharply criticize his proposaland outline the Democratic position. At the end, Mr. Ryan declared, “What we heard today was a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.”

Yet as he traveled this week through his district across southern Wisconsin, which Mr. Obama narrowly won in 2008,Mr. Ryan took a cooler approach and said both sides should try to seek more “mutual respect.”

“I’m trying not to get into some partisan bickering war with the president,” Mr. Ryan told an audience. “I don’t see what purpose it serves to do that.”

So noble! In that passage, Zeleny types the self-pitying tale Republicans have told for a week—a tale in which noble, well-intentioned, well-mannered Ryan was insulted by Obama. It’s public-spirited Ryan’s “hope” that Obama will drop all the partisan broadsides. Meanwhile, Zeleny agrees not to mention the heavy-handed partisan bombast Ryan included in his own budget plan,before Obama’s speech.

On Monday, Kevin Drum went through some of the partisan bombast found in Ryan’s plan, mocking the way poor noble Ryan has complained about Obama’s criticism. (To read Kevin post, click this.) According to the high-minded Ryan, Obama proposed a reckless spending spree in his previous budget plan. Earlier, Obama exploited acute economic hardship to enact unprecedented expansions of government power. In the energy sector, Obama has promoted a heavy-handed compliance culture, brimming with regulations and reckless spending. He has placed burdensome and ineffective regulations on businesses in the service of dubious goals. He has insisted on spending money the government does not have, committing this nation to a crushing burden of debt.

Goodness! As Kevin notes, there’s nothing “wrong” with such tough talk. (Though Ryan’s budget plan also “commits this nation to a [large] burden of debt.”) But there is something wrong when a prissy little nut-cake turns around and boo-hoo-hoos about the way that Very Bad Man made bad complaints about him. And there’s something very wrong when “journalists” won’t report that Ryan has done this, even as they quote him saying that we should avoid such terrible partisan bombast.

By normal standards, a journalist should note this contradiction. Zeleny, typing from deep in a bag, simply recites noble Ryan’s complaints. He fails to let readers enjoy the high comedy of Ryan’s rather plain double standard.

Alas! Zeleny’s working from a “meme,” from a bit of conventional wisdom. Beyond that, it’s just as Miller says: Once they’re established, such memes are almost impossible to dislodge, however at odds they are with the facts. Zeleny’s Ryan-friendly piece recalls the “Political Memos” of Elisabeth Bumiller during the 2004 campaign—“political memos” in which Bumiller would fawn to Candidate Bush’s winning personality and noble intentions.

These memes have been widespread for a long time. They have driven the portraits of an array of straight-talking, plain-spoken, well-intentioned Republicans—solons who stood in opposition to a long string of Democratic dissemblers. Although he says much more about this practice than his colleagues ever will, Miller surely knows much more about this than he is willing to say.

Miller goes much farther in his column than his colleagues tend to do. These “memes” have been driving our journalism for the past several decades; everyone in the press corps knows it. But E. J. Dionne has never been willing to tattle; for the most part, neither has anyone else. The guild doesn’t talk about the guild. People! It just isn’t done!

Why did Zeleny fawn to Ryan? I don’t understand it, Miller says.

Sorry—we don’t believe that. But the guild doesn’t rat on the guild.