576 DO YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU READ IN THE PAPER! The Times described the attack on bin Laden. But did its report make sense? THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2011

Alan Simpson is forever/Ditto liberal acquiescence: The (apparent) cluelessness of Alan Simpson deserves a bit more attention.

On Tuesday, Ezra Klein authored a short, clear post concerning Simpson’s recent remarks—his clueless remarks about retirement age, longevity and Social Security. Simpson’s various remarks this week were profoundly clueless; often, they were just stupid. For Ezra’s short but simple post, just click here. (Ezra didn’t discuss all of Simpson’s remarks.)

Good lord! This same Alan Simpson was co-chair of Obama’s debt commission! Given his apparent cluelessness, you might as well put Donald Trump in charge of the Bolshoi Ballet.

But then, Simpson’s cluelessness about Social Security has pretty much been with us forever, voiced by a wide array of elite media figures. So has the liberal acquiescence which has given long and vigorous life to his well-scripted claims.

Alan Simpson’s bogus claims have been with us forever! Consider a session hosted by the late Tim Russert way back in May 2000.

From the mid-1990s on, Russert was Washington’s most influential newsman. He was the mayor of Washington’s news establishment. People still called Broder “the dean,” but that was a bow to the past.

Russert was lord of the guild. And when it came to Social Security, he never stopped pimping the silly claims Simpson has spewed on several occasions in the past year.

Let’s add to what Paul Krugman said in Monday’s column: Within our political culture, incomprehension among elites has been the norm for a very long time. There is no expectation of competence. And by the way: During this long period, “intellectual leaders” of the liberal world basically sat and stared as Simpson’s howlers were bruited all over the land. They stroked their ding-a-lings, kissed elite keister and let the garbage roll on.

For one sample of Russert’s work, consider his hour-long session with Joe Klein in May 2000.

Klein had just published a pointless novel, The Running Mate. As he appeared on Russert’s eponymous cable program, Candidate Bush was unveiling his plan to establish private accounts within Social Security—his plan for partial privatization of the venerable program.

After discussing Klein’s new book, Russert offered his standard rap about the dangers confronting Social Security. In the following passage, you will see him repeating the same stupid claims the hapless Simpson recited this week. And it gets worse: As Russert uncorked his various howlers, he and Klein despaired of the way Candidate Gore was opposing Bush’s brave bold necessary plan.

As he starts this exposition, Russert tells Klein, “The facts are simple.” And sure enough! As with Simpson’s recent bungling, Russert’s facts were very simple—and they were stupidly wrong:

RUSSERT (5/6/00): But the role of media becomes critical here, Joe Klein. The facts are simple. When Social Security began, Franklin Roosevelt, genius he— The life expectancy at that point was 63. He made eligibility for Social Security 65.

KLEIN: Right.

RUSSERT: It was a—was a very popular program. There were 45 workers for every retiree and—life expectancy was exactly that age! Now we're approaching two workers for every retiree. Life expectancy is 78 going, to 85. You're going to have 80 million people on Social Security and Medicare for about a fourth of their life, for three to 20 years.

Everyone knows that, and yet when you present it to Al Gore, he'll say, “No problem. I'll take the surplus and it'll pay for it.” Even his own secretary of the treasury written volumes of reports—trustees reports—will say, “No, it doesn't work that way.”

KLEIN: No, it doesn't.

RUSSERT: What is our job? Can we call time-out and say, “Excuse me, Mr. Vice President, it doesn't add up?”

After reciting a standard set of inaccurate and/or misleading “facts,” Russert asked a truly remarkable question. In essence, he asked if the press corps could stage an intervention with Candidate Gore—if they could step outside their traditional role and simply announce that Gore’s position was bogus. But then, the boys were making their partisan preference stunningly clear this day. Moments earlier, they had characterized Gore’s opposition to private accounts in this remarkable way:

KLEIN: The concern I have about the Gore campaign is that he has learned one lesson and he's kind of becoming a one-trick pony.

RUSSERT: Attack. Attack. Attack.

Mr. KLEIN: Attack. Attack.

RUSSERT: Governor Bush put forward a Social Security plan calling for a partial privatizing, and he attacks, saying that is risky. The fact is, President Clinton proposed taking parts of the Social Security trust fund and putting them in the stock market in his State of the Union message just, just a year ago. Yesterday, you had Pat Moynihan and, and Bob Kerrey and John McCain all coming out, saying, “Let's have a commission and this is an idea worth looking at.” Why—why, why does Gore just auto—almost knee-jerk attack, attack, attack?

For the record: Despite Russert’s misleading account, President Clinton’s earlier proposal wasn’t like Bush’s plan. (Gore opposed both proposals.) But Klein knew how to answer Russert’s question. Why did Gore “almost knee-jerk attack, attack, attack?”

“Well, because it's—it's, you know, scaring people about Social Security,” Klein directly replied.

There you see the “Simpson howlers” being recited more than a decade ago—being recited by Washington’s most influential newsman. And even as Russert recited his time-honored groaners, he and Klein trashed Candidate Gore for refusing to respect their vast wisdom on this critical subject. We’ve discussed this Russert program many times in the past; for one example, see,THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/19/05. But go ahead—we dare you:

You can spend the whole weekend searching! Just try to find one of your “liberal leaders” criticizing what Russert said. And Russert said these things over and over again, for years—on Meet the Press, in presidential debates, in a wide array of forums. We often criticized these statements—and we did so inside a vast silence.

Why didn’t your liberal leaders speak? Please! They sold you out for an obvious reason. They sold you out because their careers came first—and because Tim Russert was powerful. They wanted to get on Meet the Press—or at least on Hardball, Jack Welch’s gruesome cable equivalent, a source of career advancement. Result: Those howlers got free rein for decades as your heroes looked on.

By the way, just a question: Was that Joan Walsh we spotted on Hardball, chuckling with Chris Tuesday night?

Liberal voters have been played this way for several decades. Simple story: Most liberal voters are too tribal to notice—and our leaders will never tell.

What’s the moral to this story? It’s much as Krugman said on Monday. Within the allegedly liberal world, these elites are still very much in charge. Their judgment is bad; their morals are worse.

They’re going to fail you again.

Further insight from Russert and Klein: As “liberal leaders” hid in the woods, the mainstream press spread Simpson’s howlers. Here’s one more exchange from that remarkable Russert program:

RUSSERT: Can Al Gore be successful in making George W. Bush a right-wing extremist on abortion, on gun control, on Social Security? Will it hold? Will it stick?
KLEIN: I think that he certainly hopes so, but—but I don't know that it'll stick. You know, the American people are really pretty hip and pretty sophisticated.

After spewing a set of the “Simpson howlers,” Russert explained what Gore was doing. He was trying to paint Candidate Bush as “a right-wing extremist on Social Security.”
Could he make it stick, the worried man asked. Luckily, Klein wasn’t sure he could. The people are just too smart!
Liberal leaders hid in the woods as this ludicrous jihad rolled on. American history was changed in the process—and the dead of Iraq stare up from the ground.
By the way, was that Joan Walsh we spotted on Tuesday night’s Hardball?