Who Thinks Paul Ryan Is Mr. Serious?

Posted on 04/24/2012 by Peter Hart

Sometimes it's the little moments that tell you something–like this from a Meet the Press panel discussion (4/22/12) about potential running mates for Mitt Romney:

DAVID GREGORY: E.J., the point though also about Paul Ryan is that if you want to send a message you're serious about the budget you could do that with Paul Ryan.

DIONNE: Well, I don't think his budget is serious, so I disagree with the premise of the question.


It's worth remembering that in the Beltway media, "Paul Ryan is Mr. Serious Budget" is the neutral, middle-of-the-road position, and someone who thinks otherwise–based on, you know, facts–has an opinion.

Posted in Budget, Election, NBC | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Prostitution Scandal Is the Big Government Story You Were Waiting For

Posted on 04/24/2012 by Peter Hart

The Beltway press is remarkably fixated on two stories: A "scandal" over an $800,000 General Services Administration (GSA) conference in Las Vegas, and the unfolding saga involving prostitutes and some Secret Service and military officers in Colombia.

The White House thinks both are bad, of course, but not worth the amount of coverage they're getting. Beltway journalists think otherwise, and seem to want to believe that by paying so much attention to these stories they are a) standing up to the government by exposing wrongdoing; and b) not really talking about prostitutes at all, but telling a larger quasi-morality tale about the public's declining faith in institutions.

In other words, they're covering a story about a prostitute in Colombia because it illustrates the way you feel about the government.

Here's Meet the Press on Sunday (4/22/12)–"they" here is the White House:

CHUCK TODD: Well, I think, first of all, they also view this as a distraction.

DAVID GREGORY: Yeah.

TODD: You know, they're trying to talk about other things other than this, and GSA was one distraction. Now this is a larger distraction and they know that we in the media are obsessed with it for what Peter King said, right, which is, oh, it involves prostitutes. So it adds a sort of level of sex appeal that the media will gravitate to.

The panel went on to agree that not paying a prostitute is not very smart. But they're talking about these stories to get a larger truth:

TODD: But there is this larger sense, and David and I were talking about it, we're both obsessed with this National Journal cover story about "In Nothing We Trust"….  This is all feeding into more government, the idea that what part of government is working well? What part of it has got trustworthy institutions? And, you know, there's–and the White House is actually–they're upset at this idea that some of us are stringing all this together, GSA and the–but it is–does get to this underlying current that is out there that there is just a lack of trust in the American public with a lot of institutions.

On ABC's This Week (4/22/12), George Stephanopoulos and pundit Matthew Dowd were doing the same:

DOWD: But for me, looking at this situation, is we've lost faith in every single–the American public has lost faith in every single institution in this country. They have lost faith in sporting institutions in this country because of many different scandals. They've lost faith in the government. They've lost faith in both political parties.

STEPHANOPOULOS: All of us, the media.

DOWD: They've lost faith in corporate institutions. They've lost faith in the media. And so they see a scandal like this, they watch this scandal, they roll their eyes, and they say, you know, this is just an ongoing thing. Nobody's willing to fix Washington. Nobody's willing to fix the crisis of the institutional faith that we've lost in here. And this to me is just another example of the American public saying, listen, I don't trust any of you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And the phrase in National Journal this week, "In nothing we trust."

Iraq War. Afghanistan War. Foreclosure crisis. The Wall Street housing bubble that destroyed millions of jobs. You can make your own list. Whatever you come up with, something tells me that the issues that really matter to you–and speak to the failures of corporate or government elites–have nothing to do with a Las Vegas conference or whatever happened in Colombia.

NBC panelist E.J. Dionne made an important point:

DIONNE: But I think it's really bad for progressives, liberals, when any of these scandals come out. Because progressives and liberals are people who say, based on history, government can accomplish great things. And, paradoxically, I think these scandals hurt the progressive side of politics more, because they feed this doubt that the public has.

GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

DIONNE: And I think the task of people who are on that side of politics [is to] say, no, we can fix government and make it work and do good things. So I think this undercuts part of the progressive argument.

Which I think explains why these scandals get the media attention that they do.

Posted in ABC, Budget, Latin America, NBC | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Obama's Not Quite Silver Spoon Swipe UPDATED

Posted on 04/23/2012 by Peter Hart

Last week Barack Obama declared some sort of class war on Mitt Romney–at least that's what Fox, the New York Post and a few other outlets would have you believe.

On April 18, Obama gave a speech at a community college touting, among other things, a rather common only-in-America underdog spirit:

Somebody gave me an education.  I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.  Michelle wasn't.  But somebody gave us a chance–just like these folks up here are looking for a chance. 

The next day, as blogger Michael Thaddeus pointed out (4/21/12), Fox host Steve Doocy added a few words to the quote during an interview with Mitt Romney. According to Doocy 4/19/12), Obama had used some "fiery rhetoric" and had actually said this:

Unlike some people, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

We know who "some people" is, right? And so with that we had a campaign story. Over at the Washington Post website we see this headline: "Mitt Romney Responds to Obama's 'Silver Spoon' Swipe." The story, by Philip Rucker, has since been corrected–sort of. ("An earlier version of this post incorrectly quoted President Obama's reference to not being born with a silver spoon in his mouth.")

But even the accounts that got the quote right were still seeing it as a swipe at Romney. At the top of ABC's This Week (4/22/12):

STEPHANOPOULOS: And the general election gets down and dirty early.

OBAMA: I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

ROMNEY: Even if you like Barack Obama, we can't afford Barack Obama.

And the New York Times (4/19/12):

Mr. Obama is trying to broaden his appeal by pressing an argument of economic fairness and questioning whether a rich candidate like Mr. Romney can understand people's challenges.

"I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth," Mr. Obama said in his speech at the community college. "Michelle wasn't. But somebody gave us a chance."

And the Murdoch-owned New York Post turned in a blistering editorial (4/20/12):

Romney has every right to be proud of his family's accomplishments–as well as his own.

Even as Obama tries to portray it as repugnant–as he did this week with a remark that prompted the former Massachusetts governor's response.

"Unlike some people, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth," Obama said.

That's not just snotty–it's woefully ignorant of the American spirit.

The Post has since corrected the editorial, leaving the quote as it was spoken–which might make it difficult for readers to understand what exactly might be considered "snotty" about expressing pride in the distance one has traveled from a rather humble upbringing. And as John Dickerson pointed out at Slate (4/20/12), Obama has been saying this kind of thing for years.

And just think: The campaign season is just getting started.

UPDATE: Doocy issued something like a correction today (4/24/12): "I did some paraphrasing that seemed to misquote the president." That's funny, but not nearly as funny as Stephen Colbert's take, which you can see here.

Posted in ABC, Barack Obama, Election, Mitt Romney, New York Post, New York Times, Washington Post | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

PBS Series, Brought to You by Dow Chemical Company

Posted on 04/23/2012 by Peter Hart

Seen FAIR's recent alert about Dow's sponsorship of a PBS series? Want to do something about it? Write to the ombudsman to encourage an investigation. And paste your letter in the comments section below.

Posted in Media Criticism, PBS | 37 Comments

Anti-Obama, Pro-Romney Media? Don't Believe the Hype

Posted on 04/23/2012 by Peter Hart

There seems to be a lot of attention to a new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) study that finds Barack Obama to be much more harshly covered than the Republicans competing to run against him this fall.

From PEJ's latest study of campaign coverage

"Obama Has Received Least Favorable News Coverage So Far During 2012 Election Cycle" reads the headline at Think Progress (4/23/12). At the Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz writes, "During the bruising Republican primaries, there was one candidate whose coverage was more relentlessly negative than the rest"–that candidate, it turns out, is Barack Obama.

A study like this is a handy counter-argument to bogus right-wing complaints about liberal media bias. But that doesn't mean the study says what people think it does.

We've been through this before–last October saw the same group issue a very similar study. As we pointed out then, a study that attempts to measure the "tone" of political coverage is bound to have some problems. Events in the real world can be coded as "positive" or "negative" for the sake of the study, which translates into "positive" or "negative" coverage. When people read that media coverage was "negative," that sure sounds like a judgment on the way the press covered a particular story or candidate. That could be the case, or it could be that the news–high unemployment, or a Supreme Court challenge to a law–isn't generally favorable.

The previous study explained that a report about Romney's lead in a poll was coded as "positive." But that doesn't mean the media is rooting for that finding, any more so than a report that explains the collapse of Newt Gingrich's campaign could be construed as anti-Gingrich media bias.

Indeed, Kurtz's article has PEJ associate director Mark Jurkowitz saying, "Day in and day out, he was criticized by the entire Republican field on a variety of policies." Which means that the press is covering a Republican election cycle where the candidates are all saying critical things about Barack Obama.

There are plenty of problems with that kind of coverage, especially when the press fails to factcheck those claims. But the presence of criticism or bad news shouldn't be confused with bias.

More useful than the positive-negative evaluation is the study's look at substance. Kurtz writes:

How substantive is the media's approach to the 2012 race? From November through mid-April, the horse race won by several lengths.

Sixty-four percent of the media attention was framed around polls, advertising, fundraising, strategy and who was up or down. Another 12 percent focused on the candidates' personal backgrounds—families, religion, marriages and finances.

As for the candidates' stands on the issues, that accounted for a mere 11 percent of the coverage.

While findings like that aren't as likely to get as much attention, they provide a more damning assessment of the way media cover political campaigns.

P.S. You can use the same dubious methodology to reach the opposite conclusion–that's kind of the problem. Here's New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane's latest column (4/22/12):

According to a study by the media scholars Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter, the Times' coverage of the president's first year in office was significantly more favorable than its first-year coverage of three predecessors who also brought a new party to power in the White House: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

Robert Lichter, of course, is the media scholar who determined that during the Gulf War, George H.W. Bush got as much negative coverage as Saddam Hussein. You should take all his evaluations of who's getting more or less bad press with an appropriate dose of salt.

Posted in Barack Obama, Election, New York Times | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

NY Times Bungles Keystone Debate (Again)

Posted on 04/20/2012 by Peter Hart

More Democrats are starting to shift towards supporting the controversial Keystone pipeline, reports Jennifer Steinhauer in the New York Times (4/20/12).  The media discussion has leaned heavily in favor of the project, so perhaps this is no surprise. And this report is no exception.

The political fight over Keystone has a lot to do with how the story is framed.  Take this paragraph from Steinhauer:

 With gas prices sticking near $4 a gallon, unemployment high in many states and demonstrable support for the project in numerous polls, many Democrats–especially those from states where pipelines are commonplace–are beginning to sound almost indistinguishable from Speaker John A. Boehner, who called Mr. Obama "increasingly isolated" in his opposition to expanding the project.

There are two key assumptions in that paragraph: Keystone would do something about gas prices and it would would generate a significant number of jobs. This is exactly what Keystone proponents like to stress.  But the Keystone project, as we've noted before, would create few jobs and have no consequential effect on gas prices.

Steinhauer doesn't get into this, writing only: "The number of jobs that could be created by the Keystone expansion–supporters say 20,000–is disputed."

Well that's not very helpful–especially considering other estimates find it would create only 2,500-5,000 jobs.

And the piece leans heavily on supporters of the project–Republicans and Democrats alike–with little room for actual critics.

With media coverage like this, it's little wonder that polls show support for the Keystone pipeline.

Posted in Economy, Environment, New York Times | Tagged , | 10 Comments

NYT Finds Fox News Whistleblower!

Posted on 04/20/2012 by Peter Hart

Brian Stelter reports in the New York Times that Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are renewing their contracts…meaning that we'll be enjoying–and paying for–their talents through the 2016 election season.

Not many people around Fox wanted to speak on the record about the new deals, but Stelter granted anonymity to one Fox insider who was more than willing to spill the beans:

A colleague of Mr. O'Reilly's, speaking on the condition of anonymity because Fox had not given permission to speak on the record, said he seemed as engaged as ever, despite having had the job for 16 years. "He always brings his A game," the colleague said. "Every single day."

What, nothing about how charming and funny he is in real life?! Surely a well-placed whistleblower could have clued us in on that too.

It's worth mentioning–again–that the Times is supposed to have rules that limit the use of anonymous sources:

The New York Times rules state, for instance, that anonymity is "reserved for situations in which the newspaper could not otherwise print information it considers reliable and newsworthy," and "should not be invoked for a trivial comment, or to make an unremarkable comment appear portentous" ("Confidential News Sources Policy," NYTCo.com).

It's hard to see how "Bill O'Reilly is awesome" meets the standards set out in the Times anonymity policy. But those are rules that are apparently made to be broken, especially if it means getting this kind of vital news into the paper.

Posted in anonymity, Fox News, New York Times | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Now They Tell Us: Iran Didn't Actually Threaten to Wipe Israel Off the Map

Posted on 04/19/2012 by Steve Rendall

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor acknowledged on Al Jazeera English (4/14/12) that Iranian leaders have never called for Israel to be "wiped" off the map.

Meridor agreed with interviewer Teymoor Nabili's suggestion that the supposed remarks  were never actually made; Iranian leaders, Meridor said,

come basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn't say "we'll wipe it out," you are right, but [that] it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor, it should be removed.

Hostile words, to be sure, but not the menacing threat endlessly reported in corporate U.S. media in recent years. (Iran, Israel and "wiped off the map" occur together more than 8,500 times in the Nexis news database in the last seven years.)

Of course, Mideast expert and blogger Juan Cole noted long ago that Ahmadinejad never called for Israel to be wiped off the map, but Meridor's interview suggests that there is hope this information might finally penetrate the corporate media bubble.

A New York Times blog (Lede, 4/18/12) wrote up the Al Jazeera interview ("Israeli Minister Agrees Ahmadinejad Never Said Israel 'Must Be Wiped Off the Map.'") Though the Lede's lede was somewhat grudging, suggesting the Persian language was partly to blame for the confusion ("In a reminder that Persian rhetoric is not always easy for English-speakers to interpret…"), it nevertheless indicated a clean break from earlier media insistence that the threatening remarks, coupled with a supposed Iranian nuclear weapons program, posed an existential threat to Israel.

The Times has used the shopworn Ahmadinejad canard on several occasions. "Wipe Israel 'Off the Map,' Iranian Says," was the paper's October 27, 2005 headline; a January 19, 2010 report stated matter-of-factly: "The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says Iran's nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. He has also denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be wiped off the map." Other Times stories have acknowledged doubts about the claim (6/11/06, 1/8/11), but the paper has never conclusively established the context and meaning of remarks, despite the fact that Jonathan Steele, an Iranian expert who writes for the London Guardian, tried to explain it to Times reporter Ethan Bronner (6/11/06) :

The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran's first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time," just as the Shah's regime in Iran had vanished. He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The "page of time" phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon.

Other media outlets have expressed even less doubt that Iran is hell-bent for Israel's annihilation. "Iran's president unleashes another warning to Israel, declaring once again that the Jewish state will be wiped off the map, and soon," remarked CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer (Situation Room, 6/2/08). "Since Ahmadinejad took office four years ago," announced CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric (9/23/09), "he's built a reputation as a provocateur, saying Israel should be wiped off the map." As a recent Washington Post op-ed (4/1/12) by Dennis Ross and David Makovsky explained, "Israel is the only country that Iran has repeatedly threatened to wipe off the map."

Over the years, two key claims have sustained hostility toward Iran in official circles and the media: that it is attempting to manufacture nuclear weapons, and that it wants to wipe Israel off the map.

The first claim, though now contradicted by American officials and the CIA, who say there's no proof Iran is currently working on nuclear weapons, nevertheless survives in the media as sort of unkillable zombie lie.

It remains to be seen if the bogus charge that Iran has vowed to wipe Israel off the map will be as resilient, even after a top Israeli official has acknowledged its inaccuracy.

Posted in CBS, CNN, Iran, Israel/Palestine, New York Times, Washington Post | Tagged , , , , , | 28 Comments

Assange's 'Nut Job' Portrayal Says More About Portrayers

Posted on 04/18/2012 by Peter Hart

New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley–whose work has been regularly featured in the paper's Corrections box–doesn't think much of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange's new TV show, which debuted on the Russian-backed RT cable channel.

Stanley takes her shots–the channel has a "zesty anti-American slant," she writes, then crudely notes: "A few correspondents can sound at times like Boris and Natasha of Rocky & Bullwinkle fame." OK.

Stanley runs down the various controversies swirling around Assange, then presents his response: "Mr. Assange tells reporters that he is being persecuted for political reasons, which, even if true, doesn't exactly help his case." I'm not even sure how to make sense of that.

The part that jumped out at me, though, was this:

To some he was a hero, to others a spy, but nowadays he is most often portrayed as a nut job.

I guess that's supposed to diminish Assange. But it tells me little about Julian Assange–and plenty about the corporate media.

Posted in New York Times, WikiLeaks | Tagged , , | 35 Comments

Washington Post's Molotov Peace Offer

Posted on 04/18/2012 by Peter Hart

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has delivered a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that calls for a resumption of peace negotiations.

Look at the image the Washington Post (4/18/12) used to accompany its story about this :


I will admit that a letter might not lend itself to an interesting graphic, but it sure seems odd to use a fiery Molotov cocktail instead.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Washington Post | Tagged | 12 Comments

NYT: Iranians and Their Lying Religion

Posted on 04/17/2012 by Peter Hart

There are different ways media talk about how you can't trust Iran. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, for one, went straight for bigotry: "These Persians lie like a rug," he wrote in 2009.

The New York Times took a slightly different route on Saturday (4/14/12) : Maybe Iran can't be trusted because their religion permits–or perhaps even encourages–duplicity.

"Seeking Nuclear Insight in Fog of the Ayatollah's Utterances" was the headline over the piece by James Risen. It's hard to know what the fog might be; the Iranian leader who actually has control over the nuclear program–supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei–has been fairly clear in stating that his country is not pursuing a weapon, and that such weapons violate his religion.

Risen sees things differently:

Ayatollah Khamenei's remarks are sometimes contradictory, and always subject to widely different interpretations.

So what's the evidence? Khamenei has talked about Libya's experience as a lesson:

For evidence, analysts can point to remarks Ayatollah Khamenei made last year that it was a mistake for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya to give up his nuclear weapons program.

Referring to Colonel Qaddafi, Ayatollah Khamenei said that "this gentleman wrapped up all his nuclear facilities, packed them on a ship and delivered them to the West and said, 'Take them!'"

"Look where we are, and in what position they are now," he added.

It is not entirely clear how far Libya's nuclear program has developed, but they did not have a weapon.  In any event, the point about Libya would seem to an obvious and uncontroversial observation: If other countries think you might have a nuclear capabilities, or a weapon, they're less likely to invade your country.

But Risen's main case seems to be that Shiite Muslims have some kind of pass when it comes to lying:

Complicating matters further, some analysts say that Ayatollah Khamenei's denial of Iranian nuclear ambitions has to be seen as part of a Shiite historical concept called taqiyya, or religious dissembling. For centuries an oppressed minority within Islam, Shiites learned to conceal their sectarian identity to survive, and so there is a precedent for lying to protect the Shiite community.

Blogger and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole–an expert on Shiite history–wrote a helpful corrective (4/16/12) explaining that taqiyya, which dates back hundreds of years, had a specific purpose:

For Shiites, who were often a minority in early Muslim societies, the doctrine of pious dissimulation was permission to say that they were actually Sunni Muslims if saying that would save their lives or their big property.

As Iran became Shiite-majority (over the last 400 years), there was little need for taqiyya. Cole explains:

Imam Ruhullah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, demanded that taqiyya be abandoned in favor of holy war or jihad. Shiite expert Rainer Brunner argues that pious dissimulation has "completely lost its importance" in contemporary, Shiite-majority Iran.

So the idea that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the theocratic leader of a Shiite-majority Islamic Republic, would give a dishonest fatwa about a key principle in Islamic law (the prohibition on killing innocent non-combatants in war) is a non-starter.

So who are the "some analysts" the Times believes could argue that Shiites are strategic liars? It's hard to figure; the article's main source would seem to be former U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross. Cole derides this Shiites-are-likely-liars idea as "just some weird form of Islamophobia, and policy-makers and analysts can safely disregard it." That would be easier to do if it weren't in the pages of the New York Times.

Posted in Iran, Islamophobia, Libya, New York Times | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments

Richard Cohen on Candidate Lying Is Half-Baked–and Half Cribbed

Posted on 04/17/2012 by Jim Naureckas

Richard Cohen says he envies people who are persuasive liars. He really ought to envy people who are persuasive writers.

His column today (4/17/12) is ostensibly about how Mitt Romney is a big liar. It goes almost its entire length, though, before citing any compelling examples of Romney lying. (Cohen does say call Romney's claim "rubbish" that he doesn't watch the ads his Super PAC supporters make to attack his opponents–but is it really so hard to believe that a candidate might choose to remain strategically ignorant about such spots?)

At the end, he points out that Romney claims Obama is an enemy of the Second Amendment–which isn't true, but is absolutely standard Republican rhetoric. He also chides Romney for changing his ideological stripes–a trait Cohen has previously touted as one of Romney's great strengths.

In between, of course, Cohen needs to point out that Obama is a liar too–or, as Cohen puts it, "does indeed sometimes play politics with the truth." While that's undeniable, Cohen's examples here too are utterly unconvincing–and both borrowed from George Will, which is a mark of some kind of desperation. First up is this:

The president's recent attack on Ryan's new budget proposal sent countless critics scurrying to their thesauruses for ways to say lie–"comprehensively misrepresenting" is the way George F. Will put it.

If you follow that link, you find that Will's complete argument for Obama misrepresenting Ryan's budget is…a link to Ryan's Facebook page. There you'll find devastating rebuttals like this one:

  • CLAIM: The Path to Prosperity's Medicaid reforms would "take away healthcare for about 19 million Americans–19 million."
  • REALITY: 19 million is about the number of Americans forced into Medicaid by the president's new healthcare law–so the president is just using a novel way of saying that we oppose his healthcare takeover and propose to repeal it.

And then, in an uncredited swipe from Will, Cohen scolds Obama for saying "that a Supreme Court reversal of his healthcare law would be unprecedented." This is an echo of that same Will column, which charged that Obama "surely knows he was absurd when he said last Monday, regarding Obamacare, that it would be 'unprecedented' for the Supreme Court to overturn a 'passed law.'"

That "passed law" phrase comes from Obama saying, "I'd just remind conservative commentators that for years what we've heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint–that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law." In other words, according to Obama, judges overturning a "passed law" is something that conservatives have frequently complained about.

It's not that it's hard to find examples of either Romney or Obama lying–including Obama lying about himself, which is the category that supposedly distinguishes the two candidates. But if Cohen is going to rely on George Will to do his research for him, there's no way to avoid the old computing rule: garbage in, garbage out.

Posted in Barack Obama, Budget, Election, Washington Post | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Pondering Bill Keller's 'Middle'

Posted on 04/16/2012 by Peter Hart

Nobody loves centrism, writes Bill Keller in the New York Times (4/16/12), but they should. "Centrism is easily mocked and not much fun to defend," writes, noting that critiques of centrism from the left and right have a certain appeal:

The politics of the center–including the professional centrists and trans-partisans of groups like Third Way and Americans Elect–do not quicken the pulse. White bread, elevator music, No Labels, meh.

So what's to love about white bread? Winning. Elections are, Keller writes,

usually decided by voters who are not wedded to either party, who don't stay in any ideological lane. These voters are thought to constitute roughly 15 percent of the electorate, give or take a few points. Add enough of them to your loyal base, and victory is yours.

And the middle isn't boring after all: "The middle is not the home of bland, split-the-difference politics, or a cult that worships bipartisan process for its own sake." He ticks off a list of centrist attributes, courtesy of the Third Way think tank. Such voters worry about debt, they are progressive on social issues, and "have nothing against the rich–but they don't oppose tax increases."

So what does this mean for the general election? "My hunch is that Romney will manage to shake off most of his extremist accouterments, because they never seemed to fit him," Keller explains.

And what about Obama? Keller worries that Obama's embrace of the Buffett Rule–which would make sure that millionaires pay more in taxes–makes him seem like less of a centrist:

The president sometimes, as in his last two State of the Union addresses, plays the even-keel, presidential pragmatist, sounding themes of balance and opportunity. Then sometimes lately he sounds more as if he's trying out for the role of Robin Hood.

The policy isn't a bad one, according to Keller–it's just that arguing in favor of it doesn't sound right:

The problem is that when Obama thrusts these populist themes to the center of his narrative, he sounds a little desperate. The candidate who ran on hope–promising to transcend bickering and get things done–is in danger of sounding like the candidate of partisan insurgency. Just as Romney was unconvincing as a right-wing scourge, Obama, a man lofty in his visions but realistic in his governance, feels inauthentic playing a plutocrat-bashing firebrand. The role the middle really wants him to play, I think, is president.

The Buffett Rule is very popular with the public–Democrats overwhelmingly support it, but so do independents, by a margin of 63 to 33 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll.

That sounds like it's kind of…centrist, maybe. The lesson here seems more like the same old, same old: When corporate media talk about the "center," they mean somewhere off to the right of the Democratic Party, wherever that may be. It's a handy definition if you want to continually move the "the middle" to the right.

Posted in Barack Obama, New York Times, Taxes | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Arabs and Democracy: A Question for Fareed Zakaria

Posted on 04/16/2012 by Peter Hart

Fareed Zakaria wrote in Time magazine (4/16/12) that "the Arab Spring is looking less appealing by the week." The problem is a "messier reality," and he zeroes in on Egypt:

And now, as Egypt's presidential election approaches, we see the rise of two candidates from Islamic parties, Khairat al-Shater and Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. The former is often described as a moderate, the latter as a radical. Much of what we're seeing might well be the tumult that accompanies the end of decades of tyranny and the rise of long-suppressed forces, but it raises the question, Why does it seem that democracy has such a hard time taking root in the Arab world?

It's a staple of corporate media commentary to lament democracies that might produce leaders that we find disagreeable (and yet somehow it's their commitment to democracy that is deemed questionable). And this is tough to take from someone like Zakaria, who spent much of the George W. Bush years extolling his pro-democratic credentials, going so far as to argue that Bush's ignorance was strength: "Bush's capacity to imagine a different Middle East may actually be related to his relative ignorance of the region. Had he traveled to the Middle East and seen its many dysfunctions, he might have been disheartened."

In any event, the news over the weekend was that both candidates Zakaria singled out above have been disqualified from the election. This raises a question for Zakaria: Since their candidacies were a sign that democracy is having a hard time taking root in Egypt, is that country's decision to bar them mean they are now moving closer to democracy, or further from it?

Posted in Egypt, Election, Islamophobia, Time | Tagged | 11 Comments

On Drones and Democracy

Posted on 04/13/2012 by Peter Hart

Photo: AFP/Getty

Yesterday (4/12/12) Pakistan's parliament unanimously voted in favor of a resolution that, among other things, calls for an immediate end to CIA drone strikes in their country.

The Washington Post's account of this news included this curious observation:

From Washington's perspective, the debate in Parliament was a healthy exercise in democracy but one that is unlikely to affect the drone war. The military leaders of both nations see the drones as efficient and effective in eliminating hard-core Islamic militants that plague both the U.S. and Pakistani armies.


I know that the Post is merely conveying "Washington's perspective," but let's think about this for a second. A sign of a healthy democracy is one where civilian political leadership has no power over the military–either in its own country or a nominal ally launching air attacks on its soil?

The New York Times, meanwhile, had this take (4/13/12):

Still, the demand for an "immediate cessation of drone strikes" has no easy solution. In 2008 Parliament also demanded an end to drone strikes, only for the CIA to continue attacking Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in the tribal belt along the Afghan border.

Actually, there is an easy solution to Pakistan's demand: Stop launching drone attacks.

Posted in New York Times, Pakistan, War/Military, Washington Post | Tagged | 23 Comments