Thomas Frank has a good piece today about my favorite topic, the difference between the public’s overwhelming support for the stimulus package and the punditry’s contention that the last three weeks have doomed the once-promising Obama administration:
It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject — whether from the left or the right, a poet or a plumber — to the Beltway version, in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power. Today, though, with the nation facing the deepest economic crisis in decades, there is something particularly perverse about the Washington way.
We are watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention. And our designated opinion leaders want to know: Is Obama up this week? Is he down? And is his leadership style more like Bill Clinton’s, or Abraham Lincoln’s?
Above all else stands the burning question of bipartisanship. Whatever else the politicians might say they’re about, our news analysts know that this is the true object of the nation’s desire, the topic to which those slippery presidential spokesmen need always to be dragged back.
When last week’s passage of the gigantic stimulus package is judged in this light, only one verdict is possible: Obama failed to deliver. He talked big about reaching out to Republicans, and yet he received only three votes from them in the Senate, and none in the House. Yes, the bill passed, but what a disaster!
Right on cue here’s some punditizing complete with one of our favorite lines:
[…]
It would have been hard to predict, as the stimulus debate began, that President Obama would end up losing more Democratic votes than gaining Republican ones.Republicans didn’t win the stimulus debate, but they managed to deflate Obama’s dream of bipartisan hand-holding, tarnish the stimulus as stuffed with lefty pork, and — to borrow a phrase from the inauguration — pick themselves up and dust themselves off.
“After the November elections the party was beat back and defenseless,” GOP strategist Ed Rollins told me. “I think this allows them to stay unified and will help rebuild their financial base. They at least have a pulse.”
Damn the opinion polls, full meme ahead!
dmsilev
Raises an amusing question: Who is more out of touch with the national mood, the GOP Congressional delegation or the bulk of the political commentariat?
-dms
bayville
Is Rollins trotting this out as the official GOP slogan for 2010?
Davis X. Machina
On the tombstone of the Republic will be the epitaph "Killed by a Story Arc".
Roonieroo
NPR was interviewing two self-identifying republicans this morning. One voted for Obama and one for McCain. Both of them refused to judge the Obama administration when only three weeks have passed and both were looking on the side of optimism that the stimulus would work. Where they said that the plan might not line up exactly with their ideology they both said they were just laymen and could not judge the package based on actual knowledge of economics.
It was interesting because these two republicans said exactly the opposite of what the punditry are saying that republican citizens belief. Now, one did say that he has friends that are purely viewing everything through partisanship and indicated that he just didn’t try to talk to them.
It was an interesting interview.
Bill H
It showed me just how strong the Obama Administration is,. He was cloistered in the White House and the "message" started to go south, so he came out of hiding and raised his voice. Public approval soared and the bill sailed through Congress. This man can kick ass.
eyeball
Zombies have a pulse too. Eventually they bump into a tree and someone shoots them in the head.
Napoleon
A similar take from Hertzberg:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/02/23/090223taco_talk_hertzberg?yrail
cleek
and this was in the WSJ Opinion section?
these are interesting times!
Anton Sirius
@bayville:
Based on his last couple of CNN appearances, I think Ed has just given up on the GOP. If and when a new right wing party springs up I fully expect him to be among the first recruits.
The Grand Panjandrum
Ezra had a pretty good post the other day about the now infamous George Will climate change piece. He wanted a Will’s Law for those who point out the global cooling myth that was based on pseudo-science as some sort of argument that the scientific "consensus" was wrong before. Maybe we just need a general law for pundits who base their assumptions on no data, fake data or just made up shit.
Any suggestions for a name? I say BillO’s Law after my favorite Fox News crazy person.
ricky
Palin-Schiavo 2012
SpotWeld
I think once the horserace is over the punditry defaults to looking for the boxing match.
dmsilev
@cleek:
Thomas Frank is a WSJ op-ed page affirmative action hire: He’s their token sane person.
-dms
Keith
I’m gonna miss "His name is Ronald Reagan. His name is Ronald Reagan…"
gbear
Wouldn’t that look nice posted everywhere on flyers and billboards in DC?
@Roonieroo:
Did the NPR commentator ‘get it’, or did he/she come back to the conclusion that Obama has his political work cut out for him if he wants to please conservative america?
Napoleon
@cleek:
After they got rid of Al Hunt they had no liberal voice at all. Around a year ago or so they added Frank (author of the book Wrecking Crew which I highly recommend, and What is the Matter with Kansas) who is clearly a progressive, and a pretty interesting one at that.
ricky
George Will wouldn’t know climate change if the umpires called a baseball game he was attending in the third inning due to rain.
Dave
The media pundits are just circling the wagons. Their entire way of life is threatened by two things; the slow collapse of the newspaper industry and the growth of independent media/opinion outlets on the Internet. They are just engaging in a common type of response to that development; you tighten your circle and surround yourself with people you feel comfortable with.
These jagoffs aren’t talking to average Americans. They are talking to DC pundits and then overlaying that onto what they think Americans "care about".
If you live in Michigan, or California, or Texas or wherever, the last thing you give a shit about is bipartisanship. What you want are results, and Obama gave them to you with a stimulus package. And Ed Rollins is smoking some strong dope if he thinks the GOP is going to survive by saying "NO!" for four years.
AhabTRuler
Stop saying that! Even when I DO smoke strong dope, I don’t come up with shit that stupid.
joe from Lowell
With a Democratic President, and large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, isn’t "deflate Obama’s dream of bipartisanship" another way of saying "guarantee that they will have no influence?"
bago
I know people who have said smarter things in a k-hole.
wilfred
What the fuck does public support of the stimulus plan have to do with the value of the Plan? How many of this same public supported the Iraq War, or believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11?
I read a lot of conflicting opinions about this plan, written by people who seem pretty reasonable. If the Republicans actually believe in what they’re doing, then good for them. If not, they’ll lose elections for the next 20 years.
Of course, if the plan does fail, they’ll be on record as having opposed it. Since most of their seats are ideologically safe, what do they lose with opposition?
Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan. You are in for some pretty fucking hard times and this same public whose wisdom you extol now will not be forgiving when they’re standing on bread lines.
Billy K (D-TX)
Random thought:
I wonder if this sort of thing is meant to deflate and divide the voting population as much as it is to steer the CW. I mean, when I was a younger man, the only political "opinion" I got was from Sunday talk shows and editorial pages (this was before there was an internet. I’m old.).
So Imagine I’m thinking, "yay, Obama passed the stimulus. There is hope for us!" But then I read a bunch of crap spewing from the village fountains about how the stimulus won’t work and nobody liked it and Obama’s doomed. Well, suddenly, as a voter, I feel like I’m the only one who ever thought maybe this was a good thing. I feel isolated, stupid and dejected. And from then on it’s much easier to convince me things are screwed up, no one thinks like me, and everything is doomed.
In other words, it’s a way to keep voters dejected and controlled.
Zifnab
@wilfred: It’s a litmus test for political success. Nevermind the fact that, by November 2010, political success will hinge entirely on job creation and actual economic stimulus. The talking heads want to focus on gut feelings and general attitudes. So that’s what you get to hear about.
Journalists aren’t doing their jobs. News at 11.
Anton Sirius
@Dave:
That’s just it. I don’t think Ed believes that they will survive four years.
OK, maybe that’s just me projecting. Viva la devolucion!
Roonieroo
@gbear:
You know, the NPR person was asking questions designed to get someone to give the partisan response and the two interviewees didn’t bite. It wasn’t like the other punditry where they browbeat the people but it was in there to some degree.
Walker
@Billy K (D-TX):
This is exactly right. When I was young and foolish, I thought the Sunday morning shows were where you went if you wanted reasoned policy analysis. I am no longer so naive.
Bill H
I live in California. I was trying to think of something I cared less about in order to make a snarky remark proving you wrong, and I came up dry. You win.
Capri
From the New Yorker Hertzberg article:
"A Republican governor, you might say, is sort of like a Republican congressman—except with actual responsibilities."
Best line of the month.
satby
@Billy K (D-TX): I wonder if this sort of thing is meant to deflate and divide the voting population as much as it is to steer the CW.
kay
“This was not a drive-by P.R. stunt, and I actually thought it might be,” Zach Wamp, of Tennessee, told the Times after he and his Republican House colleagues finished a long session with the President. “It was a substantive, in-depth discussion with our conference.”
Interesting. I was told different. About 50,000 times.
Anyone remember this guy being interviewed on cable?
satby
Ok, Imagine the blockquotes on the right part of that.
gex
@dmsilev: Not a fair comparison. The media actually believes their mission is to state loudly that they can’t tell if there are factual differences between Democratic claims and Republican claims. Shuck, who can know these things? Dems say 2+2=4. Reps say 2+2=6. Maybe 2+2=5?
DougJ
Ha ha.
Seriously, though, I realize that punditry makes no attempt to deal with actual reality. But they do purport to report on political reality. The fact that what they say flies in the face of polling data is therefore something to be criticized.
jibeaux
This is an old, long, but fascinating article, and I haven’t made my way all the way through it yet. But the comparison of "what do people ask in a town hall style meeting when they’re discussing their concerns" and "what do the pundits talk about" and the zero degree overlap, the Zenn diagram with no intersection, is pretty interesting.
jenniebee
It’s like watching the last days of Versailles, or the Romanovs, but with much less interesting clothes. This is all eerily like the court intrigue & fascination with Necker, until it turned out that the only thing that could keep the government from falling was to raise taxes, which of course wasn’t an option. Then kaboom and instead of a small tax on rich peoples’ income, it was complete confiscation of their property and a trip to the guillotine or the firing squad, and ideological purity tests and terror and tyranny.
Except this time of course we have popcorn and cable television. Nothing bad can possibly come of this.
Chris Andersen
Roonieroo:
I think you may have inadvertently hit on the key disconnect between pundit perception of Obama’s intent and Obama’s actual intent. The pundits think that when Obama said he wanted bipartisan support for his plan that he meant he wanted the support of a significant number of Republican legislators. What he really meant, however, was that he wanted the support of a significant number of Republican voters.
The key to Obama’s success is that he recognizes that, in this moment of crisis, the opinions of the voters matter a lot more than the opinions of the beltway crowd.
bootlegger
@AhabTRuler: No kidding, if anything the stuff opens me up to new and interesting ideas, not old failed ones. I think the entire GOP needs to take a hit off Phelps’ bong.
Egilsson
Even the framing of Obama’s "failure" is a win for him. Everyone out there gets that he at least tried, or at least manuevered enough so the republicans get the rap for not being bipartisan.
I just have to laugh at how stupid the republican caucus is.
At this rate, 2010 is going to be pretty bad for them too. And they STILL don’t see it coming.
Amazing.
AhabTRuler
Fixeteth. There ain’t enough weed in Holland to fix what’s wrong with them.
Egilsson
BTW, DougJ has been a good addition to the site.
Great job.
bootlegger
@AhabTRuler: ROTFL!
One can always hope right? I’d be willing to take them on a grand tour of Amsterdam complete with morning coffee at the coffeehouse, a trip to the van Gogh museum, afternoon coffee at the coffeehouse, boat tour of the city, then an evening Grolsch at "The Doors", the only place I found that served both beer and, um, coffee.
bootlegger
@Egilsson: Ditto.
garyb50
LOL, [email protected]: From your lips to the executioner’s ears.
Wile E. Quixote
@bootlegger
Cafe Smokey’s in the Rembrandtsplein also served beer and, er, coffee. They also had a bouncer at the door who made you turn your cell phone off.
bootlegger
@Wile E. Quixote: Sweet. I’ll jot that one down in my, um, coffee book.
KXB
We need to replace the word "pundit". Given that the word originated from Kashmir – "pandit" – and roughly translated means "knowledgable". The Beltway types have no knowledge about what they write or talk about – they are just good at talking about it.
TenguPhule
I believe this is called Friedman’s Law, also known as FU.
TenguPhule
I imagine they will find the ordeal of having their lives actually threatened by angry mobs to be an interesting experience deserving of just as much speculation as GOP imaginations.
AhabTRuler
@Wile E. Quixote: I’ve, er, been there. Actually, my friend puked outside their door, and then ran off in humiliation. I was laughing so hard I almost fell down, although NOT in the puke.
TenguPhule
how about "bandit"?
bootlegger
@TenguPhule: I can imagine the scenario where the mob is outside with torches, pitchforks and nooses, meanwhile the Villagers are inside the broadcast bubble still saying: "most Americans believe that the mob should go home."
TenguPhule
@bootlegger
So can I. My imagination then ends with a molotav cocktail being thrown through the window and all of them burning to death inside while we roast hotdogs and smores outside.
cleek
@KXB:
punidiot
bootlegger
@TenguPhule: mmmmm, hot dogs….
Wile E. Quixote
Am I a bad person because I want to hunt and kill the members of the punditocracy? Is there something wrong with the fact that when I think of someone like David Brooks or Thomas Friedman attempting to gnaw his leg off to escape from a trap I set for him I get a big happy grin on my face and whistle a merry tune? I mean I think of them lying there, looking at their leg, which doesn’t really look much like a leg since it’s caught in a steel jawed bear trap and whimpering and crying as they hear me giggling and saying "Be vewwwy, vewwwy quiet. I’m hunting pundits" and I just feel so happy.
dbrown
@ricky: Yeah but how do you tell which of them is the brain dead one?
Napoleon
@TenguPhule:
I’ll bring the Graham Crackers and roasting forks for the marshmellows.
Bob In Pacifica
Yeah. "Full meme ahead". I love that. I’m gonna steal it.
Stuck
Heads you’re partisan, tails you’re partisan. The pundit creed.
ricky
dbrown: You ask how to tell which on my proposed Palin/Schiavo 2012 ticket is brain dead. One has a fertile imagination. The other is just fertile.
ricky
Wile E. and Boots: While we are on comparisons and beverages, what is the difference between "beer and, um, coffee" and "beer and, er, coffee?"
jcricket
Actually an FU is measure of time always "6 months into the future" during which we’re supposed to wait before the magical benefits to kick in of whatever proposal the conservatives just promoted.
TenguPhule
No, provided you clean and eat what you kill. SATSQ.
Napoleon
This is the meme of the day on the left, and I love it.
DougJ
Thanks. I was happy with it myself.
Wile E. Quixote
@ricky
I can’t remember, but I had a really good time and came home 10 pounds heavier.
DougJ
@Egilsson and bootlegger:
Thanks, guys. It’s appreciated.
Chuck Butcher
[…]
I read the entire piece and while I disagree with the bolded "It would have been hard to predict" since I predicted it before Obama was the nominee (in general terms rather than stimulus specific) the thing isn’t particularly bad – as a whole. It is particularly stupid as quoted which may make a point but since it isn’t accurate regarding the writing it kind of undermines the point.
It is an analysis of political jockeying, it presents itself as nothing else, and in that regard isn’t too far off the mark. Perhaps it would have been more relevant if it were about something like public approval and it might have been more accurate in regard to Republican successes at framing had it held the media as complicit – but that wasn’t what it was about.
Yes, while the polls show general support for the bill, the Republicans did have success in their portrayal of it. Ignoring that success and the reasons for it invite disaster down the road. There are good counters to it, they were not effectively employed and what were not early enough. Learn lessons and do better the go around rather than deny their existence.
It was noted here that Obama meant bipartisan in regard to voters, I don’t think he specified that but it is a far more likely successful strategy than, say, the House Rs in general. The author notes that in coming legislation the Rs will have a more difficult time holding unity and will pay for it. The most effective method inside DC to show R voters Obama means it, is to keep putting that hand out to Congress, otherwise it is to take it on the road. Doing both is smart, as long as you don’t actually count on the Congress for anything.
AnneLaurie
Yea verily. And it wasn’t even a good story, dammit.
DougJ
Guilty as charged. I’m a sucker for anything that begins “It would have been hard to predict.”
I will say in my defense though that she does predict more bipartisanship down the road.
Chuck Butcher
@DougJ:
I will agree with her to the extent that it is going to be increasingly difficult for the House R’s to keep their lockstep when the focus of bills is more narrow and has more specific gains for their constituents, it will become a hell of a lot more difficult with Senators facing statewide voters.
I try to keep my posts on this sort of thing in separate categories, social analysis and political analysis because they are frequently two different things. I am a Party County Chair as well as State Delegate so the process is important to what I do and the underlying social aspect is important to why I do it. I’m a huge advocate of Single Payer Health Care but I spend almost no time on the process in that regard other than to note that it ain’t happenin’ and some of why that’s so.
I like your writing and pretty much agree with your aims, but I don’t like it when anybody uses things for what they were not intended. Like you, I’m a sucker for anything that starts out that stupidly and is presented as being reasonable. I will admit to staying away from the Reich Blogs for the most part. That isn’t about their ideology, it’s about the stupid presentation and the fact free content and the usage of things for what they’re not intended. You’re better than that and so I called you out on it.
AnneLaurie
Quote from Greenwald’s "valentine" to Bobo, just because it deserves repeating:
Chuck Butcher
Arrghh! If this bit of to and fro seem like a defense of the media, this response to TNR’s editorial will cover that.
maya
The Republicans are just shilling for yet another theatrical production of The Battle of Thermopylae. They, of course, will star as the 300, (minus their 2006 and 08 losses.)
The Righty Punditry will carry their spears but will stop short of bringing them home on their shields. The traitorous goatherd, Ephialtes, will be played, either by one of the media sellouts to the Persian Whited Mosque of Xerxes Ozymandias Obama I, or, Collins, Snow, or Specter.
Produced and directed by David Zucker.
It should surpass Gibson’s Passion of the Christ for pure historical epic drama and gore.
Rated: NC-11
Release date: July 4th, of course.
Chuck Butcher
Jay Rosen’s Press Think is a pretty good resource for those interested in journalism and citizen journalism.
Blue Raven
@Davis X. Machina:
DAMN YOU, JOSS WHEDON!
(sorry, knee-jerk reaction… carry on… if only this were being written by Joss, we’d all at least have snappy dialog to use while descending into the Hellmouth)
DougJ
@CB
Yeah, I don’t read it as much as I should. It’s very good.
Legalize
Win