I’m late to the Ferguson party, partly because I’ve been travelling, and partly because I can’t easily get past my initial reaction: it’s Ferguson, dudes. Of course he’s a hack, someone who’s who has been trading on attitude and an accent since he arrived on these shores (and before, of course). But I want to pile on just a little bit, for a reason that I hope will become clear a little later on in this post. (And, as I look at the blog, later still. DennisG’s on it too!)
Still, just to refresh everyone’s memory after a couple of days of Akin folly, Ferguson attempted in the pages of Newsweek to disguise a polemic as an argument for Obama’s replacement by his preferred Ryan-Romney ticket. (Note — I’m not making an error in the order there. Again, wait for it below.) He lists a series of alleged policy failures and promises, now much debunked — Ezra Klein’s more-in-sorrow flensing may be the best place to start, but Fallows, whom John linked, and Krugman, and Delong, and …. hell, perhaps most devastatingly Andrew Sullivan* have managed to shred whatever remains of Ferguson’s reputation. It all gets worse in the “defense” Ferguson (no linky) has vomited up across the Newsweek/Daily Beast site, in which the angry not-so-young man Niall “demolishes” folks like DeLong by complaining that the UC professor hasn’t written his book fast enough for his taste. (See Fallows for a round-up of the derision the belligerant Scot’s second bite at the apple has earned.)
But all of Ferguson’s wind and wheeze can’t mask the underlying reality: he wrote a deliberately deceptive piece and his attempt at defense merely has us pondering which of these British officer fitness reports best applies to him. I’m partial to number 12 (obvious, really), but on reflection, I think I’d go with 5. Number 2 ain’t bad either.
But I digress.
Here I just want to look at one key point. And that is that Ferguson, sorry as he is, is literally the best the Right has got when it comes to intellectual credibility. So it’s worth looking at what now represents the gold standard of rigorous thought on the right.
Ferguson actually starts from a perfectly acceptable premise: the economy sucks, and the Obama administration has not accomplished as much as Candidate Obama had hoped and predicted. What Ferguson does with that premise is what has been so thoroughly demolished by just about everyone, so I’ll pass over most of what he wrote in silence. Here, I just want to turn to his one affirmative argument:
Now Obama is going head-to-head with his nemesis: a politician who believes more in content than in form, more in reform than in rhetoric. In the past days much has been written about Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s choice of running mate. I know, like, and admire Paul Ryan. For me, the point about him is simple. He is one of only a handful of politicians in Washington who is truly sincere [italics in the original] about addressing this country’s fiscal crisis.
Note that Ferguson has Obama confronting Paul Ryan, not the emasculated and irrelevant Romney.** And note too Ferguson here signs on to the favorite lie of the right-wing commentariat. Let me illustrate.
What do you call a person who’s budgetary plan increases the federal deficit by $2.6 trillion over its first ten years? Bonus question: what do you call that person who has proposed such a fiscal Molotov cocktail in order to provide the richest among us with a tax cut? Double Jeopardy round: what do you call such a person who does so despite a rich trove of academic work demonstrating that the US is well below the revenue-maximizing top tax rate even keeping the current baroque tax code?***
If you are a member of the reality based community, one who retains honor enough to allow words their common meaning and actual data their sway over even cherished contrary preconceptions, then you would say that if that man claimed to be a serious fiscal thinker he was at best delusional, and much more likely a simple liar. A thief of sense.
OTOH, if you’re Niall Ferguson, you call that man, Paul Ryan, “sincere.”
On reflection, if Niall were right, that would be worse, certainly for Ryan (sincere buffoons are still risible), and, as it turns out, for Niall himself. What does it say about a “historian” who so ignores the easily accessible world to spin a fantasy of saviors on their white steeds, ready to defend us from the usurper in the White House?
Nothin’ good.****
One more thing, really, the buried lede (or lead, if that’s how you roll) for this whole post. Ferguson himself is just the insult to honest sex-workers that DennisG’s post describes. The real insight we gain from his massive embarassment is what it tells us about the state of Republican intellectualism. And what should scare you is that Niall is truly the best they’ve got. Here’s The New Yorker’s John Cassidy thinking along the these lines:
Where are the real conservative intellectuals these days? Surely there must be some, but sometimes it seems like all the right has to offer is a soap-box mountebank like Ryan, a trio of embittered Supreme Court Justices, and a few gnarled old Washington fixtures like Bill Kristol, George Will, and Charles Krauthammer. Given this vacuum, it’s relatively easy for an energetic and disputatious blow-in like Ferguson to emerge as one of Obama’s most visible, if not exactly persuasive, critics.
As for the party of the first part? Pity Ferguson’s students. And pity the nation that ever takes this hollow man seriously.
*When you’ve lost Sullivan:
As for Iraq, Niall says the exit was premature. It was negotiated by Bush. Maliki didn’t want us there any more. Niall thinks we should occupy a country with all the massive expense that entails – against its will? Seriously? And it’s Obama who is unserious on the debt?
** Does anyone besides me see a longer term problem developing for team Elephant in the steady rasp of that dull saw rowing away on Romney’s nether parts? The press isn’t even bothering to ask him anymore — it’s what Ryan thinks that matters. Akin gives him the classic one-finger salute and he has to say “please sir, may I have another.” Ann Romney, poor dear, gets trotted out to reassure a doubting America that he really isn’t a Red Lector Lectroid from Planet Ten. (Still don’t know what’s up with the watermelon.) And…you get the point. I’ve never seen anything like this. Is there going to be a recognizable homunculus to vote for come November?
*** See e.g., Berkeley economist Emanuel Saenz’s comment in this survey:
Based on best estimates and even with current tax code, US top rate is still significantly below revenue maximizing tax rate
****I get the argument that Dennis channels from Stephen Marche that Ferguson makes much more as a monkey-boy for hedge fund MOTUs, but I do think that Ferguson actually cares a great deal about status; he derives enormous satisfaction from his persona as a credentialed wise man. It hurts when folks he wants to defer to him instead disdain him. It doesn’t kill; stacks of Benjamins do staunch the wounds. But it does sting.
Images: Alfred Dedreux, Pug Dog in an Armchair, 1853.
Hieronymous Bosch, Cutting the Stone, (alternate title: Extraction of the Stone of Folly), before 1516. (I know I’ve used it before, but it works here…)
Comrade Mary
You have won my eternal love just for the use of the word “flensing”. All else is gravy.
joes527
When Andrew Sullivan points out that you are a hack, you’re done.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Newsweek still exists?
Are you sure?
beltane
I like the Italian term for the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Medieval period. La Decadenza has a nice ring to it, and one which emphasizes internal decay rather than the excitement of invading armies.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
there’s an unterminated bold tag in the post, I think… hmm.. wonder if WP will let me do this… ?
ETA: Nope. Sorry. I tried.
Fred Fnord
@joes527: Alternately, when Andrew Sullivan points out that you are a hack, you’ve won.
There must be a prize, right? There are so many people competing for it, after all.
Fred Fnord
@danah gaz (fka gaz): I think it has to do with asterisks. Do three asterisks in a row make something bold, or something like that?
Appears not. Wonder what ate those asterisks then?
arguingwithsignposts
When Andrew Sullivan says something worth remembering for anything other than being the sack of shit tory hack that he is, that will be the first time.
ETA: I read where someone moved his POS blog off the “monitor and mock” list silently. Screw that noise.
dmsilev
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ (formerly IrishGirl)
Stop the train, I want to get off!!
Cassidy
Not me. I don’t write.
patroclus
Ferguson wrote a good book about the Rothschilds and his PBS “Ascent of Money” was also well done, but, as a contemporary political commentator, he sucks. He shamelessly adopts Republican spin as though it were true, which isn’t what academics or historians are supposed to do. (I have recently slogged my way through Richard Evans’ series on the Third Reich and I can only imagine how it would have read if Evans treated the Nazis’ assertions as though they were true). But he also holds Obama to incredibly high standards (in Ferguson’s view, Obama is responsible for Basel) while holding the Republicans to none at all.
If Ferguson really trained a critical eye on the Republicans as any normal academic banking specialist would do given that they presided over the 2007-08 worldwide economic meltdown, I suspect he would say something different. But he has no incentive to do that (given his speaking fees and Tory sensibility), so it’s double standards, spinning and patent dishonesty instead.
arguingwithsignposts
Someone left a bold tag open.
eemom
Here’s an older, uber-erudite smackdown from a fellow Brit that reduced Fergie to a “libel”-screeching tantrum.
btw, that GOP on its meds quip earlier was teh awesome.
Thanks for bringing some class to this place once in a while. Yours and Kay’s posts are like little islands of creativity in an increasingly tedious sea of same old same old.
Tom Levenson
@danah gaz (fka gaz): @Fred Fnord:
Fix’t, I think.
patroclus
Does Ferguson support the repeal of Dodd-Frank? Romney has repeatedly said that he does, so presumably, so does Ferguson, his Newsweek spinmeister. It would seem that a banking specialist like Ferguson would at least mention it and perhaps provide intellectual arguments for it. Does he think the banking regulators should not even be able to collect information regarding derivatives to assess bank capital positions? Repealing Dodd-Frank would eliminate all that information gathering and transform the banking regulators into blind squirrels in a blizzard.
Where does Ferguson stand on each and every aspect of Dodd-Frank? Shouldn’t someone ask him?
JGabriel
Tom Levenson @ Top:
Ooh, ooh, I know this one! You call him: a Republican.
Yes! [fist pump] I got it right.
.
SFAW
Tom, Tom, Tom –
Your jealousy of all things associated with The World’s Greatest University, located more than 1,000 Smoots up the road from you, is palpable – and disappointing. I expect you will next complain that the Mass Ave Bridge should not be called the Harvard Bridge.
Herr Professor Doktor Niall Ferguson’s work is without equal – not even that modern-day Herodotus, Jonah Goldberg, can equal him for originality of thought. And Ferguson’s prose style is reminiscent of that classic, “Paul Clifford“. To top it all off (please forgive the trite phrasing), Dr. Ferguson is working on what may end up being his magnum opus. I have seen the galleys for it, and, suffice it to say, his work expands tremendously on the original thesis of Sen. John Blutarsky, the renowned historian. I am not allowed to divulge the exact topic, but here’s a hint: der Angriff bei Pearl Harbor. Clausewitz, were he not already dead, would die of shame that Ferguson thought of it first.
So, keep your MIT-laced snobbery where it belongs, in The Tomb of the Unknown Tool. Your envy is dismaying.
Hope this helps.
arguingwithsignposts
I asked this in Dennis G.’s thread, and received no response, so I’ll re-post it here as a genuine question:
Dennis G. wrote:
Is is true? I’ve only ever seen or heard of him as some sort of strange alterna-historian with a hard-on for colonialism.
Professor
So is that why economists and non economists alike were pointing at Niall Ferguson and laughing? Ha ha ha…
scav
I vote for that dog rejoining us fairly often. Three Cheers! Also, we’ve not seen the galt dog in bucket for a while.
karen marie
@SFAW: I lived in Boston, mere blocks from the Mass. Ave. bridge for 25 years, and never heard it called anything but the Mass. Ave. bridge. Maybe citizens of the People’s Republic of Cambridge call it the Harvard bridge but I never met one who did.
JGabriel
__
__
@arguingwithsignposts: I haven’t personally read any of Ferguson’s books, but his late 90’s histories of the Rothschilds appear to be well-regarded.
.
JGabriel
@SFAW: Heh, nicely done snark.
JGabriel
__
__
@karen marie: I don’t think the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor either. Or did you miss the Animal House reference?
.
Tom Levenson
@karen marie: It’s called the Harvard Bridge because when asked if he wanted it known as the MIT bridge, our president refused to allow any institutional connection to that engineering fail of a span.
True story — or rather, an often told story at my end of Mass Ave., and one that is much too good to check.
daverave
What I really want to know is if there are any Americans peddling the same crapola in Ole Blighty? IOW, does the accent thing work in reverse?
I’ve always noticed that anyone with any kind of English accent gets the red carpet, fast-track treatment to all sorts of goodies on American shores… fame, money, chicks, job promotions, etc, etc ad nauseum. Does it work in the other direction because if it does I’m gonna have to give serious consideration to decamping to the other side of da Pond. Not to mention better healthcare, also, too.
N W Barcus
In reverse order of appearance:
That’d probably be Red Lectroids, not Lectors.
Continuing your questions with a reference to Double Jeopardy is probably not useful, since anyone who would catch the reference would know that the game show Jeopardy’s shtick is that contestants are presented with answers to which they are to deduce the questions, precisely the opposite of what you are (rhetorically) doing. (Completeness requires me to note it doesn’t feature bonus questions either, rendering the overall “questions” metaphor about as relevant as hopscotch.) Not quite a Friedman-level pop-culture clam, but I have high hopes for the future.
When you wrote “someone who’s been trading on attitude and an accent since he arrived on these shores” I figured you were referring to Andrew Sullivan.
You may well be right about the paucity of conservative intellectuals, but I wonder if you could name some liberals who meet the equivalent “gold standard of rigorous thought” as intellectuals. Chomsky? Robert Reich? Steve Reich? Ben Reich?
And ideology aside, I must confess I can’t think of any Americans in public life that I could honestly call brilliant thinkers, even with a loose definition that could include the likes of, say, Britain’s Stephen Fry or Richard Dawkins (recently misspelled as “Dwankins” in the Independent). Is there something in the water?
SFAW
@karen marie:
karen marie –
Tom beat me to it, but his version comports with what I was teached.
You must not have traveled in the right circles. (No, I’m not being serious.)
@JGabriel:
Snark? Perish the thought! (Although, being a smug SOB, I self-amused [or should it be “abused”?] by throwing in the “Paul Clifford” ref.)
Rafer Janders
I cannot think who else this reminds me of.
Maude
The Pug Dog painting has Vermeer lighting. All the pup needs is a blue cravat.
Since Ronald Reagan the country has fallen into believing that fairy tales are real. That fine as long as things are going well and there’s no crisis.
Now, pundits and other media talkers along with the politicians can not only tell outright lies, but make stuff up. They get away with it.
It has to stop.
Rafer Janders
@daverave:
Nope. Or at least, not in terms of intellect.
The English won’t think you’re automatically smarter than they are. They will, however, associate an American accent with being confident, capable, effective, good at business, easy-going and fun to be around. Which will make them feel insecure, and they will then try to subtly undercut you for in revenge. But half the time you won’t notice, which will make them feel even worse.
Omnes Omnibus
@daverave:
Think of it this way: you will be the foreign guy with the accent. If you looking for shallow women, it doesn’t hurt.
Rafer Janders
Lived in Boston, also mere blocks from the bridge, after several years living in Cambridge, and no one on either side of the Charles ever called it anything but the Mass Ave Bridge.
pseudonymous in nc
@arguingwithsignposts:
The seeds were certainly sown in the Virtual History counterfactual collection that he edited and to which he contributed; from there, you get The Pity of War, which I think marks a turning point towards hackery, based on the bee in his bonnet about the avoidability of Britain’s participation in the Great War.
The Rothschilds book came from privileged access to the family archive (and a team of extremely talented undergraduate and graduate research assistants who did the hard labour of combing through it) and its writing provided a window on acquiring status far beyond the confines of academia.
He was, I’ve been told, an extremely good college tutor; he’s now on record saying that he doesn’t believe undergraduates should have the benefit of that system.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tom@top:
“who’s”?
Really, Tom? REALLY??
SoINeedAName48
Andrew Sullivan ROCKS!
Nellcote
I keep thinking it’s the theft of language but it’s so much more. Thank you for the words.
Nellcote
I keep thinking it’s the theft of language but it’s so much more. Thank you for the words.
SFAW
@Rafer Janders:
My experience was 180 degrees from yours. I attribute the change (i.e. to “Mass Ave Bridge”) to two factors: (1) a massive, behind-the-scenes PR effort by Teh Greatest University in The World to convince the hoi polloi that Hahvahd could NEVAH be associated with such a piece of crap (engineering-wise); (2) traffic reporters were paid off to change the bridge’s name from “Hahvahd” to “Mass Ave” when it came up in their reports.
Please also note that it has NEVER been called – except by the criminally insane or Republicans (I won’t show you the Venn Diagram for that one, though) – the “MIT Bridge.”
ljdramone
@22: Red Lectroids is correct.
As for the other question, it’s fairly well known why the Banzai Institute was interested in developing an exceptionally durable watermelon.
elftx
@eemom: Thanks for that link..he was sliced and diced . You should have noted a fine glass of wine would be appropriate for reading.
Bruce S
Y’all might consider an email along these lines:
To: [email protected]
Mr. President,
Niall Ferguson, in composing an intentionally dishonest and intellectually indefensible hit piece on President Obama in the increasingly tabloid “Newsweek” has brought shame to Harvard. Called on his deceptions, he doubled down and made his case even worse.
This is a man with no standards of intellectual integrity, honesty in his “scholarship” or research and no boundaries in his willingness to bend, stretch and intentionally deceive. He is not a fit teacher or scholar. He should be let go. Any person in a less prestigious job who reached so far beyond the most basic standards of honesty would likely not be able to cling to their position if so exposed.
Do the right thing.
Tom Levenson
@Bruce S: The President of Harvard, Drew Faust, is a woman. She is also a fine historian, and thus a departmental as well as an institutional colleague of Mr. Ferguson’s. I’m sure she’s paid well, but there are some jobs I just couldn’t do, and I admire those who can…
Tom Levenson
@SiubhanDuinne: Errr.
My usual rueful response applies: blog in haste; proofread at leisure.
robuzo
“Where are the real conservative intellectuals these days?” Larison at the American Conservative calls Romney and Ryan on their BS every day. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/
Off Colfax
Am I the only one who read the phrase “who has been trading on attitude and an accent since he arrived on these shores” and thought about CRAIG Ferguson instead of Niall? Or have I just been up past 1am more often than I’ve read the news magazines?
Cervantes
Tom, the Harvard Bridge was not called the MIT Bridge probably because MIT was not in its current location when the bridge was built (it was still in Copley Square, not on the banks of the Charles).
As for what we call the bridge these days, various names are used, of course, but I and most people I know have always called it the Harvard Bridge.
Cervantes
Furthermore, Tom, your original “who’s” to mean “who has” is perfectly good English. The apostrophe has other uses than only to denote possession. In this case it works as a contraction.
Nancy Irving
The most cringe-making item was Ferguson’s confusion of the temporary census employment bump with what he claims is a shortlived Obama stimulus effect.
And he made this mistake not out of ignorance (he is a Brit, after all, and so may have been unaware of our Constitutionally-ordered decennial census); but rather from arrogance. Any scholar with the least grain of humility, upon seeing the chart with that quick, sharp upsurge and as quick fall-off, would have asked a colleague, “Hey, what’s with that?” At a given level of arrogance, though, you don’t need anyone else, there is no possibility that you might make a mistake.
I don’t think Mitt will gain much prestige from Ferguson’s flattery.