Populism's Problems

This is an excellent piece by George Will; not really for the headline of Sarah Palin (which is true) but more for the problems faced by populism and it's prospects. The link to the full story is below, but two really great paragraphs....:

"America, its luck exhausted, at last has a president from the academic culture, that grating blend of knowingness and unrealism. But the reaction against this must somewhat please him. That reaction is populism, a celebration of intellectual ordinariness. This is not a stance that will strengthen the Republican Party, which recently has become ruinously weak among highly educated whites. Besides, full-throated populism has not won a national election in 178 years, since Andrew Jackson was reelected in 1832......

"Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess. Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. But today's saturation journalism, mesmerized by presidential politics and ravenous for material, requires a steady stream of political novelties. In that role, Palin is united with the media in a relationship of mutual loathing. This is not her fault. But neither is it her validation. "

Full Column- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021703507_pf.html

The Resolved Elitist

I've come to the conclusion that I'm an unabashed elitist. While the conventional mood that somehow Congress and the President aren't paying enough attention to the mob....this populist uproar over every manner of perceived error; from bailouts to spending, etc....I think they're paying TOO MUCH attention to them. The mob has no clue about what the issues are and how they're addressed. And worse, they're led astray by all manner of partisan charlatans with a political agenda. Case in point; in the recent senate election in Massachusetts, of all the people who voted for him because they wanted to stop health care reform, 41% of them couldn't explain why!!

Temper Tantrums

I was struck recently by the disillusionment by some friends over the unfulfilled promises of President Obama; namely the lack of C-Span coverage in every meeting, the involvement of lobbyists in the administration, etc. These folks are 1) not involved in politics or policy and 2) not educated or have ever been involved in management - which explains much of their frustration. I want to say, "well, duh!!" It's not their cynicism that bothers me. It's their naivete turned anger.....or maybe idealism and innocence. They remind me of little kids who find out there's no Santa Claus and teenagers who get their hearts broken. It's rough when you find out the world is a cruel, cold place and that reality is much more pragmatic than the public myths.

Those Right-Wing E-Mails

I recently received one of those mass distributed e-mails with a snide right wing mantras about 'conservatives are for freedom; liberals want to take it away' with a series of banal examples (Unfortunately, I deleted it). On the face of it, one could just as easily contrive an inaccurate and misleading comparison from a liberal perspective. "Liberals believe women should have reproductive privacy; conservatives believe the government should be in your bedroom. Liberals believe everyone should be entitled to a working wage; conservatives believe corporations come before people. Liberals believe people should be free of religious tyranny; conservatives believe government should promote religion. Liberals believe people should have access to health care; conservatives sick people should die quickly. Etc...you get the picture.

But what's more revealing is that this message was ever sent at all. It is a common observation among many on the left that these crude, baiting, provacative stink bombs are invariably thrown into mixed company by those with cartoonish right wing agendas. Rarely, if ever, do you see or hear unsolicited liberals broadcast tirades or characitures. Perhaps that is because most liberals' interpersonal and social habits reflect their politics; with a strong dose of empathy, sensitivity and even just plain old good manners. That's why most don't pop off at a neighborhood party or e-mail their entire address book with some personal, simple-minded political spitball.

And maybe the lack of those traits are why these things always come from right-wingers. That's what these e-mails really say.

Democracy's Demolition Derby

Whenever I hear people complain about "finding the truth" or the "bias in mainstream media" it's usually because that truth or bias does not reflect their own beliefs....and so it goes with everyone across the spectrum. Today there was a nice column in the Washington Post by Robert Samuelson regarding the media, the search for objectivity and the messiness of democracy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/27/AR2009122701715.html

Democracy's demolition derby

By Robert J. Samuelson
Monday, December 28, 2009; A15

It's been an education, my four decades in Washington journalism: an anniversary that prompts this personal reflection. In 1969, I arrived as a young newspaper reporter. Journalism appealed to me because it offered an excuse to learn about how things worked -- to satisfy my curiosity -- and provided an antidote to shyness. It was a license to ask people questions. I have never regretted my decision, in part because I always doubted I could do anything else. I wasn't smart enough to be an engineer and would have been a lousy lawyer, chafing at representing other people's beliefs. The pursuit of truth seemed a higher calling.

This was a common conceit among journalists of my generation. We would reveal what was hidden, muddled or distorted. The truth would set everyone free. It sustained good government. We were democracy's watchdogs and clarifiers. One thing I learned is that these satisfying ideas are at best simplifications -- and at worst illusions. Truth comes in infinite varieties; every story can have many narratives. There are always new facts, and sometimes today's indisputable fact qualifies or rebuts yesterday's. ..........

The Death of Reasoned Debate

This is a great editorial from Michael Gerson in the Washington Post today (11/27/09) that wonderfully captures the death of journalism, coupled with the proliferation and fragmentation of unverified gibberish as a source of information for too many people -- which makes reasoned discussion almost impossible. A great read:

Journalism's slow, sad death

By Michael Gerson
Friday, November 27, 2009

Like the nearby Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Newseum -- Washington's museum dedicated to journalism -- displays dinosaurs. On a long wall near the entrance, the front pages of newspapers from around the country are electronically posted each morning -- the artifacts of a declining industry. Inside, the high-tech exhibits are nostalgic for a lower-tech time when banner headlines and network news summarized the emotions and exposed the scandals of the nation. Lindbergh Lands Safely. One Small Step. Nixon Resigns. Cronkite removes his glasses to announce President Kennedy's death at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time.

Behind a long rack of preserved, historic front pages, there is a kind of journalistic mausoleum, displaying the departed. The Ann Arbor News, closed July 23 after 174 years in print. The Rocky Mountain News, taken at age 150. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which passed quietly into the Internet.

What difference does this make? For many conservatives, the "mainstream media" is an epithet. Didn't the Internet expose the lies of Dan Rather? Many on the left also shed few tears, preferring to consume their partisanship raw in the new media.

But a visit to the Newseum is a reminder that what is passing is not only a business but also a profession -- the journalistic tradition of nonpartisan objectivity. Journalists, God knows, didn't always live up to that tradition. But they generally accepted it, and they felt shamed when their biases or inaccuracies were exposed. The profession had rules about facts and sources and editors who enforced standards. At its best, the profession of journalism has involved a spirit of public service and adventure -- reporting from a bomber during a raid in World War II, or exposing the suffering of Sudan or Appalachia, or rushing to the site of the World Trade Center moments after the buildings fell.

By these standards, the changes we see in the media are also a decline. Most cable news networks have forsaken objectivity entirely and produce little actual news, since makeup for guests is cheaper than reporting. Most Internet sites display an endless hunger to comment and little appetite for verification. Free markets, it turns out, often make poor fact-checkers, instead feeding the fantasies of conspiracy theorists from "birthers" to Sept. 11, 2001, "truthers." Bloggers in repressive countries often show great courage, but few American bloggers have the resources or inclination to report from war zones, famines and genocides.

The democratization of the media -- really its fragmentation -- has encouraged ideological polarization. Princeton University professor Paul Starr traced this process recently in the Columbia Journalism Review. After the captive audience for network news was released by cable, many Americans did not turn to other sources of news. They turned to entertainment. The viewers who remained were more political and more partisan. "As Walter Cronkite prospered in the old environment," says Starr, "Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann thrive in the new one. As the diminished public for journalism becomes more partisan, journalism itself is likely to shift further in that direction."

Cable and the Internet now allow Americans, if they choose, to get their information entirely from sources that agree with them -- sources that reinforce and exaggerate their political predispositions.

And the whole system is based on a kind of intellectual theft. Internet aggregators (who link to news they don't produce) and bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting. The old-media dinosaurs remain the basis for the entire media food chain. But newspapers are expected to provide their content free on the Internet. A recent poll found that 80 percent of Americans refuse to pay for Internet content. There is no economic model that will allow newspapers to keep producing content they don't charge for, while Internet sites repackage and sell content they don't pay to produce.

I dislike media bias as much as the next conservative. But I don't believe that journalistic objectivity is a fraud. I was a journalist for a time, at a once-great, now-diminished newsmagazine. I've seen good men and women work according to a set of professional standards I respect -- standards that serve the public. Professional journalism is not like the buggy-whip industry, outdated by economic progress, to be mourned but not missed. This profession has a social value that is currently not reflected in its market value.

What is to be done? A lot of good people are working on it. But if you currently have newsprint on your hands, thank you.

mgerson@globalengage.org

The Health Care Debate

The health care reform debate has brought out the most bizarre behavior with almost juvenile hysterical rants and, unfortunately, unbelievable distortions. Ruth Marcus has a nice column in the Washington Post on the recent House debate today (11/11/09). Worth noting for a reality check:

Health scare tactics
A GOP blizzard of untrue statements

By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, November 11, 2009

I'm hoping, for your sake, that you didn't spend your Saturday night as I did: watching the House debate health-care reform on C-SPAN.

Pathetic, I know. The outcome wasn't in doubt, and the arguments were as familiar as an old pair of slippers. Moral imperative! Government takeover! Long-overdue protections! Crippling mandates!

I'm not a huge fan of the House measure, but I was glad to see it straggle across the finish line, if only to keep the process going. And, by the end of the long debate, I was cheering for it even more because of the appalling amount of misinformation being peddled by its opponents.

I don't mean the usual hyperbole about "a children-bankrupting, health-care-rationing, freedom-crushing, $1 trillion government takeover of our health-care system," as Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling put it. Or the tired canards about taxpayer-funded abortion or insurance subsidies for illegal immigrants.

Or the extraneous claims about alleged Democratic excesses, as in this from Georgia Republican Jack Kingston: "Let's remember the Pelosi plan for jobs: an $800 billion stimulus plan that caused unemployment to go from 8.5 percent to over 10 percent."

Caused? We can debate whether the stimulus was effective, although the best evidence is that it prevented things from being even worse. No rational person believes the stimulus "caused" unemployment to rise.

I mean the flood of sheer factual misstatements about the health-care bill.

The falsehood-peddling began at the top, with Minority Leader John Boehner:

"If you're a Medicare Advantage enrollee . . . the Congressional Budget Office says that 80 percent of them are going to lose their Medicare Advantage."

Not true. The CBO hasn't said anything of the sort. Boehner's office acknowledges that he misspoke: He meant to cite a study from the Medicare actuary estimating that projected enrollment would be down by 64 percent -- if the cuts took effect. Choosing not to enroll in Medicare Advantage is different from "losing" it.

But Boehner wasn't alone.

Kentucky Republican Brett Guthrie: "The bill raises taxes for just about everyone."

Not true. The bill imposes a surtax on the top 0.3 percent of households, individuals making more than $500,000 a year and couples making more than $1 million.

Georgia Republican Tom Price: "This bill, on Page 733, empowers the Washington bureaucracy to deny lifesaving patient care if it costs too much."

Not true. The bill sets up a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research "in order to identify the manner in which diseases, disorders, and other health conditions can most effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, and managed clinically."

Are Republicans against figuring out what works? There's nothing in there about cost, and certainly nothing about denying "lifesaving patient care."

Price, again: "This bill, on Page 94, will make it illegal for any American to obtain health care not approved by Washington."

Not true. The vast majority of Americans get their insurance through their employers. The bill envisions setting minimum federal standards for such insurance, in part to determine who is eligible to buy coverage through the newly created insurance exchanges. This is hardly tantamount to making it "illegal" to obtain "health care" without Washington's approval.

Michigan Republican Dave Camp: "Americans could face five years in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands to buy approved health insurance."

Not true. The bill requires people to obtain insurance or, with some hardship exceptions, pay a fine. No one is being jailed for being uninsured. People who intentionally evade paying the fine could, in theory, be prosecuted -- just like others who cheat on their taxes.

California Republican Buck McKeon: "I offered two amendments to try to improve this bill -- one to require members of Congress to enroll in the public option like we're going to require all of you to do."

Not true. No one is required to enroll in the public option. In fact, most people won't even be eligible to enroll in the public option or other plans available through the exchanges.

Florida Republican Ginny Brown-Waite: "The president's own economic advisers have said that this bill will kill 5.5 million jobs."

Not true. Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, has estimated that the bill would increase economic growth and add jobs. Republicans misuse Romer's previous economic research on the impact of tax increases to produce the phony 5.5 million number.

You have to wonder: Are the Republican arguments against the bill so weak that they have to resort to these misrepresentations and distortions?