No one should be surprised by last week’s attacks on the legitimacy of criticizing the war on terrorism. Since Sept. 11, pundits and government officials have repeatedly attempted to suppress dissent by arguing it helps the enemy. While the attacks on Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and other Democrats were widely repudiated over the weekend, efforts to stifle open political debate continue and may even grow, following a U.S.-led attack in Afghanistan that left at least nine Americans dead Monday.
Last Thursday, Daschle suggested that while the war on terrorism has been very successful thus far, further success “is still somewhat in doubt” and will be measured in part by whether the United States captures Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar. This prompted a firestorm of criticism from Republicans attacking the legitimacy of Daschle’s statement rather than the issues he raised. Most notably, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., issued a “Red Alert” press bulletin, stating “How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism, especially when we have troops in the field,” and Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said Daschle’s “divisive comments have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies by allowing them to exploit divisions in our country.”
Pundits from across the political spectrum condemned these attacks and defended Daschle’s right to question the conduct of the war this weekend. On CNN’s “Novak, Hunt & Shields,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “They’re raising questions. And I think that’s what a loyal opposition does.” In addition, the Washington Post fiercely condemned Lott, saying the United States “would be a weaker country if Sen. Lott succeeded in choking off debate.”
Still, Lott was unbowed, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “any sign that we are losing that unity, or crack in that support, will be, I think, used against us overseas.” Lott also refused to disavow Davis’ comments, saying he “wouldn’t put it the way” Davis did but “we all have to speak our own mind.”
This episode is actually only the latest in a string of attacks on dissenters since the war on terrorism began. The only thing different about the situation now is that politicians and pundits are finally starting to seriously defend critics’ rights to make their remarks.
Immediately after Sept. 11, Andrew Sullivan suggested that leftists would “mount what amounts to a fifth column” and later attacked the putative “fifth column” as “the enemy within the West itself.” Like Lott, Sullivan suggested that opposing or questioning the war aids terrorists, though he later disavowed “the shorthand of ‘fifth column.’” Michael Kelly adopted a similar argument from George Orwell’s writings during World War II, arguing that American pacifists “are on the side of future mass murders of Americans” and are “objectively pro-terrorist.” Both arguments depend on nonrational reasoning that equates opposition to a preferred policy with an endorsement of an enemy’s objectives.
The most infamous example of this kind of rhetoric, however, came in December, when Attorney General John Ashcroft bullied his critics into silence during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing:
“We need honest, reasoned debate; not fear mongering. To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against noncitizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists — for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.”
Ashcroft was condemned fairly widely in the press, but he was able to shut down most direct congressional criticism of the administration’s plans for military tribunals and its detentions of suspected terrorists.
Things have been quieter this year because criticism of the war from the left has largely subsided, but any serious challenge to the administration’s war policies is still met with disturbingly irrational rhetoric. Last month, syndicated pundit Oliver North and radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh smeared Daschle for briefly questioning Bush’s “axis of evil” formulation. Limbaugh told his radio audience that, “[i]n essence, Daschle has chosen to align himself with the axis of evil,” while North claimed that Daschle “has now joined Ted Turner and the Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin, who are people who don’t like the term ‘axis of evil.’” North also alleged Daschle was “setting the ground works for our adversaries to take on American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines.”
Today, despite the criticism Lott and Davis have received, several pundits are keeping up the attack. Here’s what pundit Robert Novak said on CNN’s “Crossfire” Friday:
“Barbara Krull sends me an e-mail saying, ‘It is patriotic to debate foreign policy, especially when we have troops on the ground whose lives depend on our making sound policy.’ Barbara, it was people like you who undermined our forces in the Vietnam War and brought Communist tyranny to a country that doesn’t deserve it.”
Similarly, the New York Post wondered Saturday whether Daschle and other Democrats would “trash” the principle that says you “don’t encourage the enemy by appearing to be divided.” And Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel’s “Hannity and Colmes” said on Friday’s show that Daschle “is communicating to our enemies that this nation is divided, that we lack resolve and that we have forgotten Sept. 11.” Again, Novak, the Post and Hannity are using vague and reductionist reasoning to claim, like Lott and Davis, that dissent aids terrorists.
From Sullivan and Kelly in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks to Novak and Hannity today, assaults on the legitimacy of dissent itself have dominated much of the debate over the war on terrorism. Now, as President Bush moves toward a dramatic expansion of the conflict, a serious debate is necessary. As David Brooks of the Weekly Standard said on PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer, “It seems to me a debate the Republicans should be eager to have and not try to stifle.” The American public has been very supportive of the war thus far; it deserves an open debate on the next phase.
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This originally appeared at Brendan Nyhan’s blog.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the current debate over the healthcare reform is the way that conservative bloggers and pundits keep trying to find evidence to justify Sarah Palin’s false claims about a “death panel.”
The latest example comes from bloggers Ann Althouse, Jim Hoft, and Doug Ross, who claim that the decision by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to conduct a National Coverage Determination for the prostate cancer treatment Provenge is evidence of a “death panel” (Althouse headline: “Death panel”; Hoft: “HERE COME THE DEATH PANELS”; Ross: “sounds like a death panel to me”).
This argument is absurd on a number of levels. First, in terms of the specific claims about Provenge, CMS hasn’t denied coverage and experts say it’s unlikely they will do so at the end of the year-long process (see also Media Matters). The entire claim is based on speculation.
More important, even if CMS had already decided to deny coverage, it would not justify Palin’s statement. Here is the relevant passage again:
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
Palin’s language suggests that a “death panel” would determine whether individual patients receive care based on their “level of productivity in society.” This was — and remains — false. Denying coverage at a system level for specific treatments or drugs is not equivalent to “decid[ing], based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether [Palin's parents and baby with Down Syndrome] are worthy of health care” (see also Cato’s Michael Tanner). Those who try to redefine “death panels” in this way are attempting to move the goalposts in the debate. It’s the equivalent of pointing to buried Iraqi chemical shells from the 1980s as evidence for the Bush administration’s claims about WMD.
Finally, defining “death panels” as rationing of any sort is totally nonsensical. By that standard, there are government and private “death panels” throughout the healthcare system already. It’s true that Obama’s proposal is likely to increase rationing, but so would every other proposal to control the unsustainable trajectory of future healthcare spending. Under Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare voucher plan, for instance, CBO projects that “[b]eneficiaries would… be likely to purchase less comprehensive health plans or plans more heavily managed than traditional Medicare” (my emphasis). Unfortunately, hysteria over “death panels” is preventing a necessary debate over which approach would be most effective and fair.
It’s shocking to me how little attention is being given to the Federal Reserve by the Obama administration and its supporters. Consider the following list of statements:
1. The economic downturn has been severe. The history of financial crises suggests that recovery may be long and difficult, particularly if the U.S. enters a deflationary spiral.
2. A second stimulus can’t pass Congress now and certainly won’t pass after expected Republican gains in November.
3. The Federal Reserve plays the most important role in determining short-term macroeconomic outcomes.
4. While interest rates are at the so-called zero bound, the Fed could take other steps to try to stimulate the economy.
5. Some officials at the Fed are concerned about inflation; this appears to be limiting its aggressiveness.
6. Obama’s Fed appointees are likely to be inclined to try to stimulate the economy. Their confirmation could help tilt the balance toward more aggressive measures.
7. There are significant lags in macroeconomic policy, which make swift action by the Fed especially important.
8. If successful, these measures could help millions of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet during the deepest downturn of their lifetimes.
9. The economy plays the most important role in presidential approval and presidential election outcomes. If economic growth does not improve significantly, Obama’s approval ratings will decline and he is likely to be defeated in his re-election campaign.
I think most sophisticated Obama supporters and administration officials would agree with each of these statements, but few besides Matthew Yglesias seem to understand their combined implications. The economy drives American politics, and it’s stuck in a ditch. Absent a macroeconomic miracle, the Fed is Democrats’ best hope for getting the recovery moving, and their only direct leverage is Obama’s appointment power. So why does no one care that Peter Diamond’s Fed nomination was blocked yesterday? As bizarre as it sounds, there is no bigger issue in American politics right now in terms of the potential effects on future electoral outcomes.
This originally appeared at Brendan Nyhan’s blog
This piece originally appeared at Brendan Nyhan’s blog:
I take it as a given that most journalists know very little about political science. But I still assumed that almost everyone has a basic understanding of the relationship between the state of the economy and presidential election outcomes. Apparently Fred Barnes missed the memo.
As Jamison Foser points out at Media Matters, Barnes published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that repeatedly suggests the key to Obama’s re-election is cutting spending:
If Mr. Obama wants to avert a fiscal crisis and win re-election in 2012, he needs House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be removed from her powerful post. A GOP takeover may be the only way…
Over the past 50 years, it should be no surprise which president has the best record for holding down discretionary spending. It was President Reagan. But who was second best? President Clinton, a Democrat. His record of frugality was better than Presidents Nixon, Ford and both Bushes. Mr. Clinton couldn’t have done it if Republicans hadn’t won the House and Senate in the 1994 election. They insisted on substantial cuts, he went along and then whistled his way to an easy re-election in 1996…
Mr. Obama’s re-election to a second term is heavily dependent on his ability to deal effectively with the fiscal mess.
The suggestion that Clinton had “an easy re-election” due to spending restraint is implausible. Here’s a plot of changes in non-defense discretionary spending (Barnes’s preferred metric) for recent first-term presidents (see methodological notes below for details):
The relationship between spending restraint and vote share is entirely driven by Reagan’s 1984 landslide (an outlier on both dimensions). When it is excluded, there is no relationship between the variables.
By contrast, the relationship between economic growth and presidential vote share is extremely strong and robust to the exclusion of any single president. Here, for example, is the same set of presidents with their vote share plotted against the Douglas Hibbs measure of weighted per-capita growth in disposable personal income (drawn from his Bread and Peace model):
As I’ve previously noted, Clinton’s move toward the center (which included an emphasis on deficit reduction) may have helped somewhat to boost his margin above what we would have otherwise expected, but the driving force in 1996 (as in every election) was the state of the economy.
Similarly, it’s hard to imagine Reagan being re-elected based on his record of spending restraint if the economy was in the tank. The fiscal year 1982 budget cut non-defense discretionary spending substantially, but it wasn’t enough to protect Reagan during the recession of 1981-1982, which pushed Reagan’s approval numbers down to 35% by January 1983. Once the economy bounced back, however, approval rebounded in time for him to crush Mondale in 1984.
Barnes may wish that presidents were re-elected based on spending restraint, but that’s just not the world we live in. Obama’s fortunes will rise or fall depending on the state of the economy.
[Methodological notes: Spending levels are drawn from the historical tables for the FY2010 budget and are in constant dollars (Table 8.2). I compare spending in the fiscal year beginning before the president takes office (e.g. fiscal year 1969 for Nixon) to the fiscal year that ends just before the president is up for re-election (e.g. fiscal year 1972 for Nixon). I start with fiscal year 1974 for Ford (since he took office in August of that year) and end with fiscal year 1976 (excluding the transition quarter in 1976).]
Back in October, I noted that the GOP’s brand (as measured by its favorable/unfavorable ratings) was in much worse shape than any opposition party at that stage in the previous four midterm election cycles. That stigma, I suggested, might limit Republican gains in the November midterm elections relative to a 1994-style scenario.
Things have changed, however. In a column for Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg flags a new NBC/WSJ poll suggesting that the Democratic brand has lost most of its advantage relative to the GOP.
Unfortunately for Democrats, their own brand has fallen like a rock.
In April, almost a year ago, the Hart/McInturff poll found 45 percent of Americans with a positive view of the Democratic Party and 34 percent with a negative view. In the most recent Hart/McInturff survey, the Democratic Party’s positives have sunk to 37 percent and its negatives have risen to 43 percent. Yes, those numbers are slightly better than the GOP’s (31 percent positive/43 percent negative), but not enough to help Democrats in the fall.
Here’s how the net positive numbers (pecent positive minus percent negative) for Democrats and Republicans have changed over the course of Obama’s presidency:
Perceptions of the GOP have only improved a bit, but the negative press and opposition party criticism faced by Democrats have apparently taken their toll. Since my original post in October, the difference in net positive numbers between the parties has closed from 27 points to 6 — a decline that coincides with the most intense stage of the health care reform debate.
As a result of this change, the difference between the major party brands no longer appears to be unusual for this stage in the midterm election cycle (polls in the chart were the closest available):
I interpret this shift as reflecting the underlying fundamentals of the election cycle, which favors the GOP (a Republican takeover of the House is a realistic possibility). The question now is whether the Republicans will continue to gain ground. In 1994, the GOP opened up a major lead in perceptions of the party relative to Democrats between June and October: 
I still don’t expect a 1994-style landslide in November, but it seems clear that the Democratic brand advantage that might have helped prevent such an outcome has evaporated.
On Election Night, Republican candidates backed by President Bush won a resounding victory across the country. Facing a transformed political landscape, with a newly invigorated president and a war with Iraq looming, it’s time to ask a crucial question: Will the media finally hold the president and his staff accountable for their repeated evasions and dissembling?
In Washington, the maxim used to be that you get in trouble not by lying, but by trying to cover up the lie when you get caught. Bush has turned this tired piece of conventional wisdom on its head, running an administration that almost always tries to cover its tracks with misinformation rather than admit to an error or a lie — and often gets away with it.
Will reporters let the president continue this strategy in the second half of his term, especially when it comes to war with Iraq? The evidence isn’t reassuring.
So far, Bush has been protected by his reputation for honesty, the media’s distaste for complex policy issues and — since Sept. 11 — his status as a wartime president. As a result, the administration has gotten a pass when it has used deceptive, even dishonest arguments to sell key pieces of its agenda, most notably the tax cut and Bush’s plan to create private Social Security accounts. And even when serious questions about its arguments have been raised, the White House has dissembled wildly rather than admit mistakes or mendacity.
Take Bush’s false claim to have publicly listed three exceptions during the campaign under which budget deficits would be acceptable. As revenues declined last year and deficits appeared imminent, the president claimed the following to try to protect himself from criticism: “As I said in Chicago during the campaign, when asked about should the government ever deficit spend, I said only under these circumstances should government deficit spend: if there is a national emergency, if there is a recession, or if there’s a war.”
Bush repeated this at least 11 separate times (and told his “trifecta” joke based on it even more often). Yet there is no record of Bush ever saying what he claims during the campaign in Chicago or anywhere else, as Jonathan Chait first reported in the New Republic. After much investigation, it was discovered that Vice President Al Gore listed the exceptions during the campaign, not Bush. A Bush advisor did indicate at the time that he also supported them, but the White House has not produced any evidence to substantiate Bush’s Chicago story despite numerous requests from the press. The administration’s only substantive response was to direct a Washington Post reporter to two GOP primary debates and a post-election appearance by Bush, none of which support the claim.
Then, in July, the Office of Management and Budget issued a press release that severely underestimated the percentage decline in the 10-year federal budget surplus caused by the Bush tax cut (apparently an inadvertent error). Rather than admit its mistake publicly, OMB deleted the error and posted an altered version of the release (Adobe PDF file) on its Web site with no indication that it had been changed. After my initial report on this was picked up by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, OMB was finally forced to add a disclosure to the release.
Now, with matters far more grave at stake in the debate over Iraq, the administration has been no less brazen in its dishonesty. At a Sept. 7 appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush said, “I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied — finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], that they were six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.”
An IAEA report in 1998 (around the time that inspectors were “finally denied access”) did say Iraq was six to 24 months away from developing a weapon before the Gulf War in 1991, but its efforts to produce weapons-grade uranium were largely crippled by the war and subsequent inspection regime. It appears Bush was referring to that estimate to underscore the point that Iraq has already come close to developing nuclear weapons and will try to do so again.
However, he should have been clearer about when that capacity was discovered. By tying the pre-Gulf War estimate to when inspectors were “finally denied access,” Bush appears to imply that IAEA’s conclusion that Iraq was “six months away from developing a weapon” dated from 1998, rather than 1991. The IAEA summary of the report he is referring to in fact stated that as of 1998 it “has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material.”
Rather than clarifying the point appropriately, Bush spokesperson Scott McClellan claimed the president was referring to an IAEA report published in 1991 (the organization says it did not issue such a report that year) and pointed a Washington Times reporter to two newspaper stories that do not corroborate Bush’s claim.
The White House shifted gears several weeks later, telling a Washington Post reporter that Bush was “imprecise” and that his statement was based on U.S. intelligence. Then, just two days after that story was published, press secretary Ari Fleischer tried a third approach, claiming that “it was in fact the International Institute for Strategic Studies that issued the report concluding that Iraq could develop nuclear weapons in as few as six months.”
But the IISS report Fleischer finally settled on as the president’s source was actually released on Sept. 9, 2002, two days after Bush’s original statement and years after inspectors were “finally denied access.” And if the president was briefed about the report in advance, he would have been told that it does not mention any such six-month estimate. An IISS summary does state that Iraq “could … assemble nuclear weapons within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained,” but this conditional assessment of the situation today was certainly not the basis for Bush’s claims in his press conference with Blair.
Nonetheless, Fleischer attacked the Post with righteous indignation. “The source may be different, but the underlying fact remains the same, despite the story’s declaration of the president’s argument, once again, as ‘dubious, if not wrong,’” he wrote. “It is The Post’s reporting that is dubious, if not wrong.”
This dissembling is a betrayal of Bush’s promise to restore honor and dignity to the White House. With so much at stake domestically and abroad, it’s time to hold the president and his administration to a higher standard of truth.
A Tea Party member carries a sign voicing his concern over "ObamaCare" during a rally marking the one-year anniversary of the movement in Troy, Michigan February 27, 2010. Some Tea Partiers say they can pinpoint the precise moment when they made it clear to the Republican Party they had no intention of being its lapdog. On a bright, brisk afternoon in mid-February, with snow still thick on the ground from storms that had battered Washington the week before, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele met with more than 50 members of the Tea Party, the Twitter Age conservative movement that is reshaping the U.S. political landscape. Picture taken February 27, 2010. To match Special Report USA-POLITICS/TEAPARTY. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST)(Credit: © Rebecca Cook / Reuters) 
President Barack Obama meets with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, June 29, 2010. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)(Credit: Charles Dharapak) 
