For now, I've moved the discussion of Professor John Yoo's Torture Memo over here: http://delong.typepad.com/the_torture_memo/
July 09, 2008
Ezra Klein on the Disloyalty of the Clinton Staffers
Ezra:
Ezra Klein | The American Prospect: Yesterday, Howard Wolfson started as a Fox News political analyst, where he'll join Lanny Davis. Today, Mark Penn announced he's going to “create a bipartisan consulting organization to advise corporations in crisis.” His first hire? Former Bush administration PR flack Karen Hughes.
The most powerful case against Clinton's candidacy was always her political advisers. They were, and are, the sort who sign up with Fox News, and enter into business partnerships with Karen Hughes. And they do all that while they're still associated with Clinton, and when their services might still be needed in the near future.
Clinton's domestic policy instincts often seemed better than Obama's, but her political instincts, as evidenced by the folks she gathered around her, were far worse. It was hard to believe anyone who's internal compass pointed progressive would nevertheless spend millions of dollars asking Mark Penn for advice. The answer, from Clinton supporters, was always that it was about loyalty. These folks had been in the foxhole with Clinton, and she trusted them.
But there's nothing loyal about Penn's decision to partner with Hughes, or Wolfson's decision to rush to Fox -- these moves hurt Clinton. They make her a less likely choice for vice president and ensure there will be yet more ammunition against her if she ends up running in 2012. Similarly, there was nothing loyal about Mark Penn continuing to run his unionbusting PR firm Burson-Marsteller while serving as chief strategist for her campaign. Even Karl Rove had to give up his other jobs before becoming Bush's Svengali.
The political professionals clustered around the Clintons have acted like self-interested operatives, not altruistic loyalists. Their presence has hurt Clinton, their conflicts of interest have hurt Clinton, and their professional decisions and public statements have emphasized all of her political weaknesses and all of the base's fears about her campaign. Frankly, she deserved better.
The performance of Penn, Ickes, Wolfson, and company in February--happily dishing dirt, blaming the others for the failure to wrap up the nomination on Super Tuesday, in the hope of getting brownie points with reporters--was the most staggering and astonishing act of political disloyalty I have yet seen...
July 08, 2008
Republican Economists Who Aren't Supporting McCain's Economic Plan
Felix Salmon writes:
The Economic Policy of John McCain: The more substantive news, in my view, is the list of 300 economists who claim to "enthusiastically support John McCain's economic plan". Would most of them sign their name to the economic plan of any Republican nominee, no matter how vague it was? Possibly. But there are undoubtedly some very heavy hitters on there, including five Nobel laureates and four former presidents of the American Economic Association. (Gary Becker, for these purposes, counts twice.) An arguments from authority can never be particularly convincing, but in this case it's stronger and more compelling than a promise buried in a position paper. It's one thing to say that McCain has no idea what he's talking about: it's another thing entirely to say that the same thing must go for every economist on the list...
I agree: it is disappointing. But there is good news: a lot of economists who you would expect to have signed on--subcabinet appointees in past Republican administrations, et cetera--have not. One would expect, based on political loyalties and willingness to serve in Republican administrations, to see Greg Mankiw, Paul Wonnacott, Dick Schmalensee, Michael Mussa, Thomas Moore, Gary Seevers, Marina von Neumann Whitman, Kristin J. Forbes, Katherine Baicker, Matthew J. Slaughter, Andrew Samwick, and others on the list. They are not there. That is good news.
Jim Hamiton Listens to Janet Yellen of the SF Fed on Risks for the U.S. Economy
Janet:
Econbrowser: Janet Yellen on risks and prospects for the U.S. economy: Unfortunately, it appears to me that there are at least three reasons for thinking that housing prices have further to fall... the ratio of house prices to rents... still remains quite high... inventories of unsold homes remain at elevated levels.... futures market for house prices predicts further declines....
The ongoing fall in house prices has important implications for the financial markets.... [T]he market for private-label securitized mortgages of even the highest quality remains moribund. These securities were the primary source of financing for nonconforming residential mortgages.... Jumbo mortgages for prime borrowers are available, but at historically high spreads.... With hindsight, it is clear that [the] originate-to-distribute model suffered severe incentive problems--the originator had insufficient incentive to ensure the quality of the loans.... Before private-label mortgage securitization can recover, financial markets must design mechanisms to align the incentives of originators with the interests of the ultimate investors.... [T]here was a widespread failure of risk management... excessive reliance on what turned out to be flawed assessments of risk by rating agencies.... Investors, even large sophisticated financial institutions, did not take adequate steps to assess risk independently.... The encouraging news is that large commercial banks, investment banks, and mortgage specialists have, to some extent, been able to issue new equity capital and to rebuild capital positions.... My expectation is that market functioning will improve markedly by 2009. But things could get worse before they get better....
[B]ooming economic activity in developing countries has boosted their appetite for commodities... since 2000, world demand for oil has increased by roughly 11 million barrels per day, with China accounting for roughly 30 percent of this increase, and other developing countries accounting for another 60 percent.... On the supply side... major discoveries are increasingly difficult to find.... I am not yet persuaded that speculation, rather than the fundamentals of global supply and demand, has played an important role....
Between September and April, the [Federal Open Market] Committee reduced the federal funds rate by 3-1/4 percentage points to its current rate of 2 percent. With core consumer inflation running at about the same rate, the real funds rate is now around zero.... [R]ecent data... suggest that my biggest fears on the downside have, so far, been avoided.... But maximum sustainable employment is only one of our mandates. The other is low and stable inflation. In the wake of rapid increases in prices for gasoline and food, consumer survey measures of longer term inflation expectations have turned up... [but] other surveys, such as the Survey of Professional Forecasters, show little erosion in long-term inflation expectations... the anecdotes I hear are more consistent with credibility than with an upward wage-price spiral.... I still see inflation expectations as reasonably well anchored.... We cannot and will not allow a wage-price spiral to develop...
I still think that my best moment in the Clinton administration was passing out individual sheets of paper to individual members of the House estimating how many of their constituents would benefit from expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. But I now think doing the staffwork for getting Janet Yellen into the Federal Reserve was almost as positive a public service.
John McCain's Budget Policy: Government by the Underpants Gnomes!
UPDATED July 8, 2008:
Cr--! Robert Pear of the New York Times called, looking for asoundbite on McCain's budget policy. I blathered on, while the perfect soundbite was waiting in my email inbox, unread.
It was:
Underpants Gnomes.
You all remember the plan of the Underpants Gnomes from South Park:
- Collect underpants.
- ?
- Profit!
That's the perfect analogy for John McCain's budget policy:
- Cut taxes and spend more on the military.
- ?
- Balanced budget!!
Memo to self: read email from persons known to be witty before talking to reporters, not after...
Let's see if Pear's story is up yet...
Yes. Ah, nice informative lead that tells it straight--with all the "to be sures..." placed at the end:
Skepticism on McCain Plan To Balance Budget by 2013: The package of spending and tax cuts proposed by Senator John McCain is unlikely to achieve his goal of balancing the federal budget by 2013, economists and fiscal experts said Monday.
“It would be very difficult to achieve in the best of circumstances, and even more difficult under the policies that Senator McCain has proposed,” said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.
Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is proposing billions of dollars in tax cuts. But advisers to Mr. McCain said those costs would be more than offset by savings from slower growth in spending.
In his proposal, Mr. McCain said he would hold overall spending growth to 2.4 percent a year. That is a tall order because federal spending has been growing an average of more than 6 percent a year in the last five years.
Mr. McCain said he would also slow the growth of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and fiscal experts agree that he would need to do that to achieve his goal. But Mr. McCain did not give details of how he would alter those benefit programs, which have powerful constituencies, including older Americans, a huge health care industry and state and local government officials.
A longtime foe of pet projects known as earmarks, Mr. McCain said he would stop such spending. The Bush White House says earmarks this year total $17 billion, a comparatively small share of a $2.9 trillion budget.
Mr. McCain proposed a one-year freeze in most domestic spending subject to annual appropriations, “to allow for a comprehensive review.” This proposal would affect education, scientific research, law enforcement and scores of other programs.
Mr. Bush’s battles with Congress suggest it would be extremely difficult for Mr. McCain to win approval for such a freeze.
Mr. McCain said he was counting on “rapid economic growth” to help reduce the deficit. While a growing economy generates additional revenue, several of Mr. McCain’s tax proposals would be costly, experts said.
He would “phase out and eliminate” a provision of the tax code known as the alternative minimum tax, which has ensnared a growing number of middle-class Americans in recent years.
By his own account, repealing this tax “will save middle-class families nearly $60 billion in a single year.” That is $60 billion that would presumably not be available to the Treasury.
Mr. McCain also wants to extend many of the Bush tax cuts, scheduled to expire by Jan. 1, 2011. That could reduce tax collections below the levels assumed under current law, and it could widen the deficit, many economists said.
In January, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that extending the Bush tax cuts would cost more than $700 billion in the next five years.
Since January, the economy has been weaker than expected, making the goal of a balanced budget more difficult to achieve. The budget deficit in the current fiscal year is running much higher than in the previous year.
Other McCain proposals, like doubling the personal tax exemption for dependents and cutting the corporate income tax rate, would also reduce revenues, economists said.
C. Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute, who worked in the Reagan administration, said Mr. McCain “may well be committed to balancing the budget in five years, but does not tell you how he would reach that goal.”
J. Bradford DeLong, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked at the Treasury under President Bill Clinton, said, “Senator McCain and his advisers want to claim they will balance the budget by 2013, but they have given us no clue and no plan to meet all the commitments he has made and still get there.”
On the other hand, history shows the deficit sometimes shrinks faster than experts expect.
That happened in 1998 in the Clinton administration, when the government ran a surplus for the first time in nearly three decades. And Mr. Bush cut the deficit in half faster than he or many fiscal experts had predicted.
Jed Lewison on Why America Cannot Afford to Elect John McCain
My line used to be that John McCain was the best possible Republican candidate--he was, after all, the only one not enthusiastically in favor of torture. But Jed Lewison has now convinced me that McCain is worse than I could previously have imagined. How has he done this. By firing up the Wayback Machine and taking us back to 2002 to listen to John McCain on the virtues of preemptive wars:
McCain's chilling defense of preemptive war against Iraq - The Jed Report: If you're like me, it can be hard to get fired up about something John McCain says, but earlier this evening I spent twenty-something minutes watching John McCain's October, 2002 Senate floor speech in favor of launching a preemptive war against Iraq. It was chilling... his foreign policy judgment is both terrifying and dangerous.... [I]t's impossible to... [avoid] the conclusion that he is a trigger-happy war monger....
What stunned me most was that oil played a crucial role in McCain's rationale. Speaking of Saddam Hussein, he said: "his ambitions lie not in Baghdad, or Tikrit, or Basra, but in the deserts of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia." Explaining the reluctance of other powers to support the war, McCain said that Saddam had dangled "the prospect of oil contracts for friendly foreign powers." Finally, McCain said, "We contemplate military action to end his rule because allowing him to remain in power, with the resources at his disposal, would intolerably and inevitably risk American interests in a region of the world where threats to those interests affect the whole world."
Here are key quotations....
It is a question of...whether our morality and security give us cause to fire the first shot in this battle...
[Saddam Hussein's] ambitions lie not in Baghdad, or Tikrit, or Basra, but in the deserts of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia...
[Saddam Hussein] is using opponents of war in America, including well-intentioned individuals who honestly believe inspections represent an alternative to war, to advance his own ends, sowing divisions within our ranks that encourage reasonable people to believe he may be sincere...
The burden is not on America to justify going to war. The burden is Saddam Hussein's, to justify why his regime should continue to exist as long as its continuing existence threatens the world. Giving peace a chance only gives Saddam Hussein more time to prepare for war - on his terms, at a time of his choosing, in pursuit of ambitions that will only grow...
It's a safe assumption that Iraqis will be grateful to whoever is responsible for securing their freedom. Perhaps that is what truly concerns some of our Gulf War allies: that among the consequences of regime change in Iraq might be a stronger demand for self-determination from their own people...
We contemplate military action to end his rule because allowing him to remain in power, with the resources at his disposal, would intolerably and inevitably risk American interests in a region of the world where threats to those interests affect the whole world...
Failure to end the danger posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq makes it more likely that the interaction we believe to have occurred between members of al Qaeda and Saddam's regime may increasingly take the form of active cooperation to target the United States...
By voting to give the President the authority to wage war, we assume and share his responsibility.... We have a choice. The men and women who wear the uniform... and... might lose their lives in service... do not. They will do their duty, as we see fit to define it for them...
Marcus Brauchli Has, I Think, Made a Big Mistake (Washington Post Death Spiral Watch)
Former WSJ executive Marcus Brauchli has agreed to take over the Washington Post:
The Post's New Executive Editor Once Headed Wall Street Journal: Brauchli's challenge is particularly acute because he has never lived in Washington, a city with a unique culture and customs, and he has not dealt with local news.... Brauchli said The Post must straddle its dual roles as "the best source of information" for local news while providing a "definitive" account of national politics and policy.... "My mantra has been, we are not defined by medium, we are defined by our approach to journalism. If The Washington Post, which has a very strong brand, can reach people who want sound, thoughtful, balanced journalism -- free of cant, free of slant -- they will come to The Post in print, online, on mobile phones, expecting those qualities."
This is, I think, a huge mistake for him and his reputation. For the Post as it is today is not for "people who want sound, thoughtful, balanced journalism -- free of cant, free of slant." In fact, the opposite.
To see this, all you have to look at is page A1 of this morning's paper--at the article by Perry Bacon, Jr., who has already written what the Columbia Journalism Review judged the worst article of the 2008 campaign. The headline of the article is:
The echo of Paul Krugman's 2000 joke:
If Bush said that the world was flat, the headline on the news analysis [the next day] would read 'Shape of Earth: Views Differ'
is clear. But nobody at the Washington Post gets the joke.
And the substance of the article is as bad as the headline. Let's turn the microphone over to Hilzoy:
Obsidian Wings: Candidates Diverge: This is a very puzzling article. Here's the lede:
Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are both proposing dramatic changes to Social Security, taking on the financially fragile "third rail of American politics" that Congress and recent presidents have been unable to repair."
Here's Matt Yglesias' comment on it:
This is a great lead except for the fact that Obama is not proposing dramatic changes to Social Security. Well, there's also the fact that the projected deficits for Social Security are smaller and more manageable than those projected for the other entitlement programs (Medicare and Medicaid) and that the non-entitlement portion of the budget is running a huge deficit right now. Under the circumstances, Social Security would seem to be the least financial fragile aspect of the federal budget. And one more thing -- to say "that Congress and recent presidents have been unable to repair" Social Security implies that recent presidents and Congresses have been trying to repair it when, in fact, George W. Bush's Social Security proposals were, like John McCain's, aimed at phasing the program out. I think I'm afraid to read past the lede of that particular story...
I, however, am willing to rush in where even Matt fears to tread: The story continues:
McCain's aides said he favors a bipartisan approach and is open to working with Congress on finding a solution to the long-term solvency of the New Deal-era program, indicating he could support an array of ideas such as raising the retirement age, reducing scheduled increases in benefits and allowing younger workers to put money they currently pay for Social Security taxes into personal savings accounts. President Bush floated a similar idea for private accounts in 2005, but polls found it had little public support.
Obama has been even more specific. The Democrat from Illinois has proposed raising taxes on upper-income Americans to address projected shortfalls in Social Security.... Under current law, income up to $102,000 a year is taxed for Social Security, and Obama would create a "doughnut hole" by not imposing new Social Security taxes on income between $102,000 and $250,000. His aides said income exceeding $250,000 would be taxed at a rate of 2 percent to 4 percent.... Experts predict that proposal would make up less than half of the $4.3 trillion shortfall Social Security is expected to face over the next 75 years."
There follows a lengthy discussion of Obama's proposal.... [E]ven though the article's headline is "Candidates Diverge on How to Save Social Security", only one candidate's proposals are seriously discussed.... [H]ere's the entire discussion of McCain's plans:
McCain supported [private] accounts in 2005 and has spoken positively about them in his campaign, but aides emphasize that he would seek consensus on the issue. "John McCain is committed to honoring the promise of Social Security and believes that his bipartisan record will serve him well as he works across the aisle to ensure the long-term solvency of the program," said Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman. Aides said McCain would not support a tax increase to address the solvency of the program, but they did not give further details. Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, described McCain's plan as a "decision to repackage President Bush's failed and flawed plan to privatize Social Security." Maya MacGuineas, a budget expert at the New America Foundation who advised McCain on Social Security in 2000, said of his proposal: "In terms of details, there is so much to be filled in.""
Not very substantive... reason is obvious: McCain does not... have... a "plan" for fixing Social Security.
Personally, I don't think that fixing Social Security is a particularly urgent problem. But McCain seems to. Moreover, yesterday, McCain promised (pdf) to balance the budget by the end of his first term. This promise met with considerable skepticism: McCain has proposed a whole bunch of costly tax cuts and spending proposals, and next to nothing about how he would pay for them. One of the few things he did say (pdf), however, was that "In the long-term, the only way to keep the budget balanced is successful reform of the large spending pressures in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid." (p. 4). One might have hoped, therefore, that he would have said something about what, exactly, he intends to do to "reform" Social Security (or, for that matter, Medicare or Medicaid), and how this will help to balance the budget. No such luck....
John McCain will fight to save the future of Social Security, and he believes that we may meet our obligations to the retirees of today and the future without raising taxes...
There are... two ways to put Social Security on a firmer financial footing, supposing one thinks that needs to be done. One is to raise taxes; the other is to cut benefits.... McCain says he does not think he will need to raise taxes. That leaves benefit cuts.... I would be more than happy to concede that I am wrong: that McCain has plans for raising revenues or cutting [other] spending that I haven't taken into account. But in order to do that, I'd have to see some concrete proposals from him. And the truth is: there aren't any.... And that, in the final analysis, is why the Post article looks as odd as it does. One candidate has proposed something quite specific: taxing income over $250,000 a year at 2-4%. The Post therefore asks various experts what they think of this, and gets a variety of opinions. Another candidate -- oddly enough, the one who has put a lot more weight on "reforming" Social Security -- offers nothing more than the claim that he will "fight to save Social Security", that he will "reach across the aisle", and that he will "act".... Imagine that you are talking to John McCain, and you're burning to hear about his plan to save Social Security. What does it involve? "Action." How will he save Social Security? By "reaching across the aisle". What will he do to save it? "John McCain will fight". Now you know all about John McCain's plan to fix Social Security.
Needless to say, none of this is in Perry Bacon's article.
Matthew Yglesias has had enough of the Washington Post:
Matthew Yglesias: Southpaw asks:
There's been a lot of talk about the unbalanced media environment in this election, and how it benefits McCain. What should Democrats actually do to counteract that advantage? (aside from opting out of the public financing system and running a buttload of paid media.)
I think that what Democrats should do is the same as what ordinary citizens should do -- support good media, punish bad media. If you subscribe to The Washington Post stop, and explain to them in a detailed letter why you're stopping. Subscribe to The American Prospect, and The Nation, and Mother Jones...
At a lunch of eight people I was at last week--former cabinet secretaries, newspaper executives, deans, et cetera--somebody (not me) asked what learning-about-the-world reason there was to read the Washington Post. There was silence. Then, after a while, somebody said "the Style section." And then there was more silence.
My call for people to nominate reliable reporters--those whose bylines tell you that you can trust the truth, the importance, and the relevance of the matters asserted by the reporter--working for the print Washington Post has come up with:
Walter Pincus, Daniel Froomkin (who doesn't work for the print edition), Joel Achenbach, Dana Priest, Barton Gellman, Gene Weingarten, Philip Carter (who doesn't work for the print edition), and William Arkin (who doesn't work for the print edition). UPDATE: Steven Pearlstein.
That's it. Those are the only nominations I have received.
The rest... Well, the presumption now is that they are like Perry Bacon, Jr.: either in the tank to please their sources or their editors, or unqualified to cover the material they are writing about. It is a great mystery why the Post has come to this pass--why we lament "why oh why can't we have a better press corps?" But it is a fact that we have.
And this fact, I think, makes Marcus Brauchli's task impossible. There is no base of reader credibility and no ethic of journalistic responsibility in the newsroom to build upon.
Ben Bernanke Is Right
From Greg Robb at Marketwatch:
Bernanke cautiously pushes for new powers for Fed: Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke stuck his toe into the shark-infested waters of Washington regulatory battles and cautiously suggested that the Fed be given new powers to oversee financial markets. In a speech at a FDIC conference, Bernanke said Congress would have to give the Fed new powers if it wanted to give the central bank the job to limit the impact of financial market turmoil on the economy. Bernanke bent over backwards to suggest rather than demand any new powers from Congress. In a major development on another topic, Bernanke said the Fed was considering extending its emergency loans to broker-dealers beyond 2008 to help stabilize the market. The Fed's emergency primary dealer credit facility is now set to expire in mid-September.
If we were back in the late nineteenth century, there would be no question--back then, banks were banks. Anything that promised liquidity, borrowed short, and invested long was a bank. And central banks existed to watch over them.
It's only in our more legalistic age that we have non-banks that aren't shepherded by the central bank...
July 07, 2008
Ross Douthat Says That He Is Not Now Nor Has He Ever Been a Jesse Helmsian
But we liberal webloggers want more! We will not let Douthat evade the key question: What, exactly, is Ross Douthat's position on "To His Coy Mistress" and "A Horatian Ode Upon Oliver Cromwell's Return from Ireland"?
We will not be denied.
We do, however, wish Ross luck as he tries to construct a decent non-Helmsian anti-Limbaughian right in America:
Ross Douthat: The Case of Jesse Helms: The liberal blogosphere wants to know: Why have conservatives lined up to say kind things about the late Jesse Helms?... [L]argely because Helms was an sometimes-effective, always-steadfast champion of conservative causes for decades, and there's a sense on the right that the liberal case against Helms-the-awful-bigot is really just the latest manifestation of the long-running liberal attempt to argue that... "the essence of conservatism is and always has been Dixiecrat-ism ... [and] that everything that conservatism has accomplished and stood for since 1965--Reagan, the tax revolt, law-and-order, deregulation, the fight against affirmative action, the critique of the welfare state...everything--is the poisoned fruit of the poisoned tree."
Regular readers will know that I... [am] sensitive to the way that liberals cry "racism!" in an effort to disarm conservative arguments.... I should note that I'm not convinced that Helms' famous "white hands" ad merits the sort of outraged denunciations that Andrew and Max Boot have offered up today....
But a specific ad is one thing; Helms himself is another. He simply was an awful bigot, and worse he was an awful bigot who never expressed a shred of remorse, so far as I know, for his toxic approach to issues ranging from civil rights to HIV to foreign affairs. Far from being the sort of politicians who conservatives ought to defend, out of a sense of issue-by-issue solidarity, he's the sort of politician conservatives ought to carefully distance themselves from, because his political style brought (and continues to bring) intellectual disrepute to almost every cause with which he was associated. Inherent to conservatism is the responsibility to stand up and say to bien-pensant opinion: Just because a bigot opposes something doesn't mean it's a good idea. But the necessity (and difficulty) of making that case, whether the issue is affirmative action or "comprehensive" immigration reform or the NEA and Piss Christ, is all the more reason for conservatives to keep their distance from actual bigots, even (or especially) when they're representing the great state of North Carolina in the U.S. Senate....
I'm happy to defend Helms' views on a variety of issues, but the man himself has no business in the right-wing pantheon, and the conservatives who have used his death as an occasion to argue that he does are doing their movement a grave disservice.
Let Us Now Speak Ill of the Living...
Let us speak ill of the editors of National Review, who write:
The Editors on Jesse Helms on National Review Online: Jesse Helms died on the Fourth of July — a fitting end for a true American patriot. He was one of the most consequential conservatives of his generation.... It is easy to rattle off a long list of what Senator No opposed. First and foremost was Communism. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was an aggressive and outspoken critic of the Soviet Union. He refused to overlook the evils of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba. During the 1980s, he led efforts to support Nicaragua’s contra rebels against the Sandinistas and their incipient totalitarianism.
He was against many other things as well: federal funding of obscene art, ineffective aid to foreign governments, and the continual encroachments of Big Government on everyday life. One of the things he was against in the 1960s was, alas, civil rights. His defense of segregation was of course deeply misguided. But is it fair for this error to have been placed in the first sentence of the New York Times’s obituary of him?...
One of the things that Jesse Helms was against was the teaching of seventeenth-century poetry:
To Their Coy Senator | OurFuture.org: Rick Perlstein: Here's a New York Times article from October of 1966:
CHAPEL HILL, N.C, Oct. 22—"To His Coy Mistress"... by Andrew Marvell, one of the great poets of the Puritan period in England, has risen to stir a tempest on the campus of the University of North Carolina. An instructor has been transferred from teaching to research duties. Students are mounting protests. Faculty members are disturbed. Chancellor Carlyle Sitterson, who recommended the transfer, has had to issue a clarifying statement in justification for his stand.
The clouds began to gather when Michael Paull, an instructor in freshman English, assigned his class to write a theme on the subject of "To His Coy Mistress," a poem that appears in many college textbooks.... One of the students apparently wrote her parents... the parents brought it to the attention of WRAL-TV, a television station in Raleigh with right-wing views that has been a frequent critic of liberalism at the university....
All 22 of Mr. Paull's students signed petitions requesting his return to teaching duties. Between 200 and 300 students and faculty members, organized into the Committee for Free Inquiry, met and asked that Mr. Paull be reinstated and that a review board be set up in the English department 'to determine whether or not Mr. Paull's effectiveness as a teacher been damaged to such a degree as to necessitate his reassignment to nonteaching functions."
Some newspapers expressed concern. The Greensboro Daily News declared, "The spectacle of a great university 'reassigning' its instructors at the behest of a bullying television pundit is hardly believable." The Daily Tar Heel, campus newspaper, headed its editorial, Who's afraid of Jesse Helms? The university—that's who"...
BONUS!!
Ramesh Ponnuru on Jesse Helms:
RAMESH PONNURU: [Jesser Helms] was willing to stop a lot of things that had a lot of bipartisan support. For, you know, just one small example of that, William Weld, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, had been nominated late in the Clinton administration to be ambassador to Mexico, had huge bipartisan support. He was a Republican, after all. Jesse Helms said no and single-handedly blocked it....
[But] he was also to work with people, like Paul Wellstone and Madeleine Albright, who actually became quite [interrupted]...
He was a throw-back to an older era of conservatism, a much more combative type of conservatism than you have today...
David Brooks on Jesse Helms:
[nothing]
David Frum on Jesse Helms:
[nothing]
Douglas Holtz-Eakin Burns His Credibility
Douglas Holtz-Eakin gained a lot of credibility working to stop the budget insanity first inside the Bush White House and then as Director of the Congressional Budget Office. He is now burning that credibility very rapidly:
McCain camp hits Obama on taxes - First Read - msnbc.com: The McCain campaign also sent out a memo.... "This year, Barack Obama returned to the United States Senate twice to vote in favor of a budget resolution which raises income tax rates by three percentage points for the 25, 28 and 33 percent tax brackets," Holtz-Eakin writes in the memo. "This would mean a tax increase for those earning as little as $32,000. While Barack Obama campaigns on a promise of no tax hikes for anyone but the rich, we once again find that his words are empty when it comes time to act. In both March and June, Barack Obama could have put the force of his vote behind his words. Instead, he decided that 'rich' now means those making just $32,000 per year."
But NBC’s Ken Strickland spoke with a Democratic aide at the Senate Budget Committee who said there was never a budget vote that said: Let's raise taxes. What the budget vote did do was estimate how much additional revenue would be needed, and then it would go to the Finance Committee to determine how to raise that amount (raise taxes, close loopholes, etc). The aide thinks what the McCain campaign has seized on is this revenue growth -- and has taken one of the possible ways to get there: by raising taxes among all income groups. But the budget vote never called for raising taxes, the aide said.
On the call, Holtz-Eakin said, “Sen. Obama can say what he wants this week… but this is about his record. It reveals what his true values are” -- that he voted for something that would raise taxes on low-income voters, Holtz-Eakin claimed...
This is, I think, a bad mistake for Doug Holtz-Eakin. If McCain wins in November, Holtz-Eakin will need credibility with Democratic as well as Republican senators. And if McCain doesn't win in November, Holtz-Eakin will need credibility with Democratic as well as Republican economists.
Ezra Klein on the New York Times on Rush Limbaugh
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps? Yet another edition in the New York Times death spiral watch.
The ethics-free New York Times reporter who should be fired is Zev Chafets. The ethics-free editor of the New York Times Magazine who should be fired is Gerald Marzorat. The Deputy Managing Editor who should be fired is Jonathan Landman. The Managing Editors who should be fired are Jill Abramson and John Geddes. The Executive Editor who should be fired is Bill Keller.
Outsourced to Ezra Klein:
EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect: If you happened to be unaware that there's a guy named Rush Limbaugh who hosts a popular program on AM radio, then this New York Times's profile will be an incredibly illuminating read. But if you happen to be aware of that guy already, and are wondering about the implications of the most popular radio host in America being a global warming denialist and self-described "defender of corporate America," then the piece stands as an extraordinary act of editorial cowardice.
The profile reads a bit like Gadsby, the famed novel written entirely without the letter "e." Here, the Times appears to have challenged itself to write 8,000 words on Limbaugh without saying anything that could be even remotely interpreted as critical.... [T]hey wrote a puff piece. See? Liberals can be fair and balanced too!
But deep within the article are glimmers of a more interesting profile about Limbaugh and the state of contemporary conservatism. Limbaugh -- and Karl Rove, and Jay Nordlinger, and a host of others -- believe Limbaugh to be the intellectual soul of contemporary conservatism. Liberals learn about conservatism from David Brooks, but conservatives learn conservatism from Rush. And we're talking two entirely different conservatisms. Here, for instance, is what Limbaugh describes as his presidential platform:
- Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
- Establish a 17 percent flat tax.
- Privatize Social Security.
- Give parents school vouchers to break the monopoly of public education.
- Revoke Jimmy Carter’s passport while he is out of the country.
- Abandon all government policies based on the hoax of man-made global warming.
If liberalish conservative intellectuals seek a Sam's Club Conservatism, then #2 and #3 are the more traditional variant: Mercedes conservatism. #4 is a bad public policy idea, but it is a public policy idea. But #1 #5, and #6... [a] bankrupt movement: They're pure resentment politics mixed with a toxic distaste for empiricism. The stereotypical liberal loves the environment, so Limbaugh will drill up the shelf, a policy that won't do much to increase the oil supply, but will presumably piss off Al Gore. And you know what will really piss off Al Gore? Doing nothing about global warming. Denying its very existence. Oh, and for good measure, screw Jimmy Carter.
So what does this mean for conservatism? Who cares!? The point of this piece was to leave Limbaugh relatively happy once it was published. In that, the Times succeeded. But Limbaugh fits into an interesting and long-running tension in the conservative movement: Where is its soul? Was it Jesse Helms, a stone-cold racist and bigot? Liberals, in good faith, sort of assumed Helms a marginal figure, and have been informed, in recent days, that he was in fact a key figure. Were Limbaugh to drop dead tomorrow, the obituaries would no doubt extol him as a leading conservative thinker and actor. What does that say about conservatism?
David Leonhardt Has Been on Fire for the Past Couple of Months
May I draft David Leonhardt for my rotisserie-league journalism team? Is there a David Leonhart personal RSS feed?
David Leonhardt - The New York Times:
Dispelling the Myths of Summer
The current economic downturn has no one dominant mythology, and several are making the rounds. Many of these fictions will get good air time this summer.
July 2, 2008High Medicare Costs, Courtesy of Congress
Medicare pays $110 for a walker that Wal-Mart sells for $60, and medical equipment makers like it that way.
June 25, 2008ECONOMIC SCENE; High Costs, Courtesy Of Congress
David Leonhardt Economic Scene column on US House passage of sprawling Medicare bill that would throw out initial bidding results for some durable medical equipment, rather than basing prices for those items on 'fee schedule' set by Congress; says bidding program would lead to significant savings for Medicare; says bill was introduced by Rep John Dingell and John Boehner; says fight in Congress is example of how small group of constituents can potentially beat back policy that is clearly in pub...
June 25, 2008Three Questions for McCain
There are some unanswered questions about John McCain’s economic plans. And we in the media have largely overlooked those questions so far.
June 18, 2008Big Vehicles Stagger Under the Weight of $4 Gas
The growing costs of auto ownership are leading Americans to change their driving habits quickly.
June 4, 2008ECONOMIC SCENE; In the Bubble Years, The Wise Decision Was to Let the Landlord Carry the Burden
David Leonhardt Economic Scene column on decision to buy home in Washington, DC, when he and his wife move this summer instead of renting apartment, which he has done most of his adult life; cites some reasons why it is advantageous to buy home now that prices are falling; map; chart; photo
May 28, 2008As Home Prices Drop Low Enough, a Committed Renter Decides to Buy
As housing prices slowly come back to reality, buying has again started to make sense for more people.
May 28, 2008A Diploma’s Worth? Ask Her
Women, who in the past few decades have become vastly more educated, answer the question of the value of a college education in a not-s0-subtle way: the return on investment has been excellent.
May 21, 2008Fearing Red Herring in the Data
What are we supposed to make of the latest batch of better-than-expected economic news?
May 14, 2008Seeing Inflation Only in the Prices That Go Up
Inflation really has gotten worse recently it was only 2 percent a year and a half ago but it’s not as bad as it feels.
May 7, 2008
John McCain Leaves Budget Reality Far Behind...
To John McCain's promises to (a) wage more wars abroad and (b) cut taxes for the rich while (c) limiting domestic spending cuts to waste, fraud, and abuse he has now added a promise to balance the budget by 2013--a promise that his substantive policy advisorrs had been trying to keep him from making all winter and spring. Their view was that George H.W. Bush's promise in 1988 not to raise taxes had brought him little short run political gain and had done so at the price of making his presidency a failure (cf Richard Ben Cramer, What It Takes).
How does America's press react? Well, in a way that makes me say: "Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?" For today we have an edition of the Politico Death Spiral Watch...
Mike Allen writes, apropos of John McCain:
McCain promises to balance budget: McCain’s emphasis on balancing the budget is likely to excite conservatives, who have remained skeptical of his candidacy, and provoke derision from Democrats, who will argue that it’s a warmed-over version of proposals that President Bush failed to enact...
Mike Allen is on record on what the role of a journalist is. As Matthew Yglesias reported:
He Said / She Said: [Reporters,] I said, aren't... giving... "just the facts, ma'am."... Rather, they're trying to act as neutral arbiters between contending parties.... [C]ontroversy about a basically factual subject ("what's the effect of X on the deficit?")... goes unresolved by [the] news writer.... [who] gives us a set of meta-facts -- "Joe says 'X' but Sam says 'Y.'" Bloggers... think the facts are partisan. When I say that the Bush Social Security plan involves a huge quantity of transition debt that risks provoking a fiscal crisis, I'm trying to state some facts... not offering "opinions" as such....
Allen took issue.... He said that news writers are trying to present both sides' points-of-view, hence the "he said, she said" quality to it, but that they're trying to present these points-of-view in such a way so that a discerning reader can tell who's right based on reading the story...
Is McCain's newfound "emphasis on balancing the budget" a joke, to which the only proper response is derision and laughter, or it is a serious statement of policy intentions that should excite fiscal conservatives like me who think the budget should be much closer to balance?
Let's see how Mike Allen does at planting clues in his article so that a "discerning reader" can tell who is right:
Paragraph 1: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico...
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 2: The vow to take on Social Security puts McCain in a political danger zone that thwarted President Bush after he named it the top domestic priority of his second term...
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 3: McCain is making the pledge at the beginning of a week when both presidential candidates plan to devote their events to the economy, the top issue in poll after poll as voters struggle to keep their jobs and fill their gas tanks...
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 4: “In the long-term, the only way to keep the budget balanced is successful reform of the large spending pressures in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” the McCain campaign says in a policy paper to be released Monday.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 5: “The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.”
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 6: The pledge is a return to an earlier position he'd later backed away from. On April 15, McCain backed off a February pledge to balance the budget in his first term when asked about it by Michael Cooper of The New York Times, who reported that McCain said “at a news conference … that ‘economic conditions are reversed’ and that he would have a balanced budget within eight years.”
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 7: McCain advisers admit that the document is a repackaging of previous policies, without dramatic new initiatives. Some Democratic officials had thought McCain might try to make a splash by proposing a bold middle-class tax cut.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraphs 8-9: Jason Furman, Obama's economic policy director, called McCain's pledge “preposterous." Furman pointed out that the Congressional Budget Office now estimates a 2013 deficit of $443 billion, assuming the Bush tax cuts are extended. And he estimated that McCain would have to cut discretionary spending--including defense--by roughly one-third to bring the budget into the black by then. "McCain would have to pay for all of his new tax cuts and other proposals and then, on top of that, cut an additional $443 billion from the budget--which is 81 percent of Medicare spending or 78 percent of all discretionary spending outside of defense," Furman said.
Let's come back to these later...
Paragraph 10: McCain’s tour of swing states is designed to relaunch his candidacy after a high-stakes shakeup last week in his campaign organization, which has been widely criticized as soft and slow compared to the Obama machine.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 11: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) also is spending the week emphasizing economic issues, and plans to tout the family-friendly, bottom-up benefits of his proposals.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 12: Obama begins the week in Charlotte, N.C., with what his campaign calls “a discussion on economic security for America’s families.”
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 13: The Obama campaign sought to steal McCain’s thunder by holding a conference call Sunday to portray McCain as out of touch and not up to the job on economic matters.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 14: McCain’s emphasis on balancing the budget is likely to excite conservatives, who have remained skeptical of his candidacy, and provoke derision from Democrats, who will argue that it’s a warmed-over version of proposals that President Bush failed to enact.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 15: The budget was in surplus when Bush took office but now is deeply in the red—$410 billion, the White House projects, blaming the demands of war and homeland security.
No clues as to who is right here...
Paragraph 16: McCain begins his tour in Colorado, then goes on to Pennsylvania, Ohio Michigan and Wisconsin—five of this year’s 10 most closely contested states.
No clues as to who is right here, and that carries us to the end of Allen's first page. Pages two and three of the article are pure stenography--summaries of the "plan."
Now let's go back to paragraphs eight and nine...
Now I carry much of the federal budget around in my head 25/8. And the first of my bookmarks is to Peter Orszag and company's summary "The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2008 to 2018" http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/89xx/doc8917/01-23-2008_BudgetOutlook.pdf. I know that the CBO baseline projects (assuming spending subject to appropriations growing at the same pace as the economy) the federal goverment spending $3.7T (nominal) on our behalf in 2013--20.2% of GDP in an $18T (nominal), $12,000 per capita. I know that Jason Furman's $443 extension baseline deficit is based on a lowballed forecast of spending subject to appropriations: assuming spending subject to appropriations growing at the same pace as the economy and assuming extension of the Bush tax cuts and of standard one-year tax system patches produces a projected deficit of $580B--3.3% of GDP--and a projected on-budget deficit of $820B--4.5% of GDP, $2,600 per capita--once one recognizes that borrowings from the Social Security Trust Fund do have to be paid back. I know that spending on domestic uses that is allocated by annual appropriations--the park service, the courts, et cetera--peaked at 4.8% of GDP in 1978, was cut to 3.4% of GDP by 2002, was cut to 3.1% of GDP by 2000, and has risen since then to 3.5% of GDP. I know that McCain's defense policy rhetoric is not consistent with defense spending growing more slowly than the economy as a whole. I know that cutting more from spending subject to appropriations has proven impossible both politically and substantively: Americans like and expect federal support for education, their interstate highways, veterans' benefits, their FBI, their courts, TANF, the EPA, the national parks, NASA, et cetera.
In short, I am much more than a "discerning reader." I know a lot of things that tell me that Jason Furman has (a) constructed a scenario that is relatively favorable to the Bushies McCainites, (b) allowed the McCainites to count the Social Security Trust Fund surplus as current tax money to be spent rather than as a fund to be saved in a lockbox to pay for future Social Security deficits, and (c) even so the cuts in spending needed to hit McCain's target are politically impossible and substantively unwise. But I knew this before I started reading Allen.
What would a "discerning reader" who doesn't have CBO's current-law and alternative baselines:
engraved on their brain make of these two paragraphs? Such a discerning reader would note that:
- Jason Furman throws numbers around with facility and ease...
- What these numbers mean is unclear, but there sure are a lot of them...
- Jason Furman is not a neutral arbiter here: he is Barack Obama's economic policy director...
- Nevertheless, Mike Allen pushes Jason onstage and gives him the microphone: Mike does not offer an alternative rebuttal quote from some "fiscal conservative" "excited" about McCain's plans to balance the budget...
Such a "discerning reader" might reason as follows: "that Mike Allen gives Barack Obama's economic policy director a large, unrebutted, my-eyes-glaze-over two-paragraph quote reasonably high up in an article about McCain tells me that Allen wants me to think that the McCain campaign is bulls---ting me." And I do, in fact, think that that is how Mike Allen hopes his discerning readers will reason.
But how many "discerning readers" are there? How many of those who read Mike Allen's stuff have ears sensitive enough to pick up the message of this dog-whistle journalism? I guarantee you that McCain's spinmasters this morning are happy with Mike Allen's article--have probably boxed up and sent him a new pair of kneepads--because they think the number of readers who pick up the dog-whistle journalism is very small, and that the takeaway for the overwhelming number of eyeballs that see the article is the headline: "McCain promises to balance budget."
I should note that Jason Furman likes and respects Mike Allen. As Jason wrote me in an email back in 2005:
Mike Allen is a great reporter and a very smart guy. If anything, he's more willing to "make the call" than a lot of other reporters. For years I've been frustrated when budget reporters write "pox on your houses" stories. [Allen is] one of the rare exceptions...
From my perspective, the bar is low.
UPDATE: I am reminded that P. O'Neill had something smart to say about Mike Allen:
There is another defence of Allen, not specifically related to the econ stories. He broke the Schiavo Republican talking points story, and had to endure two week of getting trashed by Powerline, Michelle Malkin, and Mickey Kaus, and even when he was proven right they still trashed him. He managed to stick to his line but it's dissipating to be up against the War on Facts crowd all the time. Probably contributes to a bit of gun-shyness on other stories...
Here is the execrable Mickey Kaus trashing Allen, yet another reason that friends don't let friends read Slate:
Mickey Kaus: March 30, 2005: Blogging in Print: According to de facto MSM Damage Controller Howie Kurtz, WaPo's Mike Allen is apparently now admitting what has been obvious to everyone else who has followed the controversy over those alleged "GOP Talking Points": the Post's stories were not entirely "accurate and carefully worded" (Kurtz's words), nor is it true that Allen "stuck to what we knew to be true and did not call them talking points or a Republican memo." Instead, he let an early version of his story ship out containing the unsupported claim that the memo was "distributed to Republican senators by party leaders."... Obviously at some point Allen thought or assumed the memo was a GOP leadership document, and before he'd nailed that down he temporarily let his scooplust get the better of him. This is a perfectly forgivable mistake. At least I hope it is--I make it all the time. You get all excited thinking you have a great story and then when you think more about it you realize you have a not-quite-as-great story, so you go back and make it "carefully worded"!...
Here is Allen's final word on the Schiavo memo:
washingtonpost.com: Counsel to GOP Senator Wrote Memo On Schiavo: The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night. Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said. Martinez, the GOP's Senate point man on the issue, said he earlier had been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing the memo.... The mystery of the memo's origin had roiled the Capitol, with Republicans accusing Democrats of concocting the document as a dirty trick, and Democrats accusing Republicans of trying to duck responsibility for exploiting the dying days of an incapacitated woman.... The document was provided to ABC News on March 18 and to The Post on March 19.... At the time, other Senate Republican aides claimed to be familiar with the memo but declined to discuss it on the record and gave no information about its origin...
July 06, 2008
Hilzoy Speaks Ill of the Living
She speaks ill of all those conservatives who praise Jesse Helms, that is:
I haven't written anything about Jesse Helms' death, since I don't like speaking ill of the dead. However: every so often, conservatives wonder: why oh why do people think that the Republican party, and/or the conservative movement, is bigoted? I think that the conservative response to Helms' death ought to settle that debate once and for all.
More below the fold. Note that I have largely restricted myself to conservatives' own words (and not random bloggers, but people and magazines with some standing in conservative circles), and to Helms' words and actions.
For my part, I'll just echo Matt:
"Conservatives are taking a line that I might have regarded as an unfair smear just a week ago, and saying that Helms is a brilliant exemplar of the American conservative movement.And if that's what the Heritage Foundation and National Review and the other key pillars of American conservatism want me to believe, then I'm happy to believe it. But it reflects just absolutely horribly on them and their movement that this is how they want to be seen -- as best exemplified by bigotry, lunatic notions about foreign policy, and tobacco subsidies."
And Ezra:
"Some of my conservative friends often complain about the difficulty of constructing a "usable history" out of the movement's recent past, and I sympathize with their plight. When leading exemplars of your political tradition were trying to preserve segregation less than four decades ago, it's a bit hard to argue that your party, which is now electorally based in the American South, is really rooted in a cautious empiricism and an acute concern for the deadweight losses associated with taxation. That project would really benefit, however, if more of them would step forward and say that Helms marred the history of their movement and left decent people ashamed to call themselves conservative. The attempt to subsume his primary political legacy beneath a lot of pabulum about "limited government and individual liberty" (which did not apparently include the liberty of blacks to work amongst whites or mingle with other races) is embarrassing. But if it goes unchallenged, what are those of us outside the conservative movement to think?"Some conservative reactions:
George W. Bush:
"Throughout his long public career, Senator Jesse Helms was a tireless advocate for the people of North Carolina, a stalwart defender of limited government and free enterprise, a fearless defender of a culture of life, and an unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty. Under his leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a powerful force for freedom. And today, from Central America to Central Europe and beyond, people remember: in the dark days when the forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took their side.Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called "the Miracle of America." So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July. He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: "The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven." Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race, and we pray he finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve throughout his life."
"At this time, let us remember a life dedicated to serving this nation.""Today we lost a Senator whose stature in Congress had few equals. Senator Jesse Helms was a leading voice and courageous champion for the many causes he believed in.""He was one of the giants of the '80s and '90s in the United States Senate"“He was a conservative icon,” Bob Dole, the former senator and Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview on CNN. “He was a good, decent human being.”"Death of a Conservative Great [Mark R. Levin]I wish the Helms family peace, and I thank Jesse Helms for helping to ensure the election of Ronald Reagan, being a warrior against the Soviet Union and for the release of Soviet Jews and other abused minorities, and being a voice for millions of unborn babies.
I have noticed some of the smears lobbed at William Buckley in other places since his death; Jesse Helms is in for even more of it. Other prominent conservatives will face the same. Unfortunately, such is the nature of these things now."
The Weekly Standard reposted this article in response to Helms' death:
"Reagan, as candidate and president, was conservatism with a happy face. Helms is conservatism with a stiffened spine. Reagan's success as a conservative leader, however, wouldn't have happened without Helms's bracing him. The Republican party needs another duo like that. What's missing, obviously, is a new Reagan. Helms is still here, operating at full tilt.""Jesse Helms, U.S. Senator and Conservative Champion, DiesConservative Sen. Jesse Helms, 86, a truly great American and champion of freedom, died at 1:15 a.m. today. Helms, who gave our country three decades of service as a U.S. senator from North Carolina, was ill in recent years.
Heritage President Ed Feulner (pictured at right with Helms and his wife Dorothy) presented Helms in 2002 with the Clare Boothe Luce Award, Heritage’s highest honor, calling him a “dedicated, unflinching and articulate advocate of conservative policy and principle.”"
"If Ronald Reagan was the sunny and optimistic face of modern conservatism, the uncompromisingly defiant exemplar of it was Jesse Helms, who died yesterday at age 86."The American Conservative's blog cites, without comment, someone saying:
"On Capitol Hill, conservatives had no finer champion than Jesse Helms, the longtime Republican senator from North Carolina."Commentary's blog reposts an old article (pdf), which says, among other things:
"Yet the "racism" of which Helms is accused turns out on inspection to consist of nothing more than an opposition to quotas and other forms of racial preferences."Commentary's blogger adds:
"His controversial political career has been chronicled in numerous obituaries, but few recall the severity of the demonization to which Helms was subjected by many liberals–who accused him of being a one-man “pantheon of evil.”"See below to judge Helms' racism, and whether he was just a "controversial figure" who was "demonized" by the left. The quotes below might also provide some useful background for judging this, from The Corner:
"The first sentence of the NYT obit:
Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina Senator whose courtly manner and mossy drawl barely masked a hard-edged conservatism that opposed civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art, died early Friday.He "opposed civil rights"? Uh, no. He opposed a particular vision of them."
And, of course, RedState:
"He was a warrior and a patriot. The date of his death is fitting indeed."***
Here are quotes by Jesse Helms himself. As you read them, bear in mind all those lovely quotes above, the ones about how he's a conservative champion, a fighter for conservative ideals, etc. They said it, not me. Like Matt Yglesias, I would have thought it was a completely unjust smear against conservatism to have said any such thing. [UPDATE: To be clear, what I would have thought was unfair was not to take him as a part of the conservative movement, but to think of him as an exemplary figure or a champion. END UPDATE.]
"Just days after Mr. Helms, a Republican from North Carolina, created a furor by saying that President Clinton was not up to the job of Commander in Chief, he told The News and Observer, a newspaper in Raleigh: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard.""On race:
"From the beginning, Helms was schooled in the political device of using race to propel white conservatives to the polls. As news director for WRAL radio, Helms supported Willis Smith in his 1950 Senate campaign against Frank Porter Graham, the former president of the University of North Carolina. The campaign theme was that Graham favored interracial marriages. "White people, wake up before it is too late," said one ad. "Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races."The campaign's further contribution to political notoriety was a handbill that showed Graham's wife dancing with a black man. (...)
But before long, Helms found his real calling as a nightly television commentator for WRAL in North Carolina, a post he held from 1960 to 1972. He blasted the "pinkos" and "Yankees" in Washington, and criticized King's inner circle of civil rights leaders for "proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion." He railed against Social Security, calling it "nothing more than doles and handouts." (...)
In the 1972 race, pitted against a Democratic congressman from Durham, Helms used code words that enraged liberals. The congressman's name was Nick Galifianakis. Helms' slogan: "Elect Jesse Helms -- He's One of Us.""
And:
"Helms warned that, "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced."He suggested that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist dupe and refused, even decades after King's death, to honor the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
He dismissed the civil rights movement as a cabal of communists and "moral degenerates."
As the movement gathered strength -- and as murderous violence against activists in particular and African-Americans in general increased -- Helms menacingly suggested to non-violent civil rights activists that, "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights.""
A personal favorite, worth remembering when you read things about how courteous Helms was in person:
"When Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first African-American woman to sit in the Senate, Helms followed Moseley-Braun into an elevator, announcing to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch: "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries."Then, emphasizing the lines about how "good" things were before the Civil War ended slavery, Helms sang "Dixie.""
And another:
"His disdain for people of color (exemplified by his "humorous" habit, in private, of referring to any black person as "Fred") continues to find ways of expressing itself. He is the Senate's most reliable opponent of any measure aimed at securing the rights or improving the conditions of African-Americans. In 1994, when Nelson Mandela visited the Capitol, Helms ostentatiously turned his back on him."Humorous? Referring to any black person as "Fred"??
And (Helms himself, h/t Majikthise):
“No intelligent Negro citizen should be insulted by a reference to this very plain fact of life. It is time to face honestly and sincerely the purely scientific statistical evidence of natural racial distinction in group intellect. ... There is no bigotry either implicit or intended in such a realistic confrontation with the facts of life. ... Those who would undertake to solve the problem by merely spending more money, and by massive forced integration, may be doing the greatest injustice of all to the Negro.”And:
"Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced."And:
“To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing.”And:
""Martin Luther King repeatedly refers to his 'non-violent movement.' It is about as non-violent as the Marines landing on Iwo Jima.""And:
"I was a senior when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Roughly 2,000 of us joined a vigil on the quad for several days. (...) Jesse Helms came on the television and said that all of the students sitting on the quad at Duke should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to "marry a Negro" (Duke students were practically all white in those days). Unless the student's parents approved of that prospect, Helms advised, he or she should go back to class."And:
"As a television commentator before running for the Senate, Helms said, "Dr. (Martin Luther) King's outfit ... is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior." He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.""Later, his views had not changed. (This is a transcription of a video; it doesn't say when the interview it shows is from, but I'd guess the late 80s or 90s, from his appearance. It's the video linked under Martin Luther King.)
"I thought it [the Civil Rights Act] was very unwise. It was taking liberties away from one group of citizens and giving them to another. I thought it was bad legislation then, and I have had nothing to change my mind about it."Helms also "staged a filibuster against the establishment of a national holiday to mark the birthday of Martin Luther King, having called King a communist and a sex pervert", and "was one of a small number of senators who opposed extending the Voting Rights Act in 1982, eventually giving up a filibuster when then-Majority Leader Sen. Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican, said the Senate would not take up any other business until it acted on the extension."
And:
"Appearing on “Larry King Live” in 1995, Jesse Helms, then the senior senator from North Carolina, fielded a call from an unusual admirer. Helms deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, the caller gushed, “for everything you’ve done to help keep down the niggers.” Given the rank ugliness of the sentiment — the guest host, Robert Novak, called it, with considerable understatement, “politically incorrect” — Helms could only pause before responding. But the hesitation couldn’t suppress his gut instincts. “Whoops, well, thank you, I think,” he said."One of his home state papers sums it up:
"Helms was an unceasing foe of the 20th century's social movements -- the drives for equality by blacks, women and gays. While others saw groups striving for a piece of the American dream, Helms saw threats to the social fabric.Along with former gubernatorial candidate I. Beverly Lake Sr., Helms was a leading voice for segregation in North Carolina. Unlike other well-known segregationists, such as Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Thurmond, Helms never repudiated his views or reached out to black voters.
He portrayed the civil rights movement as being planned in Moscow, dismissed Martin Luther King Jr. as a Marxist and a pervert, and called racial integration a phony issue."
On gays:
"He fought bitterly against federal financing for AIDS research and treatment, saying the disease resulted from “unnatural” and “disgusting” homosexual behavior.“Nothing positive happened to Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said, “and nothing positive is likely to happen to America if our people succumb to the drumbeats of support for the homosexual lifestyle.”"
And:
"Helms practically invented the modern conservative politics of sexuality, along with the electoral mobilization of white conservative evangelicals, starting back in the 1970s. In 1977, he seized on Anita Bryant's successful campaign to overturn a gay rights ordinance in Miami and began building a national backlash against antidiscrimination laws. As early as 1979, he was making speeches about the terrible threat of "secular humanism" to Christianity, making the wonky Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies an unlikely villain. When the AIDS epidemic emerged in the 1980s, Helms began an extended and violently worded campaign to "protect" Americans from the "perverts" whose "disgusting" habits were responsible for AIDS, while attacking efforts to find effective treatments. (...)But other aspects of Helms's personality cannot be ignored, particularly his venomous assault on Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy and his virulent hatred of gays and lesbians. For years, as part of his campaign against the NEA, this "courtly" Christian carried around portfolios of homoerotic Mapplethorpe photos and showed them to reporters and (male) citizens with the question, "How do you like them apples?" And as late as 1995, when an old friend wrote him to recommend compassion for people like her gay son, who had died of AIDS, Helms wrote back to say, "I wish he had not played Russian roulette with his sexual activities.""
And:
"1993: On the nomination of a gay rights activist to a federal post: “She’s not your garden-variety lesbian. She’s a militant-activist-mean lesbian, working her whole career to advance the homosexual agenda. Now you think I’m going to sit still and let her be confirmed by the Senate? … If you want to call me a bigot, go ahead.”"And:
"As a senator, he explained that he voted against Roberta Achtenberg, President Clinton's nominee for a Housing and Urban Development position, "because she's a damn lesbian." When Helms encountered protesters during a visit to Mexico in 1986, he remarked: "All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction." In 1990, Helms stayed away in protest when Nelson Mandela addressed a joint session of Congress."And:
"The Bible is unmistakably instructive on the sin of sodomy," he declared in 1994. "I confess I regard it as an abomination." Aids, he suggested, was acquired through "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct" and he became an ardent opponent of government funding for Aids research and education. In 1987 he described Aids prevention literature as "so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up."In his own words:
"The government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."And:
"Over the years Helms has declared homosexuality "degenerate," and homosexuals "weak, morally sick wretches." (Newsweek, 12/5/94) In a tirade highlighting his routine opposition to AIDS research funding, Helms lashed out at the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988: "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." (States News Service, 5/17/88)"(Take that, Ryan White!)
On foreign affairs, he was an almost wholly malign force:
"His obstinacy in foreign policy, where pragmatism often guides debate, was remarkable. Few administrations escaped his wrath. He condemned President Nixon's historic 1972 trip to Beijing as "appeasing Red China." He castigated President Carter, saying he "gave away the Panama Canal." And after the newly elected President Clinton proposed that gays be allowed to serve openly in the military, Helms said that Clinton "better have a bodyguard" if he visited North Carolina. (...)Because of Helms, several major treaties never became law: The Kyoto Protocol against global warming, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the proposed land mine treaty -- all were stopped at his insistence."
He also had a thing about governments with death squads, and the appallingly brutal South African-funded guerilla groups in Angola and Mozambique. He supported the apartheid regime in South Africa.
***
And here's a random quote from 1966 (cited in the Boston Globe, 11/21/1994), just because I like it:
"The nation has been hypnotized by the swaying and the gesturing of the Watusi and the Frug."
Let Us Now Speak Ill of the Living...
Jesse Helms is dead. We will not speak of him. We will speak ill of the living--of all the living "conservatives" who are currently lionizing Helmls.
Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein sum it up.
Matt:
Matthew Yglesias: One might expect that Helms' death would prompt from conservatives the sorts of things that I might say if, say, Al Sharpton died -- that he and I had some overlapping beliefs and I don't regard him as the world-historical villain that the right does, but that he's a problematic guy... marginal to American liberalism. But... conservatives are... saying that Helms is a brilliant exemplar of the American conservative movement.... [I]f that's what the Heritage Foundation and National Review and the other key pillars of American conservatism want me to believe, then I'm happy to believe it. But it reflects just absolutely horribly on them and their movement that this is how they want to be seen... bigotry, lunatic notions about foreign policy, and tobacco subsidies.
Ezra:
EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect: Jesse Helms... was an awful bigot with a secondary interest in destroying international institutions and increasing tobacco subsidies.... Some of my conservative friends often complain about the difficulty of constructing a "usable history" out of the movement's recent past.... When leading exemplars of your political tradition were trying to preserve segregation less than four decades ago, it's a bit hard to argue that your party, which is now electorally based in the American South, is really rooted in a cautious empiricism and an acute concern for the deadweight losses associated with taxation.... [So why don't] more of them would step forward and say that Helms marred the history of their movement and left decent people ashamed to call themselves conservative?] The attempt to subsume his primary political legacy beneath a lot of pabulum about "limited government and individual liberty" (which did not apparently include the liberty of blacks to work amongst whites or mingle with other races) is embarrassing... and] it goes unchallenged, [so] what are those of us outside the conservative movement to think?
Washington Post Death Spiral Watch (Joe Stephens Edition)
Outsourced to Nate of FiveThirtyEight.com:
FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: Irresponsible Journalism Alert: It took more than four months, but something finally beat out the Vicki Iseman story for its sheer chutzpah and utter irresponsibility. The culprit is [Joe Stephens's] piece from the Washington Post, which alleges that Barack Obama received a "discount" on his 30-year home mortgage when he purchased his house in Hyde Park in 2005. Obama's mortgage rate was 5.625 percent; the Washington Post cites databases stating that the average rate on comparable properties was 5.93 percent.
So Obama's rate was 30 basis points better than the average. However, the amount of the loan and the nature of the property are not the only factors that determine a mortgage rate. Another major consideration is the creditworthiness of the borrower. According to current rate quotes from myFICO.com, a borrower with very good credit can expect a mortgage rate about 30 basis points better than someone with pretty good credit, and a borrower with excellent credit can expect about a 50 basis point discount.
Unless the Washington Post has access to Obama's FICO score -- and unless it has rented an apartment to him, it probably doesn't -- it is missing a pretty important piece of information on what Obama's mortgage rate ought to have been. What was Obama's FICO score? I don't know, but considering that...
- Obama had just gotten a $2.27 million book deal from Random House -- about $1 million more than the value of the mortgage.
- The Obamas each had exceptionally secure jobs that paid them a combined annual salary of about $500,000 per year.
- The Obamas had just sold their condo, on which they had realized a $137,500 profit.
- The Obamas were prominent public figures whose political futures depended in part on maintaining a reputation for responsibility and trustworthiness.
- The Obamas are known to be relatively thrifty and have no credit card debt but substantial savings.
...I would think that the Obamas were exceptionally creditworthy. So indeed, Obama received a "discount" -- the same discount that any borrower in his position would have received.
And, yes, I apologize for being a little off-subject (and running three media-bashing pieces in a row), but one of the things that ties together my work over here and my work at Baseball Prospectus is that I want the media to be smarter and more accountable when they cite statistical information, be it mortgage rates or polling numbers or batting averages. This article was neither smart nor accountable. It's the equivalent of noting that Alex Rodriguez has a batting average 40 points better than the league average, and using that to infer that the umpires were biased in his favor.
Joe Stephens, this alone http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/01/AR2008070103008_pf.html is enough to ask you to please report to the animal cosmetics testing laboratory...
But let's look on the bright side. Walter Pincus is a good reporter still working for the print Washington Post. Is there anybody else at the Washington Post you would trust? Whose articles you would take as reliable without taking special steps to verify?
The Singularity Is in Our Past...
Will McLean writes:
A Commonplace Book: Buying Power of 14th Century Money: In the second half of the 14th century, a pound sterling would: