Brendan Nyhan

Brendan Miniter, an assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com, makes an absurd claim in a column today:

Republicans were sent to Washington in the 1950s to repeal the New Deal. Voters sent them packing when it became clear they were big spenders. In the 1990s Republicans were sent to Washington to repeal the Great Society. If they too turn out to be big spenders, they can expect a similar fate.

Now, it may be true that conservatives wanted Republicans “to repeal the Great Society,” but that was hardly the sentiment of the electorate as a whole, as we learned when the government shutdown backfired on Newt Gingrich and the supposed revolutionaries of the 104th Congress. And while I’m not an expert on 1950s politics, my sense is that the Republicans of the period were largely accomodationists who weren’t “sent” to repeal the New Deal either.

Miniter is also peddling a simplistic dichotomy between “big spenders” and repealing the New Deal/Great Society in which those who fail to do the latter must be the former. That’s ridiculous, and it’s equally ridiculous to suggest that voters are going to punish members of Congress for failing to take us back to the 19th century. There’s simply no popular support for rolling back the New Deal or Great Society. That said, however, the GOP is discovering that its big spending ways can be politically damaging, especially when they are seen as corrupt and hypocritical.

A Wall Street Journal editorial today (subscription required) again suggests that tax cuts increase revenue:

Our primary concern with the Katrina spend-fest is that it puts the economy at risk by putting pro-growth tax cuts in harm’s way. If the 2003 capital gains, dividend and income tax rate cuts are cancelled, as virtually the entirety of the Democratic Party is clamoring for, we get the most destructive of all fiscal storms: a continued federal spending buildup — expenditures are already up 34% under President Bush in five years — slower economic growth, and a smaller future tax base to finance federal spending promises.

This is nonsense on two levels. We know that deficits drive up interest rates and at least partly counteract the effects of tax cuts. In addition, having a larger “future tax base” isn’t particularly helpful for financing “federal spending promises” because keeping the Bush tax cuts in place will (a) increase the debt burden on future generations and (b) reduce the amount of revenue that could be generated from the future tax base without a tax increase.

The trick here is to obscure the underlying supply side fallacies by using more indirect language. But the point is the same, so let me put it more clearly. Almost every serious economist (including former Bush CEA chair Greg Mankiw) agrees that tax cuts don’t increase growth enough to pay for themselves. This means that tax cuts reduce revenue both now and in the future relative to what would have happened if they had not been enacted. And that means that the federal government has less ability to fulfill its spending promises both now and in the future.

(See my previous posts on the Journal for more.)

A brief note: I was busy taking comprehensive exams last week, and then I camped out for basketball tickets over the weekend, so obviously the blog has been neglected. I’m playing catchup now, but I’ll be back in full force tomorrow. Thanks for being patient.

In a classic Alterman move, he’s taken another vague cheap shot at me that misconstrues what I actually wrote:

A certain young blogosphere language cop recently took issue not only with my use of irony on the blog but also with my implication that the mainstream media have consistently treated President Bush as far more popular with Americans than he really is.

He then quotes from a poll showing President Bush’s low approval ratings and some silly analysis from an MSNBC anchor about how Bush’s response to Katrina is “going to be a win” as if these disproved my claims.

Once again, Alterman is being disingenuous. The first post he’s referring to pointed out that, on June 7, he wrote:

George W. Bush’s approval rating is now a full twenty points lower than Bill Clinton’s was on the day he was impeached. Dear media, that means you gotta stop referring to him as a “popular president,” and no less important, stop treating him like one.

But when I checked Nexis, I found that Chris Matthews was the only major media figure who had described Bush as a “popular president” since his second inauguration. I certainly never said that Bush was popular — indeed, I wrote in the same post that Bush’s popularity is a “myth” and linked to a post making that point back in March.

Then, on August 30, I pointed out that Alterman had made another direct claim about the press:

Will Bush become the most unpopular president in the history of Gallup Polling? Here. And will the mainstream media continue to refer to him as “well-liked” by the country?

So I checked Nexis and couldn’t find even a single example of anyone in the press using the phrase “well-liked” to describe President Bush during the previous six months. But I never denied that the press exaggerated Bush’s popularity — in fact, I agreed with Alterman’s premise: “The media does tend to overestimate Bush’s popularity, but that doesn’t mean you can just put phrases in quotes and claim people in the media are repeating them.”

However, since Alterman doesn’t have the courage to name me or link to my posts, his readers will never know any of this.

(See my previous posts on Alterman, especially this one, for more.)

Update 8/26: Apparently I’m also “whiney,” “self-pitying” and don’t know what irony is:

One additional irony of this story –note to whiney, self-pitying literalist language cops, look that up — is that because the refs worked the Times “liberalism” so effectively, in my opinion, they won themselves a completely baseless and self-defeating endorsement of the awful and incompetent George Pataki in his last election.

After their free market dreams didn’t quite work out in post-Saddam Iraq, conservatives are turning to the Gulf as the newest laboratory for half-baked Heritage Foundation policy proposals. Grover Norquist may have been the first prominent conservative to try to pass off the Gulf as a rationale for more tax cuts, but he’s hardly the only one.

The latest offender is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which published an agonizingly naive editorial today advocating a flat tax for the Gulf:

Why not allow the Gulf to operate as a laboratory for a flat tax, with an 18% rate and no taxes whatsoever on capital investment for businesses — small and large? And if this works for New Orleans, as it has for so many of the former economically ravaged nations of East Europe, then make it the law of the land.

…Congressman Bobby Jindal, who represents a large slice of New Orleans and whose own home has been nearly destroyed, warns that now is not the time for a bidding war of spending between the two parties. Rather, he says, “We now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to let the free market policies that we know will work for New Orleans flourish.” And if it works there, why not everywhere? (my emphasis)

Note Jindal’s metaphysical certainty about “the free market policies that we know will work for New Orleans” — a perfect expression of the faith-based economic policy that has taken over the Republican Party.

As part of my months-long effort to compile misleading claims Wall Street Journal editorial page, let me briefly note their latest bogus statistic:

The startling bottom line on Bush administration profligacy is this: At $22,000 per household, federal spending is at an inflation-adjusted post-World War II high and set to go still higher soon as the Baby Boomers start drawing Medicare and Social Security.

But what the Journal doesn’t tell you is that current spending levels relative to GDP are historically low. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that federal spending will be approximately 20 percent of GDP over the next five years including costs for Katrina relief and reconstruction. “[T]his level of spending will be lower, as a share of the economy,” they write, “than federal spending in every year from 1975 through 1996.”

The irony is that the Journal likes to downplay deficit projections by making historical comparisons of the deficit as a percentage of GDP (a valid metric). But when it comes to federal spending, levels of GDP go out the window. Surprise, surprise.

I think our good friend Eric Alterman is still mad about our recent disagreement — apparently I’m now the “Blogworld Language Police”:

Again, Fred Barnes is right. With a Republican Congress and no re-election to face, Bush does not need to be popular to continue ruining our country. (Note to Blogworld Language Police: I am not saying Bush, himself, thinks he is ruining the country and enjoys doing so, and therefore does intentionally. I am saying that is the net effect of his actions, regardless of his intentions.)

This item describes a supposedly endearing Bill Frist anecdote about a teddy bear that someone didn’t think through:

Is America ready for a president who wears clogs and plays with a teddy bear? Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist thinks so. The heart surgeon and undeclared White House hopeful has recently been sending us colorful E-mails about his travels in what appears to be a bid to show a folksier side as he considers the 2008 race. His latest includes “12 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Bill Frist,” as written by his kids. Among them: He prefers Dr. Scholl’s clogs in the operating room and practiced stitches on his teddy bear.

How cute. Here’s one more. Frist also adopted a series of cats from animal shelters as pets and then “practiced” his heart surgery techniques on them.

Via Wonkette, more depressing news about the “journalists” in the pundit corps:

When John G. Roberts is approved as chief justice of the United States, as expected, he can thank President Bush ‘s “Friends & Allies” program, which went to work on him immediately after he was nominated. The project, started by the Republican National Committee in the 2004 re-election campaign, is simple and effective: Give opinion makers, media friends, and even cocktail party hosts insider info on the topic of the day. How? Through E-mailed talking points, called D.C. Talkers, and conference calls. For Roberts, it worked this way: A daily conference call to about 80 pundits, GOP-leaning radio and TV hosts, and newsmakers was made around 9 a.m. On the other end were the main Roberts gunslingers like Steve Schmidt at the White House and Ken Mehlman and Brian Jones at the RNC. D.C. Talkers would then be distributed to an even larger list filled with positive info about Roberts and lines of attack on his critics. “The idea,” said one of those involved, “is to feed them information and have them invested in us.” It has even created addicts, he added. “Now they come to us before going on TV.”

Is it any wonder so many conservative pundits follow the party line?

People in the media can’t interpret polls to save their life — here’s CNN’s Judy Woodruff embarrassing herself on Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: Let’s look at the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll for the latest numbers on President Bush. Job approval: 40 percent. That’s the lowest we’ve ever had for George Bush in his five years as president. Fifty-five percent disapproval. Handling of Iraq? Only 37 percent approve of the way he’s handling Iraq. Fifty-eight disapprove. And how did the Bush administration do with Katrina? Satisfied, 38; dissatisfied, 58. Gwen Ifill, twin challenges confronting this president, Katrina and Iraq.

MS. GWEN IFILL: And all of them are unpalatable for him. The approval numbers are almost less interesting to me than the last two because the approval numbers have been knocking around in the 40s for a while. Not good but he was willing to survive with that and to work with that. The real problem is that this president–the way he has always been praised is for his ability to lead and his ability to protect us. And it looks like in the last couple of weeks neither of those things seem true…

MR. RUSSERT: Judy Woodruff, what’s your take?

MS. JUDY WOODRUFF: I do think these numbers are significant, because as Gwen said, it’s been rolling around, around 40 percent, but this is the first time the negative job performance has outweighed positive. On the feeling thermometer, as you call it, negatives outweigh the positives.

Um, no. It isn’t true that “this is the first time the negative job performance has outweighed positive.” More Americans have disapproved of Bush’s job performance than have approved of it for some time now, dating back as far as the early months of this year in some polls. If by “feeling thermometer” she actually means positive or negative feelings toward Bush, two major polls have also shown more Americans with negative than positive evaluations of Bush before – Gallup in July and ABC News in June (though it is true that other polls showed greater number of Americans indicating favorable feelings toward Bush until recently).

Once again, the media is slow to catch on to the fact that Bush is not a popular president.