Brendan Nyhan

I forgot to note that my friend Chris Mooney will be discussing his excellent new book The Republican War on Science on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” tonight. Make sure to tune in, and check back tomorrow morning for the post-mortem and my (belated) review of the book.

On Saturday morning, Eric Alterman sent me this charming email in reference to my post about him:

You are making a jerk of yourself which is why I am doing you the favor of ignoring these baseless accusations on the blog. You have now twice accused me of imputing intentions to the administration on the basis of zero evidence. When I say something wrong, fine. When I say something that you (alone) interpret to imply what I mean–without any evidence whatsoever–it might be a good idea not to make a public accusation. I have never, ever accused Bush et al of what you say. And if I did believe it, I wouldn’t say it, having no evidence to support it save my own feelings. The idea that you do this in the context of playing language cop is, shall we say, ironic.

Feel free to print this. I have nothing to hide.

A followup email added:

It occurs to me that I am being accused of accusing Bush et al of thinking something they have not said by someone who is accusing me of thinking something I did not say, This same individual purports to be policing the standard of public discourse. This is, I believe, triply ironic, and perhaps quadruply ridiculous.

And then today Alterman lashed out at me on his blog:

The sad fact is that the Bush administration has done little about preparing the nation for another terrorist attack in the past four years—just look here and here, while it does plenty to make one more likely—creating more hatred in the Arab world and more support for those who would give their lives to kill us, and less willingness to follow our leadership everywhere else.  I am not saying, as a foolish young blogger named Brendan Nyhan idiotically insists, that Bush has done this because he wants more terrorism.  I don’t pretend to know what Bush wants, but I would be honestly surprised if it included killing lots of brave American soldiers for no good reason.  (Hmmm, Nyhan, the little language cop, professes to know what I think but have not said about what Bush thinks but has not said.  Someone call George Orwell… or Alanis Morissette.)  What I am saying, and have been saying all along, is that George Bush is so blinkered by his ideological obsessions, coupled with his intellectual laziness, personal pique, and professional incompetence, that he cannot see what is plainly before him and hence, has failed in his most fundamental duty as president: to provide for the security of the nation.

So what did I do to get Alterman so riled up? I called him on the plain implications of his language:

One of the key tactics of political jargon* is confounding intention and (alleged) effect, as in this passage from Eric Alterman today:

In the name of fighting “terrorism,” the administration has sent 40 percent of the National Guard to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to create more terrorists and let bin Laden get away.

The phrase “in order to” clearly implies that the Bush administration wanted to “create more terrorists and let bin Laden get away.” Alterman would no doubt claim that he’s just being sarcastic, but that’s an easy excuse that allows him (and people like him) to make this sort of vile suggestion.

(* By jargon, I mean the highly engineered and manipulative language used by pundits, politicians and PR experts.)

This is not a radical idea. The phrase “in order to [x]” has a clearly accepted meaning — an action taken with the intention or goal of doing [x]:

Idiom: in order to do something
So as to be able to do it.
Thesaurus: to, with a view to, with the intention of, with the purpose of, intending to.

And if you peruse this Google search, you’ll find Alterman using the phrase that way over and over. Yet he is angry that I took his words seriously in the quotation presented above. To state the obvious, I have no idea what he personally believes — I can only judge him by what he writes. If I am wrongly interpreting his statement, what does Alterman suggest the phrase “in order to” actually means? Of course, he has no answer, so he vaguely disparages me for allegedly trying to read his mind and engages in ad hominem attacks (“foolish,” “the little language cop,” “idiotically,” etc.). Nowhere does he address the substance of my criticism. Draw your own conclusions.

Update 9/12 — Here is the email exchange I had with Alterman today (he has given me permission to reprint it):

Nyhan:

That’s some sloppy ad hominem on the blog, and you didn’t link to the original post about you. Anyway, my response is here:
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/09/when_alterman_a.html

I’ll happ[il]y print any further comments you have there.

Alterman:

I’m sorry but your original blog item is unworthy of a considered response (though I thought I did link to it). What kind of person would accuse George Bush of wanting to murder American soldiers and create terrorism on purpose? And given that, what kind of person would willfully misread what I wrote to pretend I said that?

Someone of bad faith, that’s who..

Nyhan:

Did you read my original post before flying off at the handle? You linked to the one about Yglesias, but that was a followup to this one:
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/09/altermans_antib.html

And as I said in my response today ( http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/09/when_alterman_a.html ), if I’m willfully misreading you, what does the phrase “in order to” mean? I don’t think you believe Bush intentionally tried to murder American soldiers, but that’s precisely what your original phrasing suggested.

Finally, I’m certainly not acting in bad faith – I’ve praised your writing in the past multiple times, you linked to Spinsanity frequently, etc. More fundamentally, I spent 3 1/2 years building up a strong reputation for fairness and accuracy on Spinsanity. I take that seriously.

Alterman:

And as I said in my response today ( http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/09/when_alterman_a.html ), if I’m willfully misreading you, what does the phrase “in order to” mean? I don’t think you believe Bush intentionally tried to murder American soldiers, but that’s precisely what your original phrasing suggested.

Only to someone of bad faith deliberately misrepresenting what I said… to someone who is familiar with who I am and my work, it would be obvious that I was pointing out that this was the result, rather than the intention…

Nyhan:

What about all the readers who go to your blog and aren’t “familiar” with who you are and your work? Where’s the decoder ring? Not to mention, I’m familiar with you and your work, but the phrase “in order to” still suggests intentional action.

In short, Alterman (who admits he did not offer a “considered response”) says his statement is ok because “in order to” means what he says it means to people “familiar” with his work. As I noted above, this is an exceptionally weak argument. First, it assumes everyone who reads his blog is familiar with his work, which is not true. In addition, I’m quite familiar with his work (I have read several of his books and read his blog daily), but his assertion doesn’t change the meaning of the phrase.

On a deeper level, Alterman’s logic is deeply flawed. It implies we cannot directly assess the meaning implied or suggested by people’s words, but instead should speculate about their intentions based on our knowledge of the person in question. The problem, however, is that we cannot know what someone’s intentions are, nor does knowledge of the person resolve the question of what their “true” meaning was.

Just to illustrate the absurdity of this, I would note that it implies Alterman should no longer criticize conservatives whose work he is not familiar with, since the meaning of their words can only be interpreted in that context. More seriously, such an approach would prevent us from criticizing people who use language that implies things they cannot or will not state explicitly — a heavily-used tactic in today’s political discourse.

Finally, I want to clear up a confusion Alterman is promoting that came up several times in comments from readers. I did not say Alterman thinks Bush intentionally tried to “create more terrorists and let bin Laden get away.” I said that his language implies this. Some people seem to be having trouble separating the two, but it’s very important to do so. For instance, when I criticize President Bush for implying Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, I’m not saying Bush believes Saddam was behind 9/11 — I have no idea if that’s true. I’m saying his language leaves his audience with that impression, which is not supported by any solid evidence.

Update 9/13 — I’m sick of this, but Alterman has replied again and given me permission to reprint his email, so here it is:

My readers are apparently either a lot smarter or more honest than you are since I receive hundreds of emails a day at Altercation and not one interpreted what I wrote the way you did. And as you point out, I’ve used the formulation many times, and never before have I seen the accusation, that I can recall, though perhaps someone like David Horowitz or Andrew Sullivan has made it and I’ve missed that. In any case, the phrase only suggests “intentional action” to those who would willfully misrepresent who I am and what I do. In the past twenty-three years, I’ve written six books, hundreds of columns and articles and a few thousand blog items. I have never accused any American official of seeking to kill Americans on purpose or wishing to. Indeed, I can’t remember many times, if at all, I ever professed to know the motives of anyone for doing anything. I tend to keep my analysis on the level of results.

You know that–or at least the rough outlines–and you ignored it, dishonestly. For what reason, I can’t know and don’t really care, but it was a big, big mistake on your part. You may think I am over-reacting but the accusation could hardly be more serious.

Oh and by the way, being unfamiliar with the work of Kundera is a pretty damning admission for someone who sets himself up as a language cop or an educated person of any kind. I’d suggest taking a break from the blog and doing some reading.

Let’s quickly run through the problems with this argument. Alterman begins with a logical fallacy, suggesting that the lack of reader email interpreting his statement the way I did proves he’s right. He then mischaracterizes the Google search I linked showing that he uses “in order to” to mean intentional action, claiming it somehow supports his point. Next, he denies that he has ever “accused any American official of seeking to kill Americans on purpose or wishing to.” The point of my post, however, was that Alterman’s language suggested such a conclusion, not that he had made a direct accusation. Then, after more claims that I am being willfully dishonest about some objective truth, it’s on to the vaguely threatening language: “[the post] was a big, big mistake on your part. You may think I am over-reacting but the accusation could hardly be more serious.” Finally, he offers a pompous lecture on why I am an illiterate because I’ve never read Kundera.

I’m not going to spend any more of my time on this nonsense, but you can see why Alterman is so widely disliked in the media world. I think lee’s comment below sums things up well:

Brendan,

I think you’ve run up against a central truth about Eric Alterman, which is – It’s all about Eric Alterman.

He’s clearly a smart guy and worth reading even when one disagrees with him, and he is capable of respectful and civil disagreement (see his posts conveying grudging respect for Paul Wolfowitz) But, whenever the disagreement becomes personal (not ad hominem, just personal, as in “I think Eric Alterman is wrong, or said something dumb.”) it’s as if a switch gets flipped inside him. His intellectual honesty goes out the window, and he becomes hostile, insulting, and incapable of admitting to the slightest of errors. He is, in other words, not just sensitive but hyper-sensitive to critisism. How DARE this young whipper-snapper criticize ME, ERIC ALTERMAN.

Update 9/12: One last thing — people seem to be exaggerating how important I think this is in all the “nitpick” comments below. Alterman’s phrasing is representative of an important problem, but he’s not a serial offender and I’ve written about far worse language in the past. As such, my original post was less than 100 words, and I would have never mentioned it again had Alterman not attacked me personally on his blog. If he had just apologized and corrected himself, I would have been happy, but he decided to try to bully me instead — and when challenged, I’m going to respond.

(Note: For more on Alterman’s mistakes and successes, see my previous posts on him.)

Last Wednesday, I flagged this passage from a John Kerry email to supporters:

How long will it be before [Republicans] start telling us that tax cuts for the wealthy can provide just the stimulus we need to get the Gulf Coast economy moving again?

My response: “I’d say a week, maybe less.”

That turned out to be generous. On Sunday, tax-cutting apparatchik Grover Norquist became the first conservative that I’ve seen use Katrina as a justification for more tax cuts:

Grover Norquist, a leading advocate of substantially reducing the federal government, argued that the disaster only underlined the need for more tax cuts to spur the economy. “Step one is you deal with the problem – rebuild New Orleans,” he said, “and step two, you enact economic policies so you can afford to rebuild New Orleans.”

Norquist is implying that tax cuts generate revenue rather than reducing it — a discredited bit of supply-side cant that even Bush administration economist Greg Mankiw has disavowed. And on a deeper level, Norquist has publicly declared that he wants to reduce the size of government by half so he can “drown it in a bathtub.” As such, he must not believe that tax cuts will throw off additional revenue — otherwise government would get bigger and bigger as it cuts taxes more and more (Norquist’s stated goal). So we can only conclude that Norquist is being disingenuous.

Who will be the first Republican member of Congress to peddle this nonsense?

Update: I just discovered a nasty Max Sawicky post quoting Norquist making a similar point about the estate tax in a Sept. 2 appeal to senators:

The 2003 tax cut lifted economic growth far
beyond what most people expected. We know repeal of the Death Tax
will also have a similar effect. And higher levels of economic growth
is exactly what the residents of the Gulf Region need at this time to
start the rebuilding process for their neighborhoods and more
importantly for their lives.

Having seen the preview for “The Man” at least seven times, I have to say that the news that it is going to be shown to Katrina refugees at the Astrodome hurts me inside. Dateline Hollywood, which Ben Fritz of Spinsanity fame co-edits, gets it right in a very funny satire:

ASTRODOME REFUGEES ENDURE SCREENING OF “THE MAN”
FEMA blames local authorities for airing of buddy comedy

Houston — Hurricane refugees staying at the Houston Astrodome said they had reached the limits of their tolerance for tragedy Friday when New Line Cinema arranged for a special benefit screening of new buddy comedy “The Man.”

Tens of thousands lined up outside the Astrodome begging for earplugs, blindfolds, or buses to take them away from the trauma. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff blamed the screening on local disaster management authorities, while Houston and Texas officials said the federal government is responsible for the selection of entertainment in FEMA-declared emergency zones.

Many critics have noted that authorities had several days of advance warning to prepare for the arrival of “The Man,” a buddy comedy starring Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy that received 84% negative reviews according to RottenTomatoes.com. Producer Robert N. Fried first warned that he was preparing a showing at the Astrodome on September 7 at the film’s premiere.

But whether due to bureaucratic bungling or simple lack of compassion for refugees at the stadium, authorities were unable to stop “The Man” or provide those in attendance with basic supplies to ride out the 83-minute screening.

Someone has lost their mind — according to a survey conducted by James Lindgren of Northwestern University, “GOP-leaning scholars rated Mr. Bush the 6th-best president of all time, while Democratic ones rated him No. 35, or 6th-worst. Even Bill Clinton–13th among Democrats, 34th among Republicans–isn’t as controversial.”

Sixth best of all time? Let me note the top five finishers in the Londregan survey: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. Who seriously thinks Bush belongs in that kind of company?

Update 9/12: John Transue points out that I’ve been studying for my comprehensive exams too much — it was Northwestern law prof James Lindgren who conducted the study, not Princeton political scientist (John) Londregan. The mistake has been corrected above.

Andrew Sullivan makes a great catch:

THE TWO CHENEYS: Even in a disaster, he spins:

In his first tour of the damage, Cheney offered an upbeat assessment of what he called the “very impressive” current response efforts. “I think the progress we’re making is significant,” he said.

Meanwhile, back on planet earth:

A Republican with close ties to the White House, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Bush had made clear that he wanted a change, a view reinforced by Vice President Dick Cheney’s fact-finding trip to Mississippi and Louisiana on Thursday. Mr. Cheney, the Republican said, came back with a progress report that was critical of Mr. Brown’s management.

Memo to the public: this guy will tell you anything.

Via Josh Marshall, the latest Newsweek poll is devastating to President Bush:

In Katrina’s wake, the president’s popularity and job-approval ratings have dropped across the board. Only 38 percent of Americans approve of the way Bush is doing his job overall, a record-low for this president in the NEWSWEEK poll. (Fifty-five percent of Americans disapprove of his overall job performance.) And only 28 percent of Americans say they are “satisfied with the way things are going” in the country, down from 36 percent in August and 46 percent in December, after the president’s re-election. This is another record low and two points below the satisfaction level recorded immediately after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal came to light. Fully two-thirds of Americans are not satisfied with the direction of the country.

But Katrina’s most costly impact could be a loss of faith in government generally, and the president, in particular. A majority of Americans (57 percent) say “government’s slow response to what happened in New Orleans” has made them lose confidence in government’s ability to deal with another major natural disaster. Forty-seven percent say it has made them lose confidence in the government’s ability to prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11, but 50 percent say is has not. (Note: our question asked about “government” in general, so we cannot say whether respondents meant state, local, federal or a combo of any of the three.)

More critical to President Bush — and the GOP’s future as the nation’s majority party: most Americans, 52 percent, say they do not trust the president “to make the right decisions during a domestic crisis” (45 percent do). The numbers are exactly the same when the subject is trust of the president to make the right decisions during an international crisis.

Why the gloom? Forty percent of Americans say the federal government’s response to the crisis in New Orleans was poor. Thirty-two percent say it was fair; 21 percent say it was good and five percent believe it was excellent. Americans don’t think much of the local and state governments’ responses either: 35 percent say state and local officials did a poor job and 34 percent say they did a fair job; 20 percent say they did a good job and five percent say an excellent job after the storm hit.

The Katrina effect is evident in how Americans rate the president personally. In every category, the view of the president is at all-time lows for the NEWSWEEK poll. Only 49 percent of Americans now believe the president has strong leadership qualities. The same percentage of registered voters feel that way, 49 percent — down from 63 percent the week before Bush’s reelection. Only 42 percent of Americans believe the president cares about people like them; 44 percent of registered voters feel that way — down from 50 percent the week before the election. And only 49 percent of Americans and the same percentage of registered voters believe Bush is intelligent and well-informed — down from 59 percent before the election.

Similarly, public approval of the president’s policies on issues from the economy (35 percent) to the war in Iraq (36 percent) to terrorism and homeland security (46 percent) have suffered. Demonstrating the widespread havoc that Katrina has wrought on the president’s political fortunes—even far from issues of disaster response—for the first time in the four years since 9/11, more Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of terrorism and homeland security than approve of it.

Reflecting the tarnished view of the administration, only 38 percent of registered voters say they would vote for a Republican for Congress if the Congressional elections were held today, while 50 say they would vote for a Democrat.

Just to put these figures in perspective, here are some comparisons to disapproval figures from Gallup — Bush is now comparable to Clinton in 1994 and moving towards Jimmy Carter territory:

Bill Clinton’s highest disapproval rating was 54% in September 1994. In fact, several polls that year found at least 50% of Americans disapproving of Clinton’s performance as president.

In the summer of his re-election bid, 60% of Americans told Gallup they disapproved of the way George H.W. Bush was handling the presidency. Across the 14 polls conducted from May 1992 through October 1992, a majority of Americans expressed disapproval in Bush.

In January 1983, 56% of Americans said they disapproved of Ronald Reagan. Five polls conducted from December 1982 through February 1983 found at least 50% of Americans disapproving of Reagan.

Many of the polls conducted in 1979 and 1980 found majority disapproval of Jimmy Carter’s performance. His highest disapproval was 59% in June and July 1979.

Just prior to his resignation as president, 66% of Americans said they disapproved of the way Richard Nixon was handling the presidency.

In March 1968, Gallup found that 52% of Americans disapproved of Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson’s disapproval ratings were at 50% or higher only four times in his presidency.

Harry Truman scored the highest disapproval rating in Gallup’s history — 67% — in January 1952. Truman also scored the lowest approval rating in Gallup’s history, 23%, in the same poll.

In the aftermath of Katrina, it’s clear that the Bush administration has modernized the wrong part of government. We’re getting 21st century PR combined with 19th century patronage — an ugly combination that represents a double step backward for the country.

For instance, it turns out that Michael Brown isn’t the only unqualified political hack at FEMA. In fact, as the Washington Post and Knight Ridder report (via Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum), the leadership is dominated by cronies and hangers-on. Here’s KR:

In 2000, 40 percent of the top FEMA jobs were held by career workers who rose through the ranks of the agency, including chief of staff. By 2004, that figure was down to less than 19 percent, and the deputy director/chief of staff job is held by a former TV anchor turned political operative…

Of the top 15 FEMA spots in Washington, the only people who had experience or have a single permanent job – some employees of FEMA are holding down two positions – are the agency’s top lawyer, its equal rights director, its technology chief and its inner-agency planning chief. None of them is responsible for disaster response or preparations.

And here’s the Post:

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA’s top three leaders — Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler — arrived with ties to President Bush’s 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Meanwhile, as Laura Rozen notes via Brad DeLong, the Bush administration’s PR-driven approach to crises is in full swing. Mark Pfeifle, a press operative who ran the White House Social Security “war room,” has already been shifted to being a FEMA spokesperson to clean up the mess. Perhaps they need help over there diverting firefighters for photo-ops?

As Atrios points out, at least one conservative gets the problem — Rod Dreher at National Review:

It would be very wrong, I believe, to let
the ignominious Michael Brown be the scapegoat for FEMA’s sins. Check out
this front-pager from the
WaPo. Turns out that a raft of FEMA’s top leaders have little or
no emergency management experience, but are instead politically well
connected to the GOP and the White House. This is a scandal, a real scandal.
How is it possible that four years after 9/11, the president treats a
federal agency vital to homeland security as a patronage prize? The main
reason I’ve been a Bush supporter all along is I trusted him (note past
tense) on national security — which, in the age of mass terrorism, means
homeland security too. Call me naive, but it’s a real blow to learn that
political hacks have been running FEMA, of all agencies of the federal
government! What if al-Qaeda had blown the New Orleans levees? How much
worse would the crony-led FEMA’s response have been? Would
conservatives stand for any of this for one second if a Democrat were
president? If this is what Republican government means, God help the poor
GOP Congressmen up for re-election in 2006.

The Bush adminstration must pay a heavy price for failing to respond adequately to the disaster. All future governments must realize that patronage does not pay, especially when it comes to homeland security and disaster relief — or we’re all in big trouble.

I want to note the (brief) surge in factual scrutiny of administration claims in the press during Katrina. In particular, CNN did some excellent work on TV and on their website. See this story and this one for classic examples of vigorous media fact-checking of exactly the sort we asked for in All the President’s Spin. The problem, however, is that the press can only muster brief interludes of skeptical coverage before going back to old “he said,” “she said” habits, as it’s starting to do right now. Still, it’s a start.

I just deleted about 35 spam comments that were posted to the blog last night, so I’m considering requiring TypeKey comment authentication. Any thoughts? I hate to impede the free flow of feedback, but I don’t want to spend my time policing the spammers either.

Update 9/11: The spam comments keep coming, so I’ve turned on comment approval, which means that your comments won’t appear immediately on the site. It’s still better than having every thread corrupted by spam, though. If this is too much of a pain, I may go to TypeKey, but hopefully it’ll stem the tide. Note: If you submit a comment and it doesn’t get approved within a couple of days, it may have gotten lost in the waves of spam — just email me and I’ll make sure to approve it.