Brendan Nyhan

Scott de Marchi and Mike Munger, two of my illustrious professors, have published a nice analysis of polarization on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Raleigh News & Observer. Here’s the conclusion:

[T]here is no room for compromise, no “swing” votes for the chairman to appeal to. In fact, if Specter tries to compromise, his only option would be to turn to the Democrats, forcing a 9-9 tie on the committee…

You can bet that White House strategists are looking at the same Judiciary Committee scenario and seeing that an extreme choice could get through the committee. The opportunity to change policies and precedents for a generation may be too much of a temptation to resist…

In political terms, we have a majority party with no desire to compromise and a minority with no compromise to offer. Don’t worry about the empty middle on the Supreme Court. The problem is the large — and growing — hole in the middle of U.S. society.

Matt Bai’s much-touted article on professor/framing guru George Lakoff came out in the New York Times Magazine this week. I have to admit that I was hoping for more new material (see my previous posts on Lakoff), but Bai does carry the ball forward in a few areas:

1) The disturbing ubiquity of Lakoff among Democrats — Bai writes that Don’t Think of an Elephant! became “as ubiquitous among Democrats in the Capitol as Mao’s Little Red Book once was in the Forbidden City.” He also has a novel explanation for the Lakoff obsession:

What the framing experts had been telling Democrats on the Hill, aside from all this arcane stuff about narratives and neural science, was that they needed to stay unified and repeat the same few words and phrases over and over again. And these “outsiders” had what Reid and Pelosi and their legion of highly paid consultants did not: the patina of scientific credibility. Culturally, this made perfect sense. If you wanted Republican lawmakers to buy into a program, you brought in a guy like Frank Luntz, an unapologetically partisan pollster who dressed like the head of the College Republicans. If you wanted Democrats to pay attention, who better to do the job than an egghead from Berkeley with an armful of impenetrable journal studies on the workings of the brain?

2) Lakoff’s ideas about framing aren’t very good, as the Republican pollster Frank Luntz points out:

What Lakoff didn’t realize, Luntz said, was that poll-tested phrases like “tax relief” were successful only because they reflected the values of voters to begin with; no one could sell ideas like higher taxes and more government to the American voter, no matter how they were framed. To prove it, Luntz, as part of his recent polling for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, specifically tested some of Lakoff’s proposed language on taxation. He said he found that even when voters were reminded of the government’s need to invest in education, health care, national security and retirement security, 66 percent of them said the United States overtaxed its citizenry and only 14 percent said we were undertaxed.

3) Lakoff is taking advantage of the need for a simplistic explanation for Democrats’ electoral weakness and allowing himself to be framed as the answer. Kenneth Baer, who previously criticized Lakoff in the Washington Monthly, tells Bai that “Every election defeat has a charlatan, some guy who shows up and says, ‘Hey, I marketed the lava lamp, and I can market Democratic politics.’” Bai shows that, while Lakoff has described reframing as a long-term process, Democrats are interpreting him to be offering a tactical edge that can be obtained without rethinking old ideas:

The message Lakoff’s adherents seem to take away from their personal meetings with him, however, is decidedly more simplistic. When I asked Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the minority whip and one of Lakoff’s strongest supporters, whether Lakoff had talked to the caucus about this void of new ideas in the party, Durbin didn’t hesitate. ”He doesn’t ask us to change our views or change our philosophy,” Durbin said. ”He tells us that we have to recommunicate.” In fact, Durbin said he now understood, as a result of Lakoff’s work, that the Republicans have triumphed ”by repackaging old ideas in all new wrapping,” the implication being that this was not a war of ideas at all, but a contest of language.

4) Harry Reid, unlike Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi, is smart enough not to be talking to reporters about how he hopes to manipulate people using frames:

Reid waved away the suggestion that language had much to do with the party’s recent successes. ”If you want my honest opinion, and I know you do, I think people make too much out of that,” he said… Reid credited the ”team effort” and message discipline of the caucus for its victory on the filibuster issue…

After leaving Reid, I walked across the Capitol to see Nancy Pelosi, who told a different story. She assured me that Lakoff’s ideas had “forever changed” the way Democratic House members thought about politics. “He has taken people here to a place, whether you agree or disagree with his particular frame, where they know there has to be a frame,” she told me. “They all agree without any question that you don’t speak on Republican terms. You don’t think of an elephant.”

5) As Bai finally drives home, the Democrats still need ideas — frames aren’t a substitute for them:

The larger question — too large, perhaps, for most Democrats to want to consider at the moment — is whether they can do more with language and narrative than simply snipe at Bush’s latest initiative or sink his nominees. Here, the Republican example may be instructive. In 1994, Republican lawmakers, having heeded Bill Kristol’s advice and refused to engage in the health-care debate, found themselves in a position similar to where Democrats are now; they had weakened the president and spiked his trademark proposal, and they knew from Luntz’s polling that the public harbored serious reservations about the Democratic majority in Congress. What they did next changed the course of American politics. Rather than continue merely to deflect Clinton’s agenda, Republicans came up with their own, the Contract With America… Those 10 items, taken as a whole, encapsulated a rigid conservative philosophy that had been taking shape for 30 years — and that would define politics at the end of the 20th century.

By contrast, consider the declaration that House Democrats produced after their session with John Cullinane, the branding expert, last fall. The pamphlet is titled ”The House Democrats’ New Partnership for America’s Future: Six Core Values for a Strong and Secure Middle Class.” Under each of the six values — ”prosperity, national security, fairness, opportunity, community and accountability” — is a wish list of vague notions and familiar policy ideas…

Consider, too, George Lakoff’s own answer to the Republican mantra. He sums up the Republican message as ”strong defense, free markets, lower taxes, smaller government and family values,” and in ”Don’t Think of an Elephant!” he proposes some Democratic alternatives: ”Stronger America, broad prosperity, better future, effective government and mutual responsibility.” Look at the differences between the two. The Republican version is an argument, a series of philosophical assertions that require voters to make concrete choices about the direction of the country… Lakoff’s formulation, on the other hand, amounts to a vague collection of the least objectionable ideas in American life…

What all these middling generalities suggest, perhaps, is that Democrats are still unwilling to put their more concrete convictions about the country into words, either because they don’t know what those convictions are or because they lack confidence in the notion that voters can be persuaded to embrace them. Either way, this is where the power of language meets its outer limit. The right words can frame an argument, but they will never stand in its place.

What no one is talking about, though, are the implications of an arms race in the systematic manipulation of political language. This quickly leads to a war of buzzwords and nasty frames, such as denouncing the other side as practicing “Enronomics” or comparing them to the Taliban or terrorists. And in the long term, it eats away at the very possibility of rational debate. Already, an official within the Bush administration has spoken about its efforts to create its own reality. The conclusion of All the President’s Spin argues that this dynamic can be reversed, but the success of Bush’s disinformation campaign from 2000-2004 and the Democratic embrace of framing since the election are making me increasingly pessimistic.

Via Josh Marshall, make sure to check out the Washington Post’s recap of “Plamegate,” which does an admirable job of laying out the whole saga for readers who haven’t followed every twist and turn — something newspapers don’t do nearly enough.

More on the conservative movement’s slide toward relativism from TNR’s Michelle Cottle:

[Karl] Rove is just the latest, most egregious example we’ve seen. Before that, America watched as the CIA head who screwed up the Iraq WMD intelligence was given a pass–and then a medal. Ditto the geniuses who botched–or rather failed to do any–postwar planning. Meanwhile, the man who helped build the legal foundation for the scandalous abuses at Abu Ghraib got himself bumped up to Attorney General and may soon be on his way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then there’s Thomas Scully, the former Medicare chief who reportedly threatened to fire his top actuary if the man dared admit to Congress that the White House was low-balling its cost estimates for the Medicare drug bill. Later asked to investigate the matter, the Government Accountability Office, citing federal law that bars the government from paying the salary of any official who prevents another employee’s communication with Congress, ruled that the administration should require Scully (who had since decamped for a private-sector post) to repay half of his previous year’s salary. The administration refused, insisting that, in its view, Scully had done nothing improper.

Of course not. Because, in Bushworld, the definitions of such terms as “proper” and “right” and “good” depend entirely upon whether the act in question serves the goals of, and the version of truth propounded by, the administration. At the end of the day, despite all its moral posturing, this White House has a highly fluid, relativistic approach to right and wrong that one typically associates with fuzzy-headed lefties. The main difference seems to be that, for Bushies, the defining philosophy isn’t “I’m OK. You’re OK,” but rather “I’m OK, and if you agree with me then pretty much anything you do is OK too.”

Whatever obvious charms this approach may hold for members of Bushworld, this is no way to run a nation. An administration serious about personal accountability and moral absolutes and “doing the right thing” would–as promised–kick Rove’s butt. This one is more likely to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In response to a Democratic amendment intended to strip Karl Rove of his security clearance, Republican leaders retaliated “with a measure designed to strip the security clearance of the chamber’s top two Democrats.” Here’s the Post’s summary of the stunning amendment:

Frist offered his aimed at Reid and Democratic Whip Richard J. Durbin (Ill.). Frist’s amendment would have denied clearance to any senator who refers to a classified FBI report on the floor, a shot at Reid’s May 12 reference to a report on a Bush judicial nominee. It also would have stripped access to classified information to an officeholder making a statement that is “based on an FBI agent’s comments which is used as propaganda by terrorist organizations.” That was aimed at Durbin’s comments last month comparing the treatment of detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to techniques used by the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge.

Josh Marshall has the exact text:

Any federal officeholder who makes reference to a classified Federal Bureau of Investigation report on the floor of the United States Senate, or any federal officeholder that makes a statement based on a FBI agent’s comments which is used as propaganda by terrorist organizations thereby putting our servicemen and women at risk, shall not be permitted access to such information or to hold a security clearance for access to such information.

To point out the obvious, stripping clearances based on statements that are “used as propaganda by terrorist organizations” would essentially make it impossible for members of Congress to criticize the administration. And the implication that criticism of the administration puts “our servicemen and women at risk” is equally anti-democratic.

Fortunately, the amendment was so loathsome that 20 Senate Republicans couldn’t stomach it and voted with Democrats against it. But 33 United States Senators voted for it. Here’s the list of scoundrels:

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Burr (R-NC)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Frist (R-TN)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Martinez (R-FL)
McConnell (R-KY)
Santorum (R-PA)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Vitter (R-LA)

New York Times reporter Anne E. Kornblut needs a history lesson. Here’s what she wrote about Ken Mehlman’s apology yesterday:

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, spoke at the N.A.A.C.P.’s convention in Milwaukee. In his most extensive comments yet on the subject of race, Mr. Mehlman apologized for the so-called Southern strategy that his party employed nearly a half-century ago, when Republicans used the hostility of the civil rights era to pit Southern conservatives against blacks.

“Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” he said. “I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”

“Nearly a half-century ago”? The so-called Southern strategy was used at the national level up through at least 1988, when Willie Horton and the crime issue were carefully exploited by Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush’s campaign strategist. And it was used even longer in congressional campaigns such as Jesse Helms’ re-election campaign in 1990. Sadly, this isn’t ancient history.

Why isn’t this on the front page of the New York Times?

With no consensus in sight, even among Republicans, the chairmen of the Senate and House committees with jurisdiction over Social Security have decided to postpone further consideration of the issue at least until September.

With every passing week, the prospects for major Social Security legislation, President Bush’s top legislative priority, appear dimmer.

The combination of Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement and the Karl Rove/Valerie Plame controversy is overshadowing the failure of private accounts, which is huge news. Bush staked his “political capital” on it; he said he’d keep touring the country until he passed it; he claimed a mandate; etc. And he can’t even get a bill out of committee! Yet the media — which beat up Bill Clinton for months when his health care bill failed — has dropped the issue off the agenda.

Almost every prominent conservative in Washington, including the President, denounced the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity two years ago. But now that Karl Rove is in trouble, Fox News host John Gibson and the Wall Street Journal are arguing that it is a good thing that Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent was revealed. As Lewis Black said in a very different context, when did that go up for grabs? How far gone are we as a society that this is even an issue? She’s a national security operative in the middle of a global war on terrorism! End of discussion.

Following in the footsteps of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, the New York Post has published yet another vitriolic attack on dissent in the wake of the London bombings:

Democratic attacks on the president, his party and his war policies come in two basic categories — essentially self-serving and insidiously subversive.

Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton indulged in a little of the former yesterday evening — indecently demanding even more money for New York before all of the bodies in London had been identified.

Howard Dean & Co., meanwhile, have been taking advantage of America’s historic impatience with foreign entanglements — to say nothing of the media’s fascination with the Iraqi butcher’s bill — to undercut the president’s moral authority to wage a just and necessary war.

In another time, that would be called giving aid and comfort to the enemy — or something a bit more harsh.

It is one thing to serve as the loyal opposition — but it is quite another to undermine an anti-terrorism policy that was ratified by the American people a scant seven months ago.

The assumptions built into this passage are staggering. It’s “subversive” to ask for more funds to protect New York? It’s treasonous to criticize the president’s policies? Democrats are obligated to preserve Bush’s “moral authority to wage a just and necessary war”? They must remain silent because Bush won re-election by the narrowest margin of any incumbent since Woodrow Wilson?

Countless Americans have died to protect our right to free speech, but the Post would casually throw it away for a momentary tactical advantage. Despicable.

Update 7/17: As Noumenon points out in comments, the Wall Street Journal also recently used the same tactic in a June 27 editorial (subscription required) — here’s the passage in question, which follows quotations about Iraq from Ted Kennedy and Chuck Hagel:

The polls show the American people are growing pessimistic about Iraq, and no wonder. They are being rallied against the cause by such statesmen as the two above. Six months after they repudiated the insurgency in a historic election, free Iraqis are continuing to make slow but steady political and military gains. Where the terrorists are gaining ground is in Washington, D.C.

In a story yesterday, New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl expressed puzzlement at the lack of suicide bombings in the West before the London attacks:

Why suicide attacks have not previously emerged in the West is a mystery. In the Middle East and in Asia, the tactic has spread in recent years far beyond its origins in Lebanon in 1982, where it was pioneered by the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah.

But as University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape wrote in the Times back in May, “What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.”

As such, it’s not surprising that suicide bombings have been primarily used in the Middle East and Asia; that’s where the occupations have taken place. And as Pape documented in another Times op-ed last week, Al Qaeda is currently shifting its attention toward US allies supporting the Iraq occupation in order to try to force them to withdraw; hence the bombings in Madrid and London.

The problem is that Jehl examines suicide bombings as a tactic, but they are part of larger strategies employed by terrorist groups. Once they are examined in that context, the patterns of use become more clear. Yet another example of why reporters need to call political scientists more often!