The futility of speculating about motives

Matthew Yglesias makes a crucial point that all pundits should take to heart:

I spent a lot of time puzzling over Bush's sincerity or lack thereof with regard to his idealistic rhetoric before the war, and in retrospect it was all wasted time. It's interesting to wonder how it's possible -- or if it's possible -- for a man to speak grand words about liberty in the morning and defending systematic torture in the afternoon, but it's not actually relevant. The main point was that there was simply never any good reason to believe the more idealistic aspiration sometimes associated with the war had any decent prospects of success...

It's ultimately futile to have a debate about motives or sincerity. You can't prove that someone has acted in bad faith. That's why we bracketed the word "lie," which implies motive, in All the President's Spin. Regardless of what he intends at any given moment, which we can never know with certainty, Bush's statements are frequently misleading. As the President, it's his duty not to mislead the public. Therefore, his actions are wrong.

There's a comparable lesson in the debate over John Ashcroft's confirmation as Attorney General, which I wrote about for Spinsanity in 2001. As I pointed out, defenders of Ashcroft shifted the focus of the debate from his inflammatory public statements about race to his (unprovable) feelings about race by claiming his critics were calling him a racist:

This rhetorical trick left Ashcroft's opponents reeling. By most accounts, Ashcroft is a decent person who does not personally hate people on the basis of race - and no one can definitively prove otherwise (hence President Bush: "This is a good man; he's got a good heart"). But this does not mean that Ashcroft should be exempt from criticism for capitalizing on racial animus and being indifferent to civil rights in his political career...

In the end, Ashcroft's supporters created a standard that is effectively insurmountable, precluding race-related criticism of the more ambiguous political appeals, statements and positions that constitute the vast majority of American politics...

Ezra Klein, unfortunately, has not fully internalized this point, though he converged to it asymptotically on Tuesday.

When he first wrote about the misleading David Brooks column that I criticized, Klein spent much of the post questioning whether Brooks is writing in good faith:

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam are always telling me to cut David Brooks more slack, to extend the assumption of good faith, to listen to the interesting things he has to say. So I'd really like one of them to dissolve my current impression that Brooks' latest column -- which tries to make the argument that the economy really is in very good shape, save for some issues with inequality -- isn't a pack of lies and deceptions..

These are serious qualms and, if not factually rebutted, they call into question the accuracy of Brooks' article. Which isn't to say that there aren't answers to these objection. But readers deserve to have them. And without them, it's hard to extend that presumption of good faith. Particularly with pieces like this one providing past context.

After linking to my piece, he reiterated this concern:

But this is Brooks' main dodge in the article: He repeatedly factors in gains created during the final years of the 90s, averages them out with the losses during the Bush years, and uses the resultant positive number as proof that the economy is doing well. The actual conclusion this data suggests is that the economy was doing well and has been in decline for most of the last decade -- but that doesn't fit the story Brooks is trying to tell, which is that all those worried about the economy and intent on restoring (and possibly even enhancing) the progressivity of the Clinton years are mendacious alarmists. So again, someone explain to me how to read this in good faith.

A third post again questions Brooks' motivations:

Now why would David Brooks want to use such an inaccurate and even misleading measure? Particularly when median household income shows a 3% fall between 2000 and 2004? And has completely divorced itself from productivity gains? Doesn't Brooks find any of that worth mentioning?

In his final post, however, Klein finally concedes that we can't know Brooks' intent for sure and that we should instead focus on the effect of his column:

I want to emphasize, again, that this article is dishonest and misleading, in effect if not intent. I'm perfectly willing to believe some rightwing Heritage type impressed a perfectly well-intentioned David Brooks with these points at a party, but either way, the resulting article served to deceive readers of the New York Times op-ed page as to the state of the economy.

This is the correct position. Let's not waste our time and energy worrying about Brooks' motivations. Instead, focus on the stronger claim that his column was objectively misleading to Times readers and does not fulfill his obligations to them as a columnist.

Update 7/27 11:46 AM: After approvingly citing my original post on Brooks, Ross Douthat makes a similar point about the assumption of bad faith:

I think the liberal critics are right, and Brooks' use of the data in these two examples deserves criticism and correction.

Whether that justifies calling him a "liar," or whether it might be more appropriate to treat him the way I would assume Ezra would like to be treated himself - as a fallible pundit who is sometimes insufficiently skeptical about information that dovetails with his preconceptions, and who merits respectful disagreement in such cases rather sneering and name-calling - well, make up your own mind.

Comments

[SomeCallMeTim]

Motives are more predictive about future action than most other pieces of information, so it's worth trying to sort them out. If someone leaves the gas from the stove on as he goes to work and his wife sleeps, it seems likely to me that his wife, should she survive, will want to figure out his motivation or lack thereof.