The Wisdom of the Pundits
David Ignatius, syndicated Washington Post columnist:
Some Democratic initiatives are obvious after the November election: The public wants changes in Iraq policy that reduce the costs and dangers for America; reform of an arrogant and corrupt congressional leadership; and an end to partisan political bickering. The new House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, had a disastrous post-election week in which her first priority seemed to be settling scores rather than solving these big problems. Shame on her! But let's assume for the moment that the new Democratic majority won't commit instant suicide with a continuation of Pelosi's payback politics, and that it will get serious about governing.
So, let me get this straight: The newly elected Democratic majority is impotent because they are unable to lead during the lame-duck session in which they are still a minority. What in God's name is this man talking about? Why does his opinion matter? Does he understand the basics of American government? Does he understand parliamentary procedure? Does he even know what parliamentary procedure means? Does he understand that Democracy works deliberatively, not hastily?
I guess I'll just keep repeating myself. These people are the cancer of the Republic. The once-forgotten therapy known as "representative democracy" beat back the Republican strain of cancer on Nov. 7. Now we must endeavor to find a cure for the cancer known as "fucking idiot pundits." Apparently neither facts, honesty nor intelligence are adequate treatments. We may have to eliminate it surgically.
All humor aside, the problem of idiot pundits might be insolvable. While reading Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm, I came across these two illuminating passages:
As early as his 1922 book Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann had come to believe that the world was so complex that political decisions would best be left to a specialized class of experts. Three years later the Scopes "monkey trial" confirmed his conviction that a public uninstructed by expert opinion would succumb to the tyranny of the majority--the very worst tyranny of all. Ideologically, the columnist vacillated from decade to decade, sometimes coming out liberal in foreign affairs and conservative in domestic, sometimes vice versa. But always, always, his thinking betrayed a constant: that he and his fellow pundits--Hindi for "wise men," a title first given to him by an admiring Henry Luce--were the nation's best defense against the terror of the mob. (232-3)
And, on page 234:
So it was that Walter Lippmann wrote in August that Goldwater's candidacy "strikes at the heart of the American party system." So it was that, faced with the spectacle of a stadium of youth chanting Barry Goldwater's name, Lippmann had but two choices: predict Goldwater's imminent movement to the ideological center, or brand him a fascist in the making.
He chose to retreat into the cocoon of theory rather than record the evidence of his senses: Goldwater, he reported, was becoming a moderate. "It is interesting to watch him, and comforting to think that the system is working so well." Lemminglike, others rushed to confirm the master. Pay attention to "a fascinating political biological process," The New Republic's columnist TRB instructed readers, "like watching a polliwog turn into a frog."
Sound familiar? Or, as one of the great unwashed, Atrios, explains
I know I'm just an idiot with a cable modem and David Ignatius gets to write for the Washington Post, but for the record the Speaker of the House is currently Dennis Hastert. He's running the show. The Democrats don't take control for another couple of months. If big problems aren't being solved, it's because Dennis Hastert isn't trying to solve them. The Democrats had leadership elections, as did the Republicans. People took sides in those elections. That's pretty normal stuff. Some people won, and some people did not. The Republicans had an incredibly divisive election in the Senate in which John McCain's favorite segregation-loving candidate won by one vote. It's a real shame that McCain, who is currently in the majority in the Senate, apparently spent time on this stuff instead of solving the Big Problems, but hey that's how things apparently work. There's an election which is immediately followed by leadership elections. Then the new leadership takes control in January. This stuff happens every two years. It's not that complicated.
Exactly. But I would add the following. It's not as though Lippmann was wrong in his analysis of the mob and the tyranny of the majority. Mass populations can be led to pure evil, as we've seen throughout history. Even an educated, literate public can be led astray. But when common sense and simple facts become the purview of an elite, and that elite can't even grasp it, then we have a problem. It doesn't matter that Atrios is politically engaged, has a Ph.D or access to information. Its that he is pointing out the obvious to elites who can't or won't point out the obvious. That is a challenge, and it is precisely why elite journalism has an antagonistic relationship to left-wing bloggers. The Right wing never complains about elite pundits; they only concern themselves with "liberal bias" which, as near as I can tell, is when they find facts in contradiction to their worldview. But to elite journalists, lefty bloggers are roughly equivalent to hippies protesting war in the streets. Thus bloggers are neither serious nor nuanced in their worldview and everyone should stop paying attention to them and continue listening to the wisdom of people like David Ignatius, David Broder, Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, all of whom have repeatedly been wrong, wrong, wrong about politics, and continue to lecture the public about why they're right and everyone else is wrong. Is it any wonder these people support the "Unity 08" concept? Tell me what's wrong with this statement of principles:
Unity08 believes that neither of today’s major parties reflects the aspirations, fears or will of the majority of Americans. Both have polarized and alienated the people. Both are unduly influenced by single-issue groups. Both are excessively dominated by money.For most of the 20th Century, the contest for the U.S. presidency was waged over those “in the middle.” Recent Presidential elections, however, have not been focused on the middle but on the turnout of each party’s special interest groups – with each party’s “base” representing barely ten percent of the American people.
We believe that, while the leaders of both major parties are well intentioned people, they are trapped in a flawed system – and that the two major parties are today simply neither relevant to the issues and challenges of the 21st Century nor effective in addressing them.
As a result, most Americans have not been enthusiastic about the choices for President in recent elections, the key issues they ran on, or the manner in which the campaigns were conducted.
Therefore Unity08 will act to assure that an alternative ticket is presented to the American voters in 2008.
Ah, yes. The ultimate cop-out: both parties are bad, so here's a third choice. I'm not sure what planet these people have been on for the past 12 years, but on this planet we had the Contract with America, single-minded impeachment of a president, a stolen election, exploitation of 9/11 for political purposes, tax cuts for the rich, initiation of a civil war within Iraq, the ousting of an undercover CIA agent for political revenge, the demonization of war veterans by people who never saw combat, the use of fear and divisive social issues to mobilize voters, criminal neglect of the US Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and international law, the demoralization of the military, torture-as-policy, and corruption and sin at the highest levels of government. And, yes, I know, many Democrats made much of this possible. But only one party initiated it all. That, to me, is as plain as day, and to claim that both parties are somehow equally guilty is absurd. We'll see how power corrupts the Democrats once they've been in power a few years. But for now, all of the nation's immediate problems are the result of conservative ideology promoted by the GOP. (By the way, I'd like to see a true multi-party system in the US, but like that dirty hippy Atrios is fond of saying, "wishes aren't ponies." We have to work with what we have right now, mybe later tackle the enormous institutional barriers to a third party--more on that some other time.)
But the pundits see none of this. Those that do (Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, off the top of my head) are in the minority. The rest are aiding and abetting all of the above by pretending that they are somehow beyond partisanship. Bullshit defined. Now that the Republicans are no longer the majority in Congress, perhaps we'll see some real analysis by these people. But as Ignatius' column shows, I'm not holding my breath.
Update: I should have read this post by Digby before I expended considerable energy writing the above rant. He's spot-on about how the elite press treats Democrats and Republicans, and how they are part of the problem instead of, you know, doing their job as journalists. Glenn Greenwald also chimes in:
It's what these pundits and journalists do. They have pre-conceived, vapid notions about everything and everyone -- all driven by deep self-love for their own superior wisdom -- and they distort reality and crowd out sober analysis of everything that matters. Nancy Pelosi, and really everyone, would be well-advised not to listen to them and, above all, never adopt as a goal trying to please or satisfy them. They are frivolous and out of touch with everything that matters and should be treated as such.
Unfortunately, though, the tactic of ignoring the press makes them vindictive. Clinton tried shutting out the White House press corps and look what it got him. I agree that no one should give a damn what these idiots have to say. Masturbation, after all, should be private. The solution is find alternative pressure points to replace these idiots with, I don't know, real journalists.