12/07 Brendan: More of the economic blame game
With the economy in recession and the federal budget outlook deteriorating, politicians and pundits have unleashed a blizzard of misleading rhetoric in an attempt to place blame and gain political advantage.
Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels predicted deficits through 2004 last week, blaming the recession, the war on terrorism and reduced predictions of future economic growth. Democrats subsequently attacked President Bush's management of the economy, seeking to place responsibility for reviving growth in his hands while blaming his tax cut for the projected deficits.
The truth, as usual, is more complex. Both sides are downplaying the facts that are unfavorable to their side. Contrary to Democratic claims, tax cuts are not the primary cause of deficits through 2004. At the same time, the tax cut is the primary cause of the reduction in the government's projected surplus over the next decade.
A November 1 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a respected liberal think tank, demonstrates this. The Center's analysis shows that the slowdown has contributed more to reduced surplus projections during fiscal 2002-2004 than the tax cut, but the rate reductions that kick in during the second half of the decade have a far greater impact on the ten-year outlook than short-term factors (see figure 2).
The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes is one of several conservative pundits to use misleading reporting from the Washington Times to attack Democrats who criticize President Bush's tax cut and management of the economy. In a column titled titled "Bush's recession?", he writes that "[Senate Majority Leader Tom] Daschle suggests that budget deficits, which are projected for the next several years but haven't happened yet, caused the recession." When or how did he do so? Barnes doesn't tell us.
In fact, this claim originates in the Washington Times, which ran a story by Dave Boyer with the following opening paragraph: "Democrats yesterday put into action their campaign playbook for 2002, blaming President Bush for the recession while praising his handling of the war against terrorism."
This was not reported elsewhere because it hangs on Boyer's tenuous parsing of the following Daschle statement:
[Democrats] have a very significant difference of opinion with [President Bush] on the economy -- economic policy -- and I wouldn't give him high marks with regard to the economy. We're virtually in a recession. We are facing deficits of a magnitude we haven't seen in many, many years. And that's a direct result of the Bush policies enacted last spring.
Boyer inserts a semi-colon after "recession" rather than a period, as in the Federal News Service transcript quoted above. He then apparently reads the "direct result" quote, which immediately follows the statement about deficits, to also apply back to Daschle's previous statement about the recession. While it's certainly possible that Daschle may have intended to implicitly link the President's economic policies to the recession, it is at least as likely that his statement about "the direct result" referred specifically to the tax cut given statements from Daschle and others. Moreover, Daschle does not directly attempt to blame Bush for causing the recession in the press conference in question, nor has any effort to do so been reported elsewhere. (Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) did assail "George Bush's recession", which comes closer to the obviously false allegation that Bush caused a recession that began soon after he took office.)
Despite this ambiguity, Barnes hangs his entire column on Boyer's parsing. To do so, he has to deny that Daschle blamed the tax cuts for the projected deficits, although the Majority Leader did so four times during the press conference: "It would be one thing for Daschle to blame Bush's tax cuts for prompting projections of deficits in future budgets... But Daschle is suggesting something different, namely that potential deficits in the future are hurting the economy now. That's impossible."
Barnes ends his column by calling on the press to make Democrats justify the claim that Bush started the recession. Until a leading Democrat actually makes such a claim, this is nonsense. Instead, the press should scrutinize the deceptive claims coming from the punditry, the Democrats and the administration.
Update 12/07 5:40 PM: This post has been edited to omit a reference to Paul Krugman's column today, which I originally characterized as supporting the Democratic position that the tax cut is the primary cause of deficits through 2004. In fact, his phrasing is ambiguous enough that I have withdrawn the claim, although his criticism of the fiscal effects of the tax cut in the long run could be interpreted by readers as supporting the Democratic position on the cause of deficits through '04.
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Related links:
-Clinton speaks, pundits spin: The Washington Times and the spread of a media myth (Bryan Keefer, 11/19)
-Pre-empting Debate on Economic Stimulus (Ben Fritz, 11/12)
-Pundits insinuate Democrats want a recession (Bryan Keefer, 11/09)
-The economic blame game (Ben Fritz, 9/11)
12/7/2001 01:58:28 PM EST |
12/06 Bryan: Terrorist labels won't go away
Isn't it time to declare a moratorium on comparing domestic political opponents to terrorists?
As I noted in a previous post, in the wake of the September 11 tragedies some pundits and political actors have been tagging their political opponents with terrorist-related nicknames and labels. Sadly, the trend seems to be continuing - and may actually be escalating, judging from the number of examples we've found in the last week.
The award for most blatant and inflammatory comparison may belong to Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP. Bond repeatedly claimed that President Bush "has selected [Cabinet] nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics" prior to September 11. Earlier this week he made a similar attack on John Ashcroft, claiming "He knows something about the Taliban, coming from as he does from that wing of American politics." Bond's attack is particularly disreputable considering he has now repeated a similar line three times.
Giving Bond a run for his money in the category of nastiest analogy is Rush Limbaugh. On Wednesday, Limbaugh labeled Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle "Yasser Daschle" [link requires paid registration - begin playing at 30:30]. Claiming that both Arafat and Daschle say one thing in public and do another in private, and that Arafat is "seeking the death of Israel," Limbaugh launched into this analogy:
In public, [Daschle] only wants to help the president work through these challenging times. But in private, and in the conduct of his duty as the Senate Majority leader, it's death to everything Bush wants. And what is Yasser Daschle's latest - [imitating a critic]"Name calling! Name calling! Name calling! Yasser Daschle, how dare you! It's bad enough you call him Puff Daschle, now it's Yasser?" Yes sir, it is Yasser Daschle. Now it's death to the Bush nominations.
Arafat's name carries powerfully negative associations for many conservatives; by invoking this analogy, Limbaugh is clearly trying to attach those negative associations (including terrorism) to Daschle.
Meanwhile, pundits on both sides of the aisle are using the loaded term "jihad" to describe political policies they oppose. Conservative pundit Thomas Sowell claimed in his syndicated column today that "The most reckless and irresponsible signs of unreality among people in high places are coming from the Senate Judiciary Committee, where its chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy, is carrying on his own political jihad against Attorney General John Ashcroft." [emphasis added]
On the left, Laura Rozen wrote in a Salon.com article that "[D]espite their complaints about the Clinton administration, the hard-liners' jihad against Saddam [Hussein] is actually comparable to the work of Clinton administration hawks" [emphasis added].
Terrorist labels, comparisons and nicknames may get a laugh from political partisans, but such loaded terms should be used with care, not as a punchline. Such words carry deep emotions after the tragedies of September 11 - we deserve better than to have those associations abused for political gain.
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Related links:
-Taliban labels flying thick and fast (Bryan Keefer, 11/16)
-Limbaugh hypocrisy and ethnic slurs (Brendan Nyhan, 9/25)
-Limbaugh's Daschle "devil analogy" (Brendan Nyhan, 7/21)
-Julian Bond crosses the line again (Brendan Nyhan, 7/10)
12/6/2001 06:01:59 PM EST |
12/05 Brendan: Blurring the lines between tribunals and military justice system
The military tribunals President Bush has authorized for suspected terrorists would be quite different than the US military courts-martial system, but tribunal supporters continue to link the two in order to blunt opposition to the measure.
As William Glaberson reported in Sunday's New York Times, former military lawyers have pointed out fundamental differences between Bush's order and the courts-martial system: courts-martial sentences can be appealed; death sentences must be unanimous; guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt; and rules of evidence are "similar to those in civilian courts".
By contrast, Bush's executive order states that tribunal sentences can be imposed by a two-thirds vote, which many have interpreted to include the death penalty, and describes a looser standard for admitting evidence that has "probative value to a reasonable person." The administration is developing more detailed rules that will further specify how tribunals would work, including whether defendants will have the right to choose their own counsel, as they can under the courts-martial system.
These differences led Ronald W. Meister, a former Navy lawyer and judge, to tell the Times that tribunals "are a totally different animal." But you wouldn't know this from listening to some tribunal supporters, who have frequently blurred the differences between the two systems.
Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) in a blustering release today:
Military tribunals have been used throughout history. The Supreme Court has twice upheld them as constitutional. Now, we're at war, and we're talking about using military tribunals only for non-citizens. Why in the world would we try our own soldiers with this system of justice but not some foreigner who is trying to kill us? It's crazy. These nit-pickers need to find another nit to pick. They need to stop protecting the rights of terrorists.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) blatantly confusing the issue on CNN's "Late Edition" Sunday:
And let me tell you something. We try our young service people for their crimes in these military courts. And why would we give Osama bin Laden and these people -- we ought to kick his rear end from that cave to Timbuktu, as far as I'm concerned.
As Glaberson points out, even White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales linked the two in a misleading way in a Times op-ed defending Bush's actions last Friday:
The order specifically directs that all trials before military commissions will be "full and fair." Everyone tried before a military commission will know the charges against him, be represented by qualified counsel and be allowed to present a defense. The American military justice system is the finest in the world, with longstanding traditions of forbidding command influence on proceedings, of providing zealous advocacy by competent defense counsel, and of procedural fairness. Military commissions employed during World War II even acquitted some German and Japanese defendants. The suggestion that these commissions will afford only sham justice like that dispensed in dictatorial nations is an insult to our military justice system.
These tactics are wildly disingenuous given that critics are focusing on precisely the tribunal rules and procedures that make them different from the courts-martial system. Once again, public relations blather is substituting for intelligent debate on a serious issue.
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Related links:
-"Cornbelt Cromwell" and "Senator Depends": The Return of the Politics of Personal Demonization (Brendan Nyhan, 12/03)
-Don Feder's anti-liberal war jargon (Spinsanity series, 11/27-11/29)
12/5/2001 02:39:51 PM EST |
12/04 Ben: Mark Steyn ignores differences to attack feminists
As the Taliban loses power in Afghanistan, many feminists have begun to argue for increased attention to women's rights as the country is rebuilt and a new government is formed. Their opinions vary, however, with some opposing the war entirely and others making connections between the oppression of Afghan women and women's issues in the West. For certain conservative critics, though, this has provided all the evidence they need to launch an irrational broadside on feminism as a whole.
An article by Mark Steyn in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times is an excellent example of this. In it, Steyn continually uses examples of positions held by specific feminists to argue that feminists as a whole oppose the war, making over-the-top generalizations and ignoring the fact that one of the nation's largest feminist groups has come out in strong support of the war.
Steyn's slippery rhetoric starts in the first paragraph when he states that "[a]ll of the west's flabby intellectual elites have had problems with Sept. 11, but it's the professional feminists who are really feeling the squeeze (if they'll pardon the expression)." He goes on to cite two examples: Sunera Thobani, a Women's Studies professor at the University of British Columbia, who said "[t]here will be no emancipation for women anywhere on this planet until the western domination of this planet is ended"; and a group of 75 women called "Worldwide Sisterhood Against Terrorism and War" that, no surprise, opposes the war.
After criticizing "professional feminists" as whole, however, Steyn's two examples consist only of a small, and extreme, minority. Furthermore, many of the members of the "Worldwide Sisterhood Against Terrorism and War" are not "professional feminists," but prominent figures such as actresses and writers who are also involved in feminist politics. Most notable, however, is that Steyn ignores the Feminist Majority Foundation, one of the largest feminist groups in the country. In a Sepetember 18 press release, Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal states that "the United States has a unique obligation to end the Taliban's atrocities toward women" and "[i]n removing the Taliban, the U.S. and its allies must rescue and liberate the people, especially women and children, who have suffered so terribly under the Taliban's rule." The National Organization for Women, meanwhile, has been criticized for not taking a position on the war, but has not come out against it, as Steyn implies the entire feminist movement has.
Steyn makes this unfounded point even stronger later in the piece after he criticizes feminists for drawing analogies between Western cultural constraints on how women may appear in public and the Taliban's laws requiring women to wear burqas in public. His criticism of this logic is legitimate, but Steyn then implies that most women agree with his argument--"most women understand this"--by noting that 79 percent of women support the war in Afghanistan. He then asks "why there's such a huge gap between the overwhelming majority of women and the feminists who claim to represent them." Note that in both cases he makes illogical leaps. These poll results show that most American women support the war and does not prove they agree with Steyn about analogies between the West and Afghanistan. Moreover, Steyn never presents any evidence that the feminists arguing about burqas oppose the war, or that they claim to represent all women.
In fact, amongst those who claim to speak for the feminist cause, opinions vary widely. Criticizing certain feminists for their views is reasonable. Generalizing about an entire movement using only a few misleading examples is not.
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Related links:
-Mullings on jargon from Rich Galen (Brendan Nyhan, 11/20)
-Mark Steyn casts rhetoric at any who dare oppose war (Ben Fritz, 9/18)
12/4/2001 02:26:29 PM EST |
By Brendan Nyhan
During the last week, partisan politics returned with a vengeance
in the debate over military tribunals and other measures enacted
in the wake of the September 11 attacks. While much of the debate
has been relatively substantive, some critics of Attorney General
John Ashcroft and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy have
lapsed into hyperbole, jargon and vicious rhetoric, signaling a
return to the politics of personal demonization. (read the whole column)
12/2/2001 11:06:34 PM EST |
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