The Bush administration vs. its economists - part 2 (5/16)

By Brendan Nyhan

In February, the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) released its Economic Report of the President, which contradicted claims by President Bush and other top administration officials on the revenue effects of tax cuts and the relationship between federal budget deficits and interest rates. Now, President Bush is again being contradicted by CEA and his nominee for chairman of the council, N. Gregory Mankiw, on the date a recession began in 2001, the revenue effects of tax cuts and the number of jobs that would be created by his tax cut package. (Click here to read the whole column.)

5/16/2003 01:28:48 PM EST |

Glib Iraq comparisons continue (5/14)

By Bryan Keefer

While President Bush has stated that major combat operations in Iraq are over, the jockeying to leverage the negative associations of Saddam Hussein's regime has just begun.

Some pundits have continued to compare their political foes to the Fedayeen Saddam, regime loyalists who attacked coalition troops while disguised as civilians. In a column originally published in the New York Times on April 27, Maureen Dowd suggested that those favoring Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's policies included the "fedayeen of the Defense Policy Board -- Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Gingrich, Ken Adelman." In the same column, Dowd wrote that "Bush has never reined in Rummy's rabid fedayeen." As we have noted, Salon.com also indulged in such attacks, suggesting in an unsigned editorial, that "the wing nut fedayeen of the right crawled out of their base camps at sites like Free Republic to throw spitballs at Salon e-mail accounts and advertisers" after it published a controversial article by Gary Kamiya on the fall of Saddam.

Far more troubling, however, have been explicit comparisons of domestic politicians and commentators to the Iraqi leaders depicted on the now-famous deck of cards issued by the Pentagon to troops in Iraq to help them identify top Iraqi officials. On an April 21 segment on CNN's "Inside Politics" about the Democratic presidential contenders broadcast on CNN, Candy Crowley suggested that"[Gary Hart's entrance] would make ten candidates. And if it keeps going like this pretty soon we're going to need a deck of cards to keep them all straight. So far, nobody seems to have an ace in the hole." Crowley's statement was accompanied by a graphic depicting the faces of several Democratic contenders on playing cards. While probably intended as joke, the inescapable associations of the Pentagon's cards make the segment an example of questionable judgment at best.

The most explicit comparisons, however, have been made by NewsMax.com and Greenpeace, who have both issued their own decks of cards featuring their political enemies. The NewsMax includes a picture of a politician or celebrity doctored to include a beret bearing the logo of the Iraqi Republican Guard and a "quote revealing his anti-American, pro-Saddam ranting". Prominently featured are French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac as the Ace of Spades (Saddam Hussein's position in the Pentagon deck) and "Sen. Robert 'KKK' Byrd" as the Ace of Diamonds. The Greenpeace deck features "evil doers" who have, the group claims, "promised to disarm and get rid of their weapons of mass destruction, but didn't do so." [203K PDF] George W. Bush is featured as the Ace of Spades. Even Republicans in the Texas state legislature have produced a set of cards with the faces of Democratic state legislators, who walked out of the legislature and left the state to protest a redistricting proposal.

Pundits and politicians have been leveraging the powerful emotional associations of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other such figures since soon after September 11. Such cheap, irrational attacks, most of which link domestic political opponents with hated enemies, serve only to undermine rational debate.

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Related links:
-Patriotism charges from left and right (Brendan Nyhan, 4/29/03)
-Unfair comparisons to Fedayeen, Iraqi and Syrian officials (Brendan Nyhan, 4/22/03)
-Spinsanity on terrorist labels and Taliban/Iraq comparisons

5/13/2003 10:38:56 PM EST |

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