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Axing the tough questions (5/21)

The White House -- aided by its pundit allies -- bullies its way out of trouble
By Brendan Nyhan

Since the story broke Thursday that President Bush received a general warning of possible hijackings before Sept. 11, Democrats have been asking tough but fair questions about information the government had prior to the attack. Many Republicans and conservative pundits, however, have claimed such questions amount to suggesting that Bush had knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks and failed to prevent them.

This is only the latest example of GOP officials and their supporters in the media using bombastic, anti-democratic rhetoric to shut down debate on any issue related to the war. Whenever serious questions have been raised, this Republican-pundit alliance has launched a massive and aggressive counteroffensive to silence critics - with grave implications for open debate about the war on terrorism.

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Hijacking the issue (5/18)

A scandal hits and the spinning ensues, from Trent Lott, Robert Novak, Laura Bush -- and even Salon.
By Ben Fritz
[First published on Salon.com (Salon Premium subscription required)]

After Thursday's revelations about the White House's knowledge of a possible hijacking threat from Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network before Sept. 11, it may seem that the relevant questions would focus on what the administration knew and whether Congress and the public should have been informed. But in less than a day, expert spinners on both sides are already twisting the issue far beyond the facts.

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The mystery of the trifecta (5/15)

By Brendan Nyhan

By now, you’ve probably heard the “trifecta” punchline in President Bush’s current stump speech. Here, for example, is what he said at a fundraiser for the Taft gubernatorial campaign in Ohio on Friday:

“You know, when I was running for President, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending? I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream we'd get the trifecta.”

He again repeated the story, which is intended to justify the budget deficit now being run by the federal government, last night at a GOP fundraiser.

What the Washington press corps hasn’t told you, however, is that there is no record of Bush ever having said what he claims in Chicago, as Jonathan Chait reports in The New Republic.

It appears that the President first told this story in its current form during a meeting with business leaders on October 3 of last year. Here’s what he said then:

"Well, as I said in Chicago during the campaign, when asked about should the government ever deficit spend, I said only under these circumstances should government deficit spend: if there is a national emergency, if there is a recession, or if there's a war."

But, again, there is no evidence this ever happened. The story varies – sometimes Bush defines his audience vaguely, as he did at the Taft event, and sometimes he quite explicitly refers to a public statement that does not exist. Last year wasn’t the first time – consider this April 26 comment:

“I remind -- I want to remind you what I told the American people, that if I'm the President -- when I was campaigning, if I were to become the President, we would have deficits only in the case of war, a recession or a national emergency.”

Now, Bush may indeed have had the conversation he claims occurred in Chicago. But there is no record of him publicly telling the “American people” what he says he did. Here’s what the ABC News political unit wrote in their newsletter The Note today:

“[W]e have never been able to find, even with the help of reporters who covered the campaign every day, and from Mr. Bush's own advisers, any reference to the president saying this even ONCE.”

This isn't just a minor issue either. As Chait points out, Bush promised during the campaign to devote the entire Social Security surplus to debt reduction, which he claimed would be possible even with the tax cuts and increased programmatic spending he proposed. Now, not only is the Social Security surplus being devoted to government programs rather than debt reduction, but the federal budget is actually running an overall deficit that appear likely to persist for the foreseeable future. In short, Bush's claim that deficits are consistent with his statements during the campaign matters.

Unfortunately, other than Chait and The Note, the national press has failed to offer any serious scrutiny of Bush's statements even though he's been making them for months. This is disappointing, but not surprising. When a politician is perceived as dishonest, journalists often labor to expose any possible slip, sometimes even manufacturing supposed untruths. But Bush largely escapes such scrutiny, perhaps because he is perceived as an honest man – and so far he’s reaping the dividends.

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Do as I say (5/14)

By Bryan Keefer
[First published on Salon.com (Salon Premium subscription required)]

But coming from Republicans -- who used similar tactics against President Clinton during his two terms -- the charge lacks the righteousness needed to be anything more than a transparent P.R. tactic.

The intensity of the battle has been building steadily since Democrats took control of the Senate last May. It reached a new plane in March, when Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee scuttled the nomination of Charles Pickering for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals along party lines and after a protracted battle between partisan interest groups. On Thursday, Senate Republicans aggressively pushed the line that the battle over judicial nominations was about simple fairness. Observing the one-year anniversary of Bush's first 11 judicial nominations, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., suggested that giving hearings to Bush's nominees was "a matter of simple fairness, and I think the American people understand that justice delayed is justice denied." Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., echoed that sentiment in a press conference, claiming, "It's time that the Democratic majority play fair with the president, play fair with the American people, and play fair with these nominees and give them a hearing."

Fairness, however, is a matter of interpretation. Republicans complain that the Senate has confirmed a lower percentage of Bush's nominees (just over half) than it did under Clinton (60 percent) in the same time period, and note that eight of Bush's first 11 nominees have yet to receive hearings. Democrats counter that they have confirmed 52 nominees, more than the Republican-controlled Senate did under Clinton in 2000, 1999, 1997 or 1996. As Ron Brownstein points out, both sides can make substantive arguments. The relative fairness of the Democrats' treatment of Bush's nominees depends on how you decide to slice the numbers.

Republicans have also contended, repeatedly, that there are too many vacancies on the federal bench. Bush suggested Thursday that "we have a vacancy crisis in America. There are too many seats that aren't filled with judges, and, therefore, America hurts, America is not getting the justice it needs." Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, also suggested in a press conference that the 84 current federal vacancies represent "a crisis in our federal courts," and Sandy Rios, president of the conservative group Concerned Women for America said, "The Senate Democrats claim to protect justice, but their own refusal to schedule hearings for qualified nominees is a treacherous twisting of the rules of the game." Yet those charges are also matters of political expediency. When Clinton suggested there was a vacancy crisis in 1999 (when there were 67 federal vacancies, just 17 fewer than now), Hatch, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was quick to dismiss the complaint.

Other rhetoric has been less ambiguously deceptive. One particularly popular tactic, employed on Thursday by both sides, is to try to identify the other side as extremists or ideologues. Writing in the Washington Times, Thomas L. Jipping suggested that the "far-left troops" of Ralph Neas of the People for the American Way "are fighting for a judiciary that will impose his political agenda rather than follow the law." American Conservative Union (ACU) chairman David A. Keene claimed in a press release that "America suffered through the extreme left's misrepresentations, distortions, and lies as Judge Charles W. Pickering of Mississippi ... was subjected to intentional misstatements by left-wing fringe groups and their Senate Democrat allies, simply because he is Conservative."

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., framed Bush's nominees in the same way, claiming that "the President, at an earlier period, said he wanted to be [a] uniter and not a divider. But he has sent the Senate several nominees who divide Americans and who divide the Senate, and those nominations will take longer." Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., struck the same chord: "Nominate ideologues willing to sacrifice the interests of many to serve the interests of a narrow few, and you'll have a fight on your hands. It's that simple." All of this is simply an attempt to define the terms of the debate by defining one's opponents, rather than engaging on a productive level.

But the key charge is one of obstructionism. ACU's Keene made reference to "the obstructionist tactics of Democrat Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Democrat Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy" and claimed that they, "in concert with the other Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have conspired to thwart the Senate from performing its Constitutional duty to provide 'advise [sic] and consent' to the judicial nominations of the President of the United States." Nickles wrote in an op-ed on Monday that the Democrats are indulging in "controlled foot-dragging" and "organized stonewalling."

Meanwhile, Nan Aron of the liberal Alliance for Justice reversed the charge, claiming that "after years of obstructing President Clinton's judicial nominees, some Republicans are now threatening to shut down the Senate simply for doing its job -- carefully scrutinizing all candidates for these prestigious lifetime positions."

Republicans seem intent on continuing this campaign to paint themselves as the partisan victims of a Democratic Senate intent on holding up conservative nominations. The problem they have in gaining any sympathy, however, is their inability to show that they behaved any better in the past.

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No beating around the Bush (5/11)

The president: Don't vote for that Democrat because ... he's a Democrat!
By Brendan Nyhan
[First published on Salon.com (Salon Premium subscription required)]

The battle to define Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and congressional Democrats as "obstructionists" is reaching new lows.

The Dallas Morning News reported that on Thursday, President Bush accused Texas Democratic Senate nominee Ron Kirk of being an "obstructionist," even as he praised Kirk as a person:

"I know Ron Kirk. Like Ron Kirk. He's a nice fellow. He's not the right man for the United States Senate, as far as I'm concerned. I need a man up here in the Senate that's going to help me get an agenda done. I don't need an obstructionist. I need a positive influence. And John's [John Cornyn, the Republican candidate] an independent thinker, but he's a man who, I'm confident, working together, will help Texas."

Bush is now presumptively defining Democrats as obstructionists (and nonindependent thinkers) simply for being members of their party. Kirk has not cast a single vote in the Senate -- indeed, he has repeatedly expressed his desire to work with the president. But Bush was undeterred:

"When asked whether he thought Mr. Kirk could work with him, the president replied: 'Oh, I don't.'"

"Mr. Bush added: 'It's going to be hard for him to be able to make that claim when his first vote is to vote for the kind of committee chairmen that have been resisting everything I've been trying to get done.'"

As Clay Robison wrote in the Houston Chronicle, Cornyn has made Daschle the "central issue" of his race against Kirk. And the GOP's candidate for lieutenant governor in Texas is now even attacking Daschle, although the majority leader has no direct relevance to state affairs.

Bush and the GOP have every right to try to nationalize the election and turn every race into a referendum on the Democrats. And it's true that Democratic Senate candidates will vote for their party to control the Senate, which has implications for Bush's agenda. But framing every Democrat as obstructionist without regard to their beliefs or temperament is simply not rational. It's the reductio ad absurdum of negative political campaigning. Instead of attacking a candidate because of a disagreement on the issues -- or even a single issue -- Bush's rationale is simply, Don't vote for him because he disagrees with me. It's an argument designed to capitalize on the president's high approval ratings -- and one that that implicitly undermines the legitimacy of democratic opposition.

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