Frank’s Case Book

About a year ago Linda Greenhouse, Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times, was at the center of a small media controversy. In a speech after winning the 2006 Radcliffe Institute Medalist, Ms. Greenhouse complained of a “sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism” and that the “government turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha and other places around the world — [such as] the U.S. Congress.” This is not the first time that Greenhouse has draw attention her private positions on public issues. In 1989, she participated in an abortion rights rally, telegraphing her personal opinion on the seminal Rov v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Greenhouse’s opinions represent conventional, if pedestrian, Left-wing belief common in New York and perhaps even a more universal set of convictions at the New York Times.

At the time, Greenhouse was criticized by the Daniel Okrent, the public editor of the New York Times, for making clear the perspective she brings to her work. According to Okrent, “It’s been a basic tenet of journalism … that the reporter’s ideology [has] to be suppressed and submerged, so the reader has absolute confidence that what he or she is reading is not colored by previous views.”

At that time, we supported and endorsed here Greenhouse’s freedom and even obligation, to make clear her political positions. We don’t doubt Greehouse’s sincere efforts to cover Supreme Court as professionally as she can. However, in the interest of full disclosure it is salutary that her readers now know what perspectives inform the way she views the world.

This week a similar controversy erupted when MSNBC scanned public elections records and found that of the 143 journalists they could identify, 125 had donated to Democrats and Liberal causes while only 16 gave to Republicans or Conservative causes. Even the ethics columnist from the New York Times was found contributing to MoveOn.org. According the MSNBC many news organizations were trying to crack down on such activities.

The MSNBC story was interesting first and foremost because it provided yet more evidence to buttress the general consensus that the major media lean heavily Left. The New York Times was upset at the revelations because, “Given the ease of Internet access to public records of campaign contributors, any political giving by a Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false impression that the paper is taking sides.” One is left to wonder if campaign donation records were less accessible the Times would be as upset. The NY Times is worried about appearing the by taking sides. It no longer needs to worry; the side that it has chosen is now common knowledge.

We find the public disclosure of the political opinions of journalists to be a matter of necessary public transparency. If a journalist holds opinions so strongly that he or she is willing to donate to candidates and causes, it is likely that such perspectives do affect the way that he or she covers stories. Everyone has a built-in narrative of the way that the world is. There are many stories that could be reported and only a finite amount of time and effort that can be devoted. Honesty demands that stories chosen fit the world view of the reporter. If you believe that climate change is an important issue you might cover that more than crime rates. If woman’s rights issues are important to reporter, perhaps those stories will receive higher priority than stories about inflation or corruption on the city council. Even if each particular story presents both sides, the collective effect of covering certain stories more than others influences the tenor of coverage. Imagine the different perspectives conveyed if one news organizations reported every morning about the grief of a relative who had lost a soldier in Iraq and another organization provided examples of martial heroisms. All the stories presented could, within their context, be absolutely true. However, the collective effect of two different topics of coverage would be radically different.

Politicians are many times required to disclose financial interests that might affect their positions on public issues. Although there should be no law requiring such disclosure, knowledge of the politics of reporters is valuable to consumers of news.

The recent visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Syria was the occasion of much discussion as to the appropriateness of the visit. Did the trip represent wise policy, a way to reduce Syrian provocations in Iraq and Lebanon? Did the trip intrude upon the Constitutional prerogatives of the President? If the trip had been clearly successful, questions about Constitutional propriety would be quickly forgotten. However, just the opposite has happened.

The New York Observer recently reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad concluded from the trip that the American public was split on foreign policy and that is now safe to oppose American interests. The immediate effect was a crack down on dissidents. The New York Observer quotes a woman’s rights activist in Syria as complaining that “Pelosi’s visit made the regime feel that Americans were divided on how to deal with Syria…This sends a message to the regime that the pressure is off, that it can do what it likes.” Pelosi’s visit allowed Syria to feel freer to sentence Syrian dissident Kamal Labwani for daring to meet with American officials during a visit to Washington in 2005.

Pelosi’s visit also did not alleviate Syrian meddling with its neighbors and perhaps accelerated it. There are credible reports that Syria is now smuggling arms and munitions to Fatah Al-Islam, a terrorist group which is destabilizing Lebanon and triggering violent clashes with the Lebanese army. Pelosi’s visit did not preclude these actions, and it is at least possible that the visit made it a little easier in Assad’s mind to exercise his destructive influence in Lebanon.

Pelosi’s present ideas seem to contradict ones from her past. In 2003, she argued that “One of the lessons learned thus far in the war on terrorism is that there can be no success without disrupting the support networks on which terrorists rely. Rhetoric has thus far not been effective in encouraging the Syrian government to cease its assistance to terrorists, and to remove its forces from Lebanon.” Now in 2007, Pelosi appears enamored by the potential effectiveness of rhetoric and discussion. It is difficult to escape the notion that she visited Syria because the Bush Administration opposed such a high-level contact. If President George Bush did not want her to visit Syria, to Pelosi this was dispositive evidence that she should visit.

Pelosi’s problem is not a lack of good intentions. She certainly wants Syria to reduce the oppression of its citizens and its destabilizing actions on neighboring countries. As a consequence of their adult experience and the nature of their professions, politicians from democracies suffer from the conceit that all differences are splittable and agreements can always be reached through discussions. By contrast, tyrants, who rule by force and not through popular assent, desperately seek legitimacy. Friendly visits from high-level, democratically-elected leaders lend such legitimacy. Politicians, like Pelosi, consider such visits as simple courtesies, not as concessions. Unintentionally, Pelosi’s visit handed Assad a victory without extracting any comparable concession from Assad.

It is sometimes necessary to communicate with bloody regimes like Assad’s. In such cases, it is possible to send middle-level officials discretely or to work through intermediaries. The moral authority granted by the visits of high-level officials should be reserved for those cases when a comparable concession is extracted.

Only a tiny number of votes separated then Governor George Bush and the Vice-President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. George Bush was finally determined to have won a majority of votes in Florida, a majority of the Electoral College, and consequently the election for president. All this occurred despite the fact that Al Gore received a small, but very real majority, of the popular vote. The controversy had the salutary effect of reminding us of the thoughts of The Founders on the structure of government. Unfortunately, the close election also aroused deep partisan antipathy that has continued to this day. For some number of angry Democrats, Bush was “selected” not “elected.” Use of this expression at a Democratic gathering is as sure to arouse a positive response. Some Democrats have never internally accepted Bush’s legitimacy, and it shows.

One might have thought that Bush’s clear victory in 2004 (286-251 in the Electoral College and 53.16% to 46.65% in the popular vote) would dispel disputes about Bush’s legitimacy. Perhaps still yoked to their residual anger from 2000, Democratic partisans could not pull away from belief that the Swift Boat political ads, disputing Senator John Kerry war hero status, unfairly tipped the election to Bush’s favor. If anything, the anti-Bush antipathy hardened rather than eased after 2004. Indeed, Charles Krauthammer, a former psychiatrist, coined the phrase “Bush Derangement Syndrome” to describe otherwise normal people who seem loose their grip on rationality whenever the subject touches on President George Bush. Krauthammer’s clinical description of the syndrome is “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.”

This week a Rasmussen poll documented the most recent manifestation of this pernicious affliction. Released on May 4, 2007, the poll reported that:

“Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.”

If Bush knew about 9/11 in advance, he might have picked a more heroic circumstance to be found in than reading a story about a pet goat to elementary school children in Sarasota Florida during the attacks. Indeed, the Left blogosphere spent the last six years portraying Bush reaction to 9/11 as one of confusion and disorientation. If Bush knew about 9/11 in advance, he could have flown directly back to Washington in faux bravery rather than hopscotching from an Air Force base in Louisiana to one in Nebraska. If we may expand on Krauthammer’s initial work, another symptom of Bush Derangement Syndrome is the ability to simultaneous and fervently believe two contradictory propositions.

There is no plausible evidence that Bush knew in advance about 9/11, so how can so many Democrats maintain such a ludicrous proposition? Of course, there are always the extremists lurking in the muck at the ends of the political spectrum. The far Left and their associated web sites have been propagating such theories on Bush’s advance knowledge of 9/11. In addition, through the efforts of popular, though intellectually undisciplined, entertainers like Rosie O’Donnell or movie producers like Michael Moore, these notions and similarly improbable ones have been deliberately spread to infect the main stream consciousness. Such efforts, however, would not be fruitful if serious Democrats and others did not acquiesce to the crazies in their midst. Former President Jimmy Carter lent credibility to Moore by inviting him to his box at the Democratic National Convention, while Rosie O’Donnell has a daily presence on ABC’s The View. The View’s credibility is undergirded by ABC’s news correspondent Barbara Walters.

The Right is not immune to such attitudes. During the Clinton Administration and during particular embarrassing times with respect to impeachment and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, President Bill Clinton launched military strikes against Iraq and Afghanistan. Some Republican lawmakers wondered out loud whether these attacks represented a “Wag the Dog” scenario. However, the notion was never strongly pushed by Republicans.

The problem with the rise in saliency of vicious anti-Bush ideas is that such hatred needs fuel to survive. Believers must either consume themselves or spread their hatred to others. If the first turns out to be the case, extremists on the Left will burn brightly for a short time, but in the end consume themselves alone and be forgotten. If the latter turns out to be the case, the hatred will spread to others parts of the polity. That is the real danger.

Consider the proposition that in modern America, Conservatives tend to be more articulate, better debaters, and less given to foolish remarks. The reason behind this difference is not that Conservatives are inherently smarter or more eloquent, it is that Conservatives are immersed in a popular culture informed by a media that is largely unsympathetic to Conservatives. Conservative are justifiably on the defensive. As a consequence, if one has Conservatives inclinations, one soon learns that one needs to be better informed and practiced in making arguments. Many Liberals live in environments that never challenge their notions and hence their ability to debate atrophies. While Conservatives may be just as likely as others to have a foolish thought cross their minds, they have been taught to exercise a little more verbal discipline.

Thus, it was not surprising when Conservative Sean Hannity was judged by viewers in a KSL-TV poll to have won a debate with the Liberal Salt Lake City Mayor Ross Anderson, 58% to 24%. By conventional standards, it was a crushing rhetorical defeat for Anderson [1]. Part of the problem for Anderson is that he is accustomed to giving speeches to those who are largely already in agreement with him. Hannity by contrast, debates nightly with his counterpart Alan Colmes and must occasionally deal with hostile callers to his radio program. Direct debate and argument are acquired skills.

My guess is that as a matter of inherent skill and intelligence Hannity and Anderson are comparable. Why then was Hannity so victorious in their debate? The problem lies in that Anderson has been so immersed in the Left’s approach to the war and its irrational anti-Bush bashing that he assumed upon himself an impossibly high debate standard to meet. Anderson tried to argue that, “Given the scale, frequency and moral depravity of these outrages, President Bush must be held to account through impeachment and removal from office, if we do not call for accountability, we are complicit.”

I am sure that among Anderson’s friends and staff, he has drawn raucous cheers for making similar statements and he felt confident entering into the debate on the basis of such an extreme position. However, for the purposes of debate, Anderson buried himself with an un-winnable position. He could have taken a position that was more moderate position, still critical of Bush’s policies, and might have prevailed. Conservatives, always prepared for debate in a hostile context, would typically not make such a tactical mistake.

On the other side of the country, we find an example of how Liberals living in a cocoon of agreement among their peers are apt to make foolish statements. Apparently, someone had defaced a radio station advertisement for Rush Limbaugh, an event, had it occurred in other contexts, would have be called a hate crime. Instead, it was just another example of Left-wing commitment to free speech, at least the free speech of those they agree with.

The event might have passed unnoticed except for the fact that the Baltimore Sun reported that Robert Murrow of the Department of Public Works beamed about the defacement: “It looks great. It did my heart good.” The Baltimore Sun did not consider the comment remarkable until the story unleashed a furry on the Internet and talk radio. The Department of Public Works quickly distanced itself from the apparent endorsement of the destruction of private property. Although cooler heads prevailed, the question is what environment makes it easy for a public employee in Baltimore to make such a comment to a newspaper without fear of consequence? Is it alright to deface Conservative property? Had someone defaced a campaign ad for Barack Obana would anyone have be crazy enough to say “It looks great. It did my heart good,” even if such an ugly thought came across their mind?

[1] It is interesting to note that the KSL-TV report was so disappointed at the outcome that you had read to the fourth paragraph in their on-line report to learn that more than twice as many people thought Hannity had won.