The "Other Matt" Weighs In
Since it is both interesting in its own right and connects to where the converation here is leading, we thought we'd take this opportunity to comment briefly on Matt Bai's review of Off Center, scheduled to appear in this Sunday's New York Times Book Review. Since most people won't get a chance to read it until Sunday, we thought we'd give you the short version: He's not so crazy about the book.
What is interesting is that Bai doesn't seem to have a problem with most of what we wrote about the GOP. What seems to get his blood boiling (by the end of the review, REALLY boiling) is that we don't devote equal time to criticizing the Democrats for being (apparently) equally out of touch. As a result, we end up in the ugly little box where Bai has already put George Lakoff and Thomas Frank: unthinking ideologues whose task is to reassure liberal elites and tell them the people are really on their side.
Bai's frenetic "pox on both your houses" critique (think David Broder without the gentility) permits him to take a "forward-thinking" and "non-ideological" stance while simply side-stepping all the issues raised in the book. As Josh and other bloggers have pointed out repeatedly, this posture of "even-handed contempt" can be very appealing for journalists/pundits. Yet as we argue (backed by facts, not just assertions), it is simply inaccurate to describe the current climate as "polarized" -- which suggests that both sides are moving apart at the same pace -- when it can be demonstrated that the politicians, activists, and leaders of one party have moved much, much farther from the median voter than the other. Bai doesn't even report the extensive evidence on "unequal polarization" we amass (polling data, roll-call vote scores, the ideological leanings of activists), let alone take the vaguest stab at refuting it if he thinks we're wrong.
Nor did it make much sense to us to spend equal time focusing on the Democrats when we wanted to write a book about the people who are running the country. Not that a book (or a series of NYT magazine articles, say...) about the efforts of Democrats to reinvent themselves wouldn't be a good topic. It just wasn't our topic. Frankly, given what has been going on in the country in recent years it also didn't seem to us the most important topic.
It is, however, the case that our argument has implications for how we should (and should not) think about the opposition in a time of off-center politics. Ruy has been pushing us to get to that, and we'll have a post up (our final one we think, whew!) in an hour or two.
Oh, and if you want to read some nicer reviews of Off Center, you can find them here.
Good lord. This "both sides do it" stuff is so, so tired. I mean, if nothing else doesn't Bai want to be interesting? Maybe slightly unpredictable?
It's truly bizarre: You can criticize and demonize Democrats until the cows come home. But if you do the same to Republicans, no matter how much data or evidence you provice, the "balance proviso" kicks in.
Wrong on the merits, but worse: boooring.
December 9, 2005 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just a hypothesis, no data to support it, but....
Bai is working on his own book on "the future of the Democrats."
Might he be jealous? Might he be afraid of the competition? Might he feel that for his book to succeed, others must be seen as less good?
Pure speculation, mind you....
And take a look at this critique of Bai:
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2005/04/matt_bai s_georg.html
December 9, 2005 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, no! I'm am so sorry, you guys.
Why do smart people go to the Times and write such drivel? It drives me absolutely insane. Of course the Democrats have problems, but for the most part, they are completely different problems than the Republicans have, and most of their supporters will acknowledge them and want to fix them. The supporters just have many different ways of going about that process, and there are no central Power Brokers on the same level as in the GOP to enforce whatever answer the Brokers decide is correct.
Why, oh why, do the problems of the two parties (misleading, corruption) always have to be the same in the eyes of the MSM pundits, with the occasional caveat that one just happens to be happening now but be assured that the other will happen in the near future or the next time the shoe is on the other foot.
ARGH!
December 9, 2005 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Balance" is a commodity that's so incredibly valuable that accuracy pales in comparison. Frankly, cowardly careerists like Bai, so eager to appear impartial that they no longer really report news, are a greater threat to this country than all the Rush Limbaugh clones put together.
December 9, 2005 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well said. Bai has just been brutal for the last year. His contempt for the Democrats is hard to figure out.
December 9, 2005 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
As a result, we end up in the ugly little box where Bai has already put George Lakoff and Thomas Frank: unthinking ideologues whose task is to reassure liberal elites and tell them the people are really on their side.
Bai just comes from the long list of pundits who tenaciously cling to the dream that partisan politics reflects a battle of ideas and whoever's ideas appeal most to the people triumphs.
The odd thing is the same people who are so naiive about politics would without a doubt agree that shrewd marketing and a more aggressive business strategy can often trump "better products" in the economic marketplace. So why not in the political marketplace.
It would be one thing if public opinion polls actually showed the Democrats as out of touch with mainstream America on the issues - but they don't. So the circle has to be squared and Hacker/Pierson and Lakoff do a much better job of it than any theory starting from the assumption that Democratic losses must reflect less popular ideas.
December 9, 2005 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Might he feel that for his book to succeed, others may be seen as less good?=========
I don't know what Mr. Bai thinks. We should encourage people to be self-critical rather than to merely criticize others. I believe it is one of the best means to facilitating value-added research, the kind that doesn't end up begging the conclusion. We don't see much of self-criticality in current writings.
Moreover everyone is competitive, in different degrees. Some manage competition more graciously than others. They are the better for it.
December 9, 2005 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you suggesting that one should be able to discern a bias in a news report in order for the report to be non-threat or credible?
December 9, 2005 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Many journalist like Bai are unable to confront the unequal (i.e. GOP-driven) polarization for a variety of reasons, but one of them is surely this: the same forces and people on the Right who have led the polarizing wave in politics have brought tremendous pressure to bear on the media, pressure which has steadily drained content and thorough analysis from journalism. The void has been filled with celebrity-style coverage of polticians and "he said/she said" pseudo-reporting. If journalists actually examine the polarization of politics analytically, they would have to confront the dismantling of journalism and trivialization of their own profession. It's easier to hiss at Democrats than to engage in honest self-reflection.
December 9, 2005 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I keep saying this, but I'll say it again. Young Sulzberger and young Graham are getting the newspapers they want. They are the ones in charge. Success-oriented people in journalism watch hiring and promotion at the post, and they soon figure out what is wanted. They are well-rewarded if they do what is expected.
I'm so sick of the mystification of this problem. The problem is management. All those crappy reporters and columnists aren't doing it on their own. They're doing what the boss wants.
Everyone would agree if we were talking about the Washington Times, or Fox, or Christian radio, or Jack Welch's network. The problem is the same at the Post and the Times, but people don't talk about it much.
December 9, 2005 7:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
"at the Post and Times"
December 9, 2005 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course the Democrats have problems, but for the most part, they are completely different problems than the Republicans have, and most of their supporters will acknowledge them and want to fix them.
Amen!!!
Whenever someone comes up with this bogus "both sides do it" line, here's my usual response: Saying both sides are the same is like pointing at two people -- one's Ted Bundy, the other's someone who once got caught shoplifting at age 15 -- and screaming, "They're both criminals!!!"
Well, technically, that's correct. However, there is a huge difference in the severity and quantity of their crimes.
Today's Dems simply don't have the problem of relentless pathological lying that results in, among other things, the deaths of 2000+ American troops, not to mention tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians. Nor do they have the problem of a ruthlessness that knows no bounds.
Yes, the Dems have their own problems, particularly a tendency toward spinelessness that prevents them from strongly challenging the Republicans' and Bush regime's pathological lying and boundless ruthlessness.
December 9, 2005 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you suggesting that one should be able to discern a bias in a news report in order for the report to be non-threat or credible?
I'm not sure what "non-threat" means, but the answer to the question I see here revolves around the use of the word "bias." Let's take, say, Terri Schiavo as an example. Is it "bias" to report that she had no brain left, that the people calling her husband and the judicial system "murderers" and the like were complete nuts? Was it appropriate for the media to report that story "straight down the middle," as if both sides had credible opinions about Schiavo's prospects for a recovery? To me, pretending that the opinion of the few, Talibanish doctors who claimed Schiavo wasn't brain dead was just as valid as that of all those doctors, including the ones who'd seen x-rays of her skull and seen that her brain was essentially gone, is biased towards stupidity and ignorance. But that's our media, populated by simpleminded folks like Matt Bai.
December 10, 2005 12:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would like to read the Matt Bai review before I comment on it specifically, although, from what I have read about Off Center at this site, the notion that it fails to equally savage the Democrats in the way Bai says (rather than as cooperating in their own subordination), seems patently ridiculous and simply agenda-driven.
But I can say a few words about Matt Bai. During the 2004 campaign, as I have pointed out extensively, the flimsiness of the flipflop spin was systematically ignored by the Democrats and by the press until AFTER the Repuglican Convention. A cover story in The New Republic Oct 18 issue (posted Oct 7) by Jonathan Chait then simply devastated it, though Chait dutifully palmed off this decisive five months of media 'justifying the lying' as mere media "herd instinct". Then, on Oct 9, the New York Times ran an op-ed by a graphic designer, arguing cogently -- also too late, like the Chait article, to impact the election significantly -- how the Kerry/Edwards logo tended to subliminally convey a sense of weakness and confusion.
But true to form someone had to justify the lying, and that someone was Matt Bai. In the New York Times Magazine of Oct 10, the cover story, which I dub the "Bai Lie" had as its central argument the fabrication that Kerry was less willing to confront terrorism militarily than Bush (without mentioning that this is the opposite of the Parties' platforms). His systematic propaganda painting of Kerry as soft on terror, helped by a 'nuisance' quote that Bai unjournalistically failed to report the word 'nuisance' as a term of art among Israeli terrorism experts -- who are for obvious reasons extremely influential in the field -- and then the "Bai Lie" was the basis for daily columns across the country echoing and magnifying his distortions, such as one by Dick Morris. I know my letter to the magazine pointing out the distortion of Kerry's position was never printed, and neither was any other to that effect, and no column or even serious other commentary in the MSM (as on the flipflop spin) or from the Democrats countered this key meme. So it was, like the way the flipflop spin was handled, a matter of 'getting with the program and justifying the lying'. Click, Bang! [protestations to the contrary inevitable and notwithstanding -- why have a system of justifying the lying if you are going to acknowledge seriously that this is the case, without protestations if anything?]
So that's what Matt Bai is, a figure in the press who simply sells the establishment line. True, the media as a whole are a system of 'justifying the lying' but not all reporters perform that function equally, and some are 'wise-asses', like the reporter who exposed that Bush didn't even know, in 2000, who the head of state of India was. Then, when such a breach of the agenda occurs, there is lots of tongue-wagging in many quarters and down to the astroturf roots to the effect that such a detail 'doesn't really matter' and such rot that JFK might not have known the names of four 'obscure' world leaders in 1960 (Nehru?). Some people in the media, like Matt Bai, are the opposite of the 'wise asses' and real journalists. They are culture cops and ideological shills, and Bai is one of the more sophisticated. They often come laden with progressive-seeming credentials, the better to further their reactionary tasks. And Americans are, in effect, ideologically toilet trained to traipse around in awe of these culture cops, terrified of broadly exposing them for what they are. If you really believe in democracy, however, that is the way that our society needs to go.
But respectability is really the gold standard, democracy the rhetoric.
Incidentally, the other article about 'reality based' politics that appeared in the NY Times had no such similar intent or effect, although it has also been ballyhooed within a limited sphere. The "Bai Lie" was simply a restatement of a central meme of the Repuglican campaign, the drivel from Cheney about how America would be 'hit hard' if Kerry got elected, and ads featuring pictures of wolves which had virtually no substance except the cultivation of generic fear. Many people 'get with the program'; Bai helps to set it. The even-handedness of the intent and effect of those two articles, like Clinton's statement that no 'physical harm' should come to Rushdie, is the "evenhandedness" of Bai.
One is reminded of Proudhon's dictum that the law, in its infinite majesty, forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges and begging in the streets. But the system in the US forbids progressives and reactionaries alike from pursuing an effective progressive agenda, or exposing privileged reactionary propaganda, especially visibly and in the mainstream, and requires those promoting the 'program' and opposing it alike to 'get with the program and justify the lying'.
I will have more to say about Bai's review when I read it.
December 10, 2005 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink