Kennedy's Quick Win for Social Security
I first met Ted Kennedy in the fall of 1995. The context was truly bizarre.
Alan Greenspan had testified to the Senate Finance Committee in the fall of 1994 that the consumer price index (CPI) overstated the true rate of inflation. He told the committee that if it lowered the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security to correspond to the true rate of inflation, rather than the CPI, it could largely eliminate the budget deficit.
Greenspan told the committee that the gap was between 1-2 percentage points annually, so that after a decade, his plan would cut annual Social Security payments by more than 10 percent. And, the great thing was that Congress could do this cut by claiming it was just a technical adjustment.
Over the next half year, the idea of changing the COLA for Social Security gained considerable support in Congress from both parties. (Daniel Moynihan was the strongest proponent.) There was also support for the idea in the Clinton White House.
In this context, I was invited to talk to Senator Kennedy and his staff about the CPI, since I was one of the few economists who disputed the claim that the CPI overstated inflation. I was very happy when I got to his office to see 5 senior looking staffers. I assumed that these were the people that I really had to convince and I focused my attention on them, only occasionally looking back at Kennedy to avoid appearing rude.
After about 10 minutes of boring econ jargon (price indices are even boring to economists), Senator Kennedy started asking me probing questions. It was clear that he had listened carefully and understood everything I said. I then began to focus my attention directly on Kennedy and we had a very good discussion of the issues. I walked away with a very valuable ally in this fight.
I saw exactly how valuable about a month later. The scene was a meeting of an ad hoc House-Senate Democratic committee that had been established to help hammer out a balanced budget proposal that Congressional Democrats could sign onto. This was the period when the government was shut down, as President Clinton and the Republican controlled Congress could not agree on a budget.
The congressional Democrats felt that it was important that they have their own budget to establish themselves as an independent force in the debate. The ad hoc committee was supposed to focus on the issues of the CPI adjustment and corporate welfare. The CPI adjustment was being debated because there were many Democratic members of Congress who found it an attractive way to achieve deficit reduction.
Senator Kennedy invited me to this committee meeting so that I could speak about the accuracy of the CPI. I met with him and his staff before the committee meeting. He explained that his goal was to keep corporate welfare on the agenda and the CPI adjustment off the agenda. He said that he wasn't sure that he could succeed, but that was his plan.
The corporate welfare discussion came first. Senator Kennedy framed the issue. He noted hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies that could be identified as corporate welfare. He said that the Democrats should set a target of reducing corporate welfare by some substantial amount as a major part of their program for a balanced budget.
Kennedy then shut up. He let the rest of the group spout off about all sorts of related and unrelated topics, only briefly intervening at a couple of points to keep the conversation moving forward. At the end of the discussion, corporate welfare was on the agenda.
Then we got to the CPI. He briefly, but accurately, laid out the case that the claims for an overstated CPI were weak. He then introduced me as an expert on the CPI and invited me to say a few words to the committee.
The ensuing discussion again went all over the place with Kennedy largely remaining silent. However, at the end of the debate, the CPI adjustment was off the table.
I was tremendously impressed. Kennedy had gotten exactly what he wanted on both issues and he never broke a sweat. He framed the debate and just let things run their course. It was truly masterful.
From the standpoint of the policy involved, although the details are incredibly obscure, the impact would have been very visible and quite large. If the CPI adjustment had taken effect, someone who had been receiving Social Security in 1996 would be getting about 13 percent less in their monthly check today (a cut of roughly 1 percent a year for 13 years). That would be a very painful cut for a segment of the population that doesn't have much money to spare.
If the Democrats in the Congress had joined the chorus of those pushing for a CPI adjustment, it is very likely that it would have gone through. So, even though almost no one knows the details of this particular incident, Senator Kennedy played an enormously important role in protecting the financial security of tens of millions of current and future retirees.
Great post (as always).
August 26, 2009 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, Dean --
What did the Liberal Lion say or do when the BLS quietly shifted from calculating CPI arithmetically to calculating it geometrically* -- and quietly adopted the Boskin-Greenspan theory of how to stick it to retirees?
I know -- "Let Them Eat Hamburger!"
* Automatically reduces the weighting of CPI components that are rising in price the fastest.
August 26, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen is the Genius of the Straw Man.
August 26, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Greetings, gasket!
In this particular case, I think Ellen may be partly right, although her wise-crack about Kennedy is inappropriate, and Baker's credit to Kennedy still stands, because not even a very powerful and very wily Senator can single-handedly repel all the forces arrayed against fair payment of Social Security.
Ellen's "hamburger" metaphor is reflected in the first google return for Boskin-Greenspan, at shadowstats, and it's fairly convincing.
In April, 2009, Asia Times Online also discussed another way cost of living adjustments are fudged by the feds... "hedonic pricing," according to which your new, faster computer didn't "really" cost 20% more than your old computer (although the check you wrote for it was 20% bigger!) because your new computer is 20% faster, and presto! Same cost in megaflops per second, and zero inflation!
This actually gets worse, because increases in processing power outrun inflation, so your shiny new computer can actually diminish adjustments in the CPI for inflation, since the price of megaflops per second went down!
So you not only spent more on your new computer, but your cost of living adjustment went down, because of "hedonic pricing!"
A typical estimate for how much grandma's Social Security check has been diminshed by all that bullshit is on the order of 30%...
30% less for grandma, and 30% more for subsidies to multi-national corporations and an assortment of billionaires who have paid Bill Clinton more than $100 million since he departed from the Oval Office, after supervising the original round of "Screw Your Grandma!"
August 26, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Rootie!
Dean Baker said:
Baker then goes on to provide some background about Greenspan's campaign to convince Congress that rejiggering the relationship between COLA and Social Security would reduce the budget deficit, based on his idea that the CPI overstated inflation, etc, etc. Congress, of course, loved the idea of looking good while screwing their constituents (that's my interpretation of Congress's attraction to Greenspan's ideas, btw, not Dean Baker's, of course).
Baker disagreed that the CPI overstated inflation, and was invited to give Ted Kennedy a tutorial on it. Kennedy proved to be an incisive and quick study.
Baker fast-forwards to a moment in history when the government was at an impasse over the budget, and he witnesses a scene in which Ted Kennedy proved he had not only comprehended what Baker had told him from a month earlier, but he envisioned a strategy for the Democrats to succeed without skewering Social Security recipients at the time, and most important of all (I'm not done) Kennedy revealed he understood human nature in a profound and awesome way and had the self-discipline to let people be themselves. What Baker described about Ted Kennedy is nothing short of genius.
Ellen, of course, addresses none of this.
Instead, she uses the opportunity (as she always does) to deliberately hijack the conversation and argue a peevishly partisan point (that's what I mean by "Genius of the Straw Man"). Whether Ellen is partly right or completely right about her own point is irrelevant. She herself exhibits zero self-discipline by taking the easy way to argue: Set up a new argument, change the rules, I win! I have yet to see Ellen argue the merits of anyone's post. She seems to be afraid to do that.
August 26, 2009 10:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree about Ellen bashing Kennedy for no good reason, gasket, and the only reason I appended my reply to your comment was...
I only read Dean Baker's "blog" because I noticed you had commented on it.
But about the "steak to hamburger to dogfood" progress of grandma's market basket, Ellen is right, and Dean Baker is just bullshitting to make the Democrats look good.
Democratic economists like Baker are all over the media all the time saying "Don't blame Obama, he inherited a mess," and forgetting to mention that the mess was created by revoking Glass-Steagall with Gramm-Leach-Bliley and allowing banks into commodities speculation with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, and both those bills were signed by...
William Jefferson Clinton.
Democrats created the meltdown, and poor old Teddy Kennedy was just a relic from a bygone era to be trotted out as proof that Obama was really JFK, or Roosevelt, or anybody except the stinking con-man that he really is.
Hurrah for Teddy, an incredibly effective Senator!
But where are the effects of all that effectiveness?
46 years in the Senate, with universal healthcare as his main goal, and... where is it?
The rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and for all those years...
The "incredibly effective" Senator Kennedy was prowling the Capitol, standing up for the little guy!
But where are the effects of all that effectiveness?
No Child Left Behind! The great Bush/Kennedy triumph of bipartisanship, which turned the public schools into prisons for drill-drill-drill-drill-drilling the rudiments of math and reading over and over and over... and still it fails!
Hurrah?
I don't deny that Ted Kennedy's heart was always in the right place, but pretending that he was brilliantly effective in the Senate is just a joke.
Meanwhile Baker is so miserably condescending that he assumes no one here can even understand compound percentages, and he gives the result of 13 years of 1% cuts as 13%.
That kind of "arithmetic" will get you an F in the sixth grade, but apparently it's good enough for TPMCafe, where nobody ever graduated from grade school, according the the ultra-condescending Mr. Dean Baker.
But we weren't really "left behind," Mr. Baker. We actually learned a little arithmetic, and a little is at it takes to expose your bullshit about Core inflation, which keeps telling grandma that her food bill isn't really increasing, it's just a "volatile commodity," so don't expect your Social Security check to actually feed you!
August 26, 2009 11:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
FWIW, this thread was one of the most interesting bits of comment byplay I've seen in a long time. Seriously. No barbs intended.
August 27, 2009 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
1. Greenspan was right on the CPI. That's why it changed.
2. The way that if changed had no relation to Kennedy; nor should it be considered relevant to Baker's point, which I assume was not to dredge up the CPI wars again (since his side lost them), but to highlight the legislative strengths of a man recently passed form our sight.
Ellen's comment was correct but unfair, and Baker's anecdote touching but misleading.
August 26, 2009 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually El Presidente, my side (and Kennedy's) won the CPI wars. If you trust the Boskin Commission's assesment, they claimed that the CPI overstated the true rate of inflation by 1.1 percentage points a year. They were asked by GAO in 1999 (possibly 2000) to say how much of their alleged bias was fixed by the changes in the CPI. Their assessment was that 0.3 percentage points of the bias was fixed, with 0.8 percentage points remaining.
Perhaps you have a different assessment than this crew. But, by their assessment, the good guys won 0.8 to 0.3. Given the array of forces within the economics profession, this was a pretty big victory.
August 26, 2009 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dean Baker wins the big "DUH!" of the day award.
Thanks, Dean, for taking the Boskin Commission's assessment of it's own "Screw Grandma" boondoggle at face value, Dean!
And did you just somehow "forget" to mention, Dean, what Social Security payments would be today, Dean, if the old "market basket" index of inflation hadn't been perverted, Dean, by the fucking Boskin Commission, Dean?
But thanks for your pompous assumption, Dean, that nobody but you, Dean, can understand indexing, Dean, and then hiding behind a sold-out report, Dean, from a sold-out commission, Dean!
And did you think nobody would notice, Dean, that your little memoir about Ted Kennedy, Dean, was mostly about you, Dean, and your heroic efforts on behalf of Social Security, Dean, while what happened in reality, Dean, is that a lot of economists like you, Dean, didn't want to offend the Clintons, Dean, and get your all-access pass to Capitol Hill revoked, Dean, so you just sat back and watched from the sidelines, Dean, while millions of retired Americans, Dean, got screwed out of money they had paid into the system, Dean, so that Clinton and his ass-hoovering economic advisors, Dean, could inflate the currency, Dean, and produce a meaningless stock-bubble, Dean, and deregulate everything in sight, Dean, and sell out the New Deal with Welfare Reform, Dean, and prepare the current crash with the Commodities Futures Reform Act, Dean, while economists like you, Dean, cared more about prancing around the Capitol, Dean, than protecting the Social Security, Dean, or anything else except your own miserable careers?
Because if you "forgot" all that, Dean, I'll be glad to remind you.
August 26, 2009 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
One simple reflection Dean Baker's dishonest assessment of how much damage the Boskin Commission really inflicted on Social Security is how much he leaves out of his deceptive comment about how Dean and Teddy won the inflation wars.
But actually dealing with these issues in a realistic way would require a little respect for the audience, and Dean Baker is obviously convinced that nobody on TPMCafe can even read, much less understand simple arithmetic.
So Dean Baker doesn't bother to explain the unprecedented spread between headline CPI and Core CPI, a "measure" of inflation which the Clinton administration adopted for no other reason than to balance the budget by stealing hundreds of billions of dollars from retirees.
And presto! There is no inflation whatsoever in the United States!
"But golly, Mr. Baker, it seems like I pay more for stuff like gas than I used to pay back when the Boskin Commission was diddling the numbers to make Bill Clinton look good!"
"And it's seems to me that I pay a lot more for food than I used to pay back in 1999!"
Dean Baker replies...
"Shut up, grandma! If you weren't just a senile old cow who should be dead already, you would know that "volatile commodities" like food and gas can only enter into calculations of inflation after guys like me run the numbers through our little black box and make them disappear! Bill Clinton is a genius who balanced the budget by screwing grandma... Wait, that isn't what I meant to say. Clinton balanced the budget by raising taxes. Wait, I can't claim Clinton balanced the budget by raising taxes, because... Duh!... that would be a very obvious lie, and I can only get away with lies that come out of my little black box. And I, Dean Baker, can't even claim that Clinton balanced the budget by cutting spending, because that would be another obvious lie."
Clinton balanced the budget by flooding the economy with easy money, and since easy money inevitably produces inflation, somebody had to feel the pain of getting screwed out of payments adjusted for inflation, and that somebody was ... grandma, just a senile old cow who should be dead already, according to the calculations of Dean Baker and his many little friends on Capitol Hill.
August 26, 2009 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought Baker's original story said much more about Kennedy as a person than about Baker himself, as I tried to describe above.
August 26, 2009 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Ruta have you tried having a civil discussion? If I want unremmitting assholery there's plenty of wingnut sites I can go to.
August 27, 2009 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, seriously. I'm not enjoying reading that crap either. RR, why don't you take a pill or something?
Nice new pict, Mark.
-- ARG
August 27, 2009 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks ARG.
August 27, 2009 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, markg8, for demonstrating your idea of a civil discussion, with a civil vocabulary like "unremmitting assholery."
But if you weren't just exactly the sort of dim-bag-douche-bulb that my brilliant blue avatar is supposed to warn away from my comments and diaries, because your chance of understanding any of them is absolutely zero, you might have noticed that...
There was no "discussion" between me and Dean Baker, civil or otherwise.
I originally expanded on Ellen's cryptic comment about the steak to hamburger to dogfood adjustment in the rate of inflation used to calculate cost of living increases in Social Security benefits, and Dean Baker did not reply either to me or to Ellen.
Instead Dean Baker replied to an unsubstantiated but correct comment by El Presidente, and he replied with a bullshit citation of the Boskin Commission's own assessment of their predatory adjustment of how inflation is calculated.
At this point the gloves came off, but even after I unloaded on Dean Baker, he still didn't reply to me, but instead merely emitted a ridiculous assertion about phony adjustments of inflation necessarily producing a surge in "real wages."
This is more or less standard procedure for the celebrity bloggers who occupy the left margin of TPMCafe...
They simply ignore almost every comment addressed to them, and the few replies which they deign to post are ludicrously off-hand and insubstantial, because celebrities like Dean Baker have much, much better things to do than entering into any kind of discussion, civil or otherwise, with the nobodies who inhabit TPMCafe.
And there at last we arrive at something you and I have in common, markg8.
Neither of us matters.
August 27, 2009 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Judging by the length of your post you had something to say. I'll never know what it is because I quit read after "dim-bag-douche-bulb". I'd say have a nice day but you evidently have other plans.
August 27, 2009 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Poor little guy! You can write "unremmitting assholery" (even if you can't quite spell "unremitting"), but if anybody responds in approximately the same style, your tender little eyes fill up with tears, and you run away.
August 27, 2009 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
RR are you always this cranky or are you just having a bad week? Cuz I gotta tell ya even though you're obviously an intelligent person and may even have valid points to make I'm not gonna bother reading anything more you write, and I suspect there's a whole lot of other people like me, because you're such a dick. That was my original point and it still is. So if you're looking to have little to no influence on any given conversation you're doing a fine job.
August 28, 2009 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
"the steak to hamburger to dogfood"
But is there hamburger in the dogfood?
August 28, 2009 2:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, Dean, that's the best story I've heard all day. I was a bit skeptical about what Teddy did. I could never see anything BIG. But you have shown that he subtly kept us afloat.
But now we are, I fear, drowning.
Feral Cat from Montana
August 26, 2009 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
wow, some folks here are really off the mark. The core CPI has nothing to do with indexation formulas for SS. SS benefits are indexed to the overall CPI. This was not changed by the Boskin commission or anyone else.
I'm sorry folks, Kennedy really did save the cost of living adjustment for SS. I can you give anyone a hundred ways to verify this fact. (Start by looking at the pattern of the inflation as measured by the CPI year by year, if it was rigged, it would have dipped sharply in the years of the rigging. Real wage growth also would have surged and stayed at a higher pace. That has not happened.)But if someone is determined to believe otherwise, in the absence of any evidence, there's not much I can do.
August 26, 2009 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hurrah! Dean Baker has finally emerged from the safety of his little black box and made a silly claim which isn't concealed under multiple layers of jargon.
A phony index of inflation can just as easily produce a phony and flat estimate of declining real wages as a phony and "surging" estimate of real wages which are actually flat.
For example...
You get a 5% raise, but "market-basket" inflation is 7%.
So your real wages have declined.
But with "hedonistic" and "steak-to-hamburger" adjustments, the BLS says inflation is only 5%, so your real wages are flat.
It's so ridiculously obvious that underestimating inflation can artificially flatten the curve of declining real wages just as easily as it can boost flat wages into a surge, that I'm surprised Dean Baker risked poking his pointy little head out of the usual black box to make a claim which can't be covered up with the usual mystification.
August 27, 2009 12:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're rockin today Rootie! Interesting thread.
I'm kind of agnostic/ignorant on this whole CPI debate. But gotta say, Baker's argument about the 'dip' in years when CPI criteria are changed doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If you change to a variable-basket approach with a downward bias, there won't be any dip, just a relative flattening of the inflation curve from that point forward.
Bizarre...
August 27, 2009 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but you seem to ignore the original point that was made, apparently in order to make Kennedy look bad.
Sure, no one likes what Greenspan did except neocons and neolibs but to pin the actions on Kennedy is unfair.
Sure inflation is rated as less now but what's that got to do with Kennedy? Nothing. I'm glad he tried to do what he could to stop my mom from having more money taken away from her.
Remember, government is not the problem, it's the neocons, neolibs and fascists in government that are the problem. All brought to you by years of dummies buying into Reagan admin's lies (and others before that). Now I just tried to change the subject myself, didn't I?
August 27, 2009 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've been more than curious about the CPI calculations and this debate made me look it up, so thanks - I think.
I depend on social security, and like millions of us, I shudder at hearing we're to expect no cost of living raises for two years. Already moved from CA to WA to reduce my housing costs, and I miss my kids/grandkids desperately. Is Mississippi next for me, a gimp black Latina pagan granny? More shudders.
So, from what I found, both Dean and the very uncontrollable Rutabaga are only partly right. From shadowstatistics.com:
Although the ensuing political furor killed consideration of Congressionally mandated changes in the CPI, the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] quietly stepped forward and began changing the system, anyway, early in the Clinton Administration.
It goes on to say even worse changes were instituted under Bush/Unrepentant Vader's BLS, of course.
Which leads to yet another wrench in this so-called democracy-by-the-people: Are we all damned to a future of trying to unravel bureaucratic bull?
It's not enough to try to herd cats to control a congress that gives prostitution a bad name? To try to out-raise corrupt PACs with "righteous PACs" in a my-pimp's-better-than-your-pimp system? Now we have to track every move by the appointees we've no control over, esp in the Bureau of Labor Stats?
And Labor is the first to rely on the CPI and they're the younger, able to work interest group, so where the hell are they on this? Besides trying to be The Mack/Superfly Super Pimp of the 21st Century?
All that said, from what I hear (not that their bill is online to actually read!), the HELP bill includes what even the House bill doesn't: dental, vision, hearing aid funding for adults. The House bill includes it for kids, but if their parents and grandparents can scarcely see, hear and are toothless, just as we are now under Medicare and Medicaid, wth.
Our system's insane, and always will be while corporations are considered frakkin' people, media conglomerates are kingmakers, and politicians and their appointees are merely pimps-in-training.
If I didn't have family that loves me, I'd give in to the blues, gratify the bastards and give up on trying to afford housing and hitch hiking to the food bank, and spend my entire social security check on ice cream (oh how I miss ice cream) to eat my way into brain freeze, obesity, diabetes and certain death.
Luckily - I think - irrational love makes me try to do the right thing. And I'm addicted to these blogs and can't stay wired living under a bridge with cartons of ice cream.
August 28, 2009 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
For many years before he died, the MSM consistently reported that Kennedy was a master legislator. Since everyone always said this, I was never sure it was true.
My hunch, instead, was that the Kennedy mystique (and the un-mysterious value proposition of being a Kennedy alumni) attracted a very good staff who did a capable job of making the boss look good.
Dean's story is the first credible account I've read of the old guy himself in action. Maybe you *can* (occasionally) believe what you read in the paper.
August 27, 2009 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
albertparsons, I've been wondering as well; see my comment below for another story. I think a picture's emerging of how Teddy did what he did -- from the looks of it, it sure wasn't a willingness to eviscerate liberal proposals, but what it *was* was probably irreplaceable. As was he.
August 28, 2009 12:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dean, I appreciate your story about Ted Kennedy, and I thank you for posting it.
Can anyone imagine Chuck Grassely doing an analogous thing (even if it were for the other side)? I mean, seriously, the man makes Elmer Fudd look like some kind of genius.
-- ARG
August 27, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Late to this, but I wanted to echo albertparsons and thank Dean for the look at Teddy the legislator. I've been wondering, too, exactly what made him so effective, and Dean's story conforms with what little I've gleaned in the past few days.
The more I hear about Teddy's negotiating style, the more it sounds as if the secret of his success was much more his personal gifts and much less any sacrificing of key elements of a proposal (as Hatch and McCain seem to want us to believe with their "if only he were here we'd be able to sign on" bull -- the HELP committee bill is Teddy's, after all). Al Hunt on Charlie Rose described a contentious meeting of the Profile in Courage Award committee, of which Hunt was a member, where everybody had a different candidate and nobody was giving an inch. Hunt marveled that Teddy managed to guide the fractious group, without seeming to, to complete consensus on Teddy's own choice; afterward, Thad Cochrane, a Republican senator also on the committee, said to a mystified Hunt, "Now you know how 99 senators feel." Even McCain on CNN earlier, without getting specific, painted a picture of a well-liked guy who was a master of the soft sell, not some Teddy Lieberman.
Other than his willingness to vote against even good amendments once a deal was struck, I think it would be instructive to know specifically what some of his bargains entailed. I could be wrong, but I'll bet none would have distorted the very essence of his intended legislation in the way the GOP and many Blue Dogs are essentially proposing now with health care. Maybe I'd be surprised; but that would be a lesson worth learning, too. I sent an email asking whether TPM might be able to dig up a few examples; dunno if anyone read it, but I think that could be a very useful effort.
August 28, 2009 12:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Next, Mr. Baker will explain how the Great Negotiator managed to overlook (sacrifice?) 34 million uninsured folks.
The link is to Sen Dodd's website and reflects the CBO's scoring of the bill voted out of the Senate HELP Committee on July 1.
August 28, 2009 2:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
No problem Ellen, Senator Kennedy was not a magician who could completely overturn political reality. If you expect to find someone like that, you are on the wrong planet.
August 28, 2009 6:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Dean,
Saw you on the TeeVee, recently, and was impressed. Looks like you've finally recognized that in this town you can't go wrong going along with the conventional wisdom.
Welcome to the Serious Side.
Your (new) friend,
Fred (Hiatt)
P.S. You might think about dropping off an op-ed. "Serious" consideration will be given.
August 28, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink