NYT D.C. Bureau: still yearning for moderation and compromise

In short, there were many voices warning that ignoring the perilous state of the economy -- especially the appalling jobs picture -- was incredibly misguided. Yet, this perspective was not integrated into the same author's news analysis from just three week prior -- in the heat of the debate -- when the reportorial focus was all-debt, and when the headline on the failure to reach a “grand bargain” was A ‘Unique Opportunity’ on the Debt Ceiling, Lost.

It is not as though miscellaneous “hope was in the air.” Such "hope" as there was came from particular people and interests, looking for particular policy decisions to be made. The all-we-need-is-bipartisanship view — that deep policy differences are "silly" or childish, and that everyone should grow up and agree on Simpson/Bowles-type changes to the social safety net — are a specialty of both politicians and reporters who promote themselves as centrists or neutrals, and who wish not to acknowledge that other policy choices are possible.

The reader is told that strong political and philosophical differences between factions in Congress are no more than “partisan bickering” (again, the province of children, not adults), and is given the strong sense that the fact of an impasse (as opposed to the fact that one side or the other can't prevail) is causing the public great distress. Reporters are welcome to have these views; they just label them as such.

If there were not the obsession with compromise, there would be more room to explore the evidence and reasoning behind apparently irreconcilable views.

A reprise of the assumption that voters are frustrated by “both sides,” and that real political differences should be made to disappear because those differences are mere bickering.

Even accepting the terms of a “who is up and who is down story,” wouldn’t one want to get more than advisor spin? Perhaps even a comment from someone pointing out that the rise of candidates may have something to do with the common tendency in the press to dub a candidate a rising star and then focus on following that star, rather than subject the candidate to substantive scrutiny.

Actually, this story only contains one perspective — the candidate’s — but the problem is similar: giving something weight because it has been stated, not subjecting it to any reality testing. The colloquial tone of the follow-on parenthetical about having once worked on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign may give the story a little spice, but it would have been better to contrast the “broad appeal” assertion with the “forceful conservative” who is “unwilling to compromise” assertions reported at the top of the story.

The Times can really afford to be more probing on substance than to quote a cheerleading cousin.

Could this refer to misleading statements designed to be provocative, statements made heedless of whether or not they were true? The answer is not to be found here, with the story instead valuing (and enabling) putatively successful political tactics and robbing the reader of the ability to assess the accuracy of the statements.

There is no interest in figuring out what would happen if there were fair redistricting, a remarkable omission especially in light of the fact that, as reported one day earlier, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission had demonstrated that, when incumbant protection is not the goal, it is possible to redistrict achieve relatively compact, more competitive districts that are compliant with the values of the Voting Rights Act.

Purely viewed from a tactical perspective, not from the point of view of whether the maneuvering is fair or legal.

Again, something as historically and currently crucial as the Voting Rights Act — designed to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution — is demoted to an inconvenience.

The giveaway. It is accurate to say that both parties have regularly treated redistricting as a game, but that is very different from accepting the premise that redistricting is a game. On the contrary, the fair conduct of redistricting is a fundamental requisite of representative democracy, and it is surely not the job of a newspaper reporter to numb potential citizen outrage by presenting the phenomenon of redistricting abuse as an inevitable part of the process.

This is commonly known as “packing,” a practice that should draw scrutiny for potential Voting Rights Act violations, but the legality or illegality of the conduct is not rendered as important in the presentation of the article.

This is “cracking” — the companion process to “packing” — and its impropriety is also of no apparent interest in the presentation of the story.

What is of interest here is that the reporter’s entirely reasonable observation about objectionable Democratic behavior did not lead to any probing of the politicians responsible for perpetrating the conduct. Indeed, the article is devoid of any attempt to question any politician — Democrat or Republican — about the propriety or legality of the dominant redistricting practices.

It is true that there have been long periods when the Voting Rights Act has not been seriously enforced, but it is not unreasonable for a reader to want to know what would happen if the Voting Rights Act were enforced robustly.

It is unclear why the story assumes that the parties are struggling to comply with federal law, rather than investigating whether one or both are struggling to evade it. And, if the effort is to evade federal law, a basic question would be, “Which party or parties are trying to do that?” This might also have been coded in blue.

Quite a euphemism. What is meant is that the rule is often violated.

Is it true that both parties violate the letter or spirit of the Voting Rights Act and otherwise redistrict unfairly? Yes. Have they been doing that to the same extent and with the same impact? Not necessarily. Yet the story leaves the reader only with the sense that “they all do it,” rather than drawing on sources to define who actually does what and with what frequency and effect.

An assumption built into most political reporting: that, fundamentally, there has been an economic recovery in process, one that would be sustainable if unfortunate events didn’t keep on conspiring to knock the economy off balance. Recovery for whom, and at what cost? Entirely ignored are the facts that: (a) the financial system may be less stable and, given the absence of serious reforms, remain more vulnerable than it appears; and (b) there remain many millions of citizens for whom there has been no recovery at all.

Because that which is termed bipartisan is deemed to be good, the actual news is not explored: if there hadn’t been a lot of tension in the talks already, one side must have been asleep at the wheel (and Republicans have been very clear about what they want).

It isn’t clear the person or interests for whom the “new urgency” exists. The unstated premise is that the only way to get to an increase in the debt limit is to get along with some significant cuts. That may be the White House view, but it does represent a departure from the process employed for previous raises in the debt limit. The possibility that some could find it urgent to state clearly that an a debt-limit increase will not be held hostage is not explored.

This might also have been coded in yellow. Dismissed from the conversation (and the article) is the argument that there should be spending increases but no tax cuts at all.

Serving both parties characteristically, as here, is seen to provide a badge of authority, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Zandi, to put it mildly, has not demonstrated a stellar record of providing accurate predictions, let alone penetrating insights.

This might also have been coded in yellow or blue. First, the “balanced” approach is seen as exemplified by someone who both dismisses the possibility that less-than-maximally aggressive spending cuts could be counterproductive and rejects spending increases. In other words, a “reasonable” cutter who opposes stimulus. Second, Holtz-Eakin's view is juxtaposed to those who suggest more stimulus, without any discussion of the evidence supporting either position.

The reporters make the assumption that the GOP proposal to privatize Medicare was an effort to address “the nation’s long-term fiscal problems,” ignoring evidence from the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere that the plan simply sought to shift the financial burden to those needing medical care, not doing anything to improve care or control costs. This framing is only possible when the starting point is, “We all understand that Medicare recipients need to make do with less.”

People can and do disagree about whether privatizing Medicare makes any sense, but there is no disagreement about the fact that the proposal would privatize the system. The GOP learned several years ago — in its last attempt to privatize Social Security — that it was best to avoid the word “privatize.” But the fact that one side in a debate has made a tactical decision to avoid describing its plan accurately doesn’t mean that reporters should follow that lead.

One might think that there was overwhelming public demand that strong measures be taken to counterbalance an increase to the debt-limit. The reporter knows very well that this is not so, and should know that polling on this issue — as with highly general questions on spending — fail to engage respondents as to the consequences of the choices involved. Does the reference to the “potency of the issue” reflect the functioning of the Washington echo chamber, or simply a personal view that the issue should have potency?

This conceit — the proposal just popped up in my story; I exercised no agency, but only recognized that the proposal was demanding to be talked about — is a frequent one. Is there overwhelming support for it? There is no evidence of that, and, indeed, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee said he was “strongly opposed.” The key is that anything that has at least one Democratic and one Republican on board gets to be called “bipartisan,” the ticket to be treated as important given the mindset of the Washington Bureau.

Would the psychoanalysts describe this statement as projection or something else? It is entirely made up. There is simply no evidence that passing a clean increase in the debt ceiling — as has been effected many times in the past — would be “unpalatable” to voters. There are surely many Republican voters who might prefer cutting spending concurrently (and some Democrats and independents as well), but that is a far cry from presenting the satisfaction of that portion of the electorate as an unavoidable necessity of American political life. It might help if there were ever some recognition of circumstances where “balance” represented the wrong policy choice.

The unwillingness to say “privatize,” even though the word most succinctly describes the plan.

Why ignore evidence and just report this as though it were a partisan rhetoric that had no more or less truth value than any other political statement? By the time this article was reported, it was quite clear that the plan was set up so that in fact the amount that would go to seniors to purchase private insurance would not keep up with rising health care costs.

Poll after poll conducted by the Times itself has shown that debt reduction is far down on the list of public concerns; the issue is that elite opinion in Washington — which the reporters imbibe, reflect, and help shape — has decided that immediate debt reduction is important.

This is an accurate characterization.

Were the two votes really equivalent? See highlighted text below, and compare the highlighted sections of the previous day's story (to the right).

Here’s the tip-off to the problem. The sixty votes refers to the number of votes under Senate rules required to cut-off debate. Without 60 votes, opponents of a measure can filibuster it, and, since the Democratic majority has been unwilling to put Republicans to the test of actually carrying out a real filibuster, 41 Senators are effectively able to filibuster by shorthand. What disappears in the story is what a majority of the body wishes to do. That is a relevant fact to readers and voters, not esoterica.

True, but not because a majority of Senators opposed the proposal.

The premise is that the only threshold to be reported on is whether cloture is achieved, and so bills with majority support are covered the same way as bills that do not.

Only here does it become plain that the proposal to end the tax breaks had an absolute majority (with a little room to spare), and that the proposal to expand oil and gas drilling not only fell 18 votes short of the cloture requirement, but eight votes short of having the support of a majority.

An assumption built into most political reporting: that, fundamentally, there has been an economic recovery in process, one that would be sustainable if unfortunate events didn’t keep on conspiring to knock the economy off balance. Recovery for whom, and at what cost? Entirely ignored are the facts that: (a) the financial system may be less stable and, given the absence of serious reforms, remain more vulnerable that it appears; and (b) there remain many millions of citizens for whom there has been no recovery at all.

Because that which is termed bipartisan is deemed to be good, the actual news is not explored: if there hadn’t been a lot of tension in the talks already, one side must have been asleep at the wheel (and Republicans have been very clear about what they want).

It isn’t clear the person or interests for whom the “new urgency” exists. The unstated premise is that the only way to get to an increase in the debt limit is to get along with some significant cuts. That may be the White House view, but it does represent a departure from the process employed for previous raises in the debt limit. The possibility that some could find it urgent to state clearly that an a debt limit increase will not be held hostage is not explored.

This might also have been coded in yellow. Dismissed from the conversation (and the article) is the argument that there should be spending increases but no tax cuts at all.

Serving both parties characteristically, as here, is seen to provide a badge of authority, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Zandi, to put it mildly, has not demonstrated a stellar record of providing accurate predictions, let alone penetrating insights.

This might also have been coded in yellow or blue. First, the “balanced” approach is seen as exemplified by someone who both dismisses the possibility that less-than-maximally aggressive spending cuts could be counterproductive and rejects spending increases. In other words, a “reasonable” cutter who opposes stimulus. Second, Holtz-Eakin's view is juxtaposed to those who suggest more stimulus, without any discussion of the evidence supporting either position.