Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (New Republic Edition)

Kevin Drum's jaw drops as he contemplates http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007211.php The New Republic's Michael Crowley. Bill Clinton, you see, likes public policy and likes to talk about it. Michael Crowley doesn't like public policy--which makes one wonder why he doesn't go and write about things that do interest him. Crowley is, I think, one example of a larger trend:

The New Republic Online: Second Coming: Bill Clinton was briefing Elvis Costello on the future of New Orleans.... Clinton was really enjoying himself.... Clinton talked on.... Costello had looked starstruck himself. But now, his enthusiasm seemed to be waning.... [T]he Bill Clinton show--a chance for the ex-president to talk an endless number of hapless (though often rich and famous) souls like Costello blue in the face.

Clinton's pathological need for adulation is well-documented. (When a friend of mine--who is not famous and had never spoken with Clinton before--ran into the ex-president at a hotel gym recently, he had to fabricate an excuse to escape his long-winded ruminations.).... The conference's specific topics were suitably grandiose: poverty, climate change, religious strife, and Third World governance.... Poverty, of course, was an unfamiliar condition to those present, many of whom had paid a $15,000 registration fee to attend. At one point, one attendee whispered to an associate, "She has her own helicopter."

A little cognitive dissonance didn't preclude some genuinely noble results.... The pledges, written documents that Clinton required donors literally to sign "on the dotted line," ranged from $1 million (to improve the justice systems of Bolivia and Peru) to a promise by Michael Jordan's mother (for a hospital in Nairobi) to $1.5 million for "cheap sustainable mobility"--translation: free bicycles--for Sri Lankan tsunami survivors....

[O]ne reporter to call her editor in a mild panic. "It's just, like, so incredibly boring...."

And--as seems to be typical among our elite media--Crowley sneers most at Clinton's concern for the developing world:

For Clinton, it was just the opposite. Partly, it was a chance to show off his astounding grasp of global affairs, whether it was the 15,000 job losses in "the little mountain kingdom of Lesotho" due to an expired trade pact; or grain production in Argentina and Brazil ("because they have topsoil, in some places as deep as 22 feet"); or the promise of solar energy ("There are a million homes in Latin America today where the light and cooking heat come from solar generators ... at a cost of about a month's worth of candles"). This, in sum, was a man who wanted to demonstrate total understanding of the planet Earth....

We've seen this before, last year. People who wanted to trash Clinton's book did so by complaining that it talked about details of policy:

The second example is the Weston Kosova and Michael Isikoff review of Bill Clinton's My Life. Kosova and Isikoff lament how Clinton "forces [them] on a joyless march through... arid policy debate[s]" that they must slog through before finding a "raw, confessional moment that almost makes the book seem worth the $35 price of admission." But to politicians like Clinton (and to those who have ever worked for one, whether full-time, part-time, or volunteering just out of citizenship) the "arid policy debates" are of the essence: one runs for office--one works for or supports people who run for office--because one has strong beliefs about what policies will make America a better place. It is only to a reporter like Isikoff that debates about policies are "arid". To ask Isikoff to review Clinton is like asking someone tone-deaf to review a performance of Beethoven's "Eroica". The element of self-parody--unintentional self-parody--is there, especially as Isikoff and his editors repeatedly fail to grasp that they are tone-deaf, and are thus not hearing and incompetent to review the symphony. Where others see the real business of government--real policies with complicated and uncertain effects on millions of real people's lives--they see only the Gedrosian Desert.

The third example is another review of Clinton's My Life: Michiko Kakutani's. She sneers at Clinton's "messy pastiche of everything that [he] ever remembered and wanted to set down in print; he even describes the time he got up at 4 a.m. to watch the inaugural ceremonies for Nigeria's new president on TV." That, to her, is the low point: Clinton actually interested in a place like Nigeria! And--Kakutani is clearly thinking--could there be anything more a total boring and uninteresting waste of time than getting up at 4 A.M. to watch a broadcast from Lagos?

Well, here's the sum total of what Clinton has to say about Nigeria (that I could find, at least) in his book. It's two paragraphs:

p. 856: I got up at four in the morning to watch the inaugural ceremonies for Nigeria's new president, former general Olusegun Obasanjo, on TV. Ever since gaining independence, Nigeria had been riddled by corruption, regional and religious strife, and deteriorating social conditions. Despite its large oil production, the country suffered periodic power outages and fuel shortages. Obasanjo had taken power briefly in a military coup in the 1970s, then had kept his promise to step aside as soon as new elections could be held. Later, he had been imprisoned for his political views and, while incarcerated, had become a devout Christian and had written books about his faith. It was hard to imagine a bright future for sub-Saharan Africa wihtout a more successful Nigeria, by far its most populous nation. After listening to his compelling inaugural address, I hoped Obasanjo would be able to succeed where others had failed.

pp. 920-921: I flew to Nigeria to see President Olusegun Obasanjo. I wanted to support his efforts to curb AIDS before Nigeria's infection rate reached the levels of southern African nations, and to highlight the recent passage of the African trade bill, which I hoped would help Africa's struggling economy. Obasanjo and I attended a gathering on AIDS at which a young girl spoke of her efforts to educate her schoolmates about the disease, and a man named John Ibekwe told the gripping story of his marriage to a woman who was HIV-positive, his becoming infected, and his frantic search to get the medicine for his wife that would enable their child to be born without the virus. Eventually John succeeded, and little Maria was born HIV-free. President Obasanjo asked Mrs. Ibekwe to come up onstage, where he embraced her. It was a touching gesture and sent a clear signal that Nigeria would not fall into the trap of denial that had contributed so much to the spread of AIDS in other countries.

Plague, coups, famine, revolution, and--we hope--steps toward development and democracy. For Nigerians, the stuff of life and death. For President Clinton, the potentially most important country in Africa that he needs to know about as he tries to use his policy levers to make a better world. For an elite journalist like Michiko Kakutani, it's boring--and it is a gross violation of etiquette for Clinton to use two paragraphs in his book to try to teach Americans a little about Nigeria and give them a President's eye view of this piece of Africa.

Kakutani, Kosova and Isikoff, and Crowley. Their complaints that an ex-president is interested in governance and issues--and is actually curious about places like Lesotho and Nigeria--are self-parody. "How dare an ex-president bore me!" they say. "I know nothing about global development or foreign affairs. How dare he find them interesting!"

I have not yet figured out why so much of our elite press--the Crowleys, the Kakutanis, the Isikoffs, and the Kosovas--is so... what should I call it? Feckless. Corrupt (in the sense of well-rotted). Decadent. Why does Michael Crowley react with contempt to Clinton's interest in Lesotho, or New Orleans? Why do Weston Kosova and Michael Isikoff cover the government--rather than, say, cover something like advances in bartending--if they find debates over policy the equivalent of crossing the Gedrosian Desert? Why does Michiko Kakutani think it pointless and boring to wake up early to watch the inauguration of the first democratically-elected president in sixteen years in a country of 130 million people?

It is a mystery to me.

It is, however, one reason that we are saddled with an incompetent president like George W. Bush. As David Frum writes, it has long been clear to insiders that Bush is not a "diligent manager of the office of the presidency, [or] a close student of public policy, [or] a careful balancer of risks and benefits"--that, in short, George W. Bush is totally unqualified to be president, totally unprepared to make the decisions a president has to make. But by and large the elite press has simply not cared about the necessary qualifications to be a good president, and fears a president who is qualified to be president. For, after all, strikes them as bizarre and weird for somebody to actually know where Lesotho is.

Comments

[justasking]

Does the presidency held by someone not qualified to be president create or is it created by a press corp occupied by people who are not qualified to be the press?

Or is there another element that contributes to both?

[P O'Neill]

Indeed. See similarly the oft-cited comparison of the 2000 Gore campaign press corps with the girls from Heathers.

[Frank]

Great post! I hope this get the wider circulation it deserves.

[Stewart Schoder]

Nice post, Brad. Bush comforts these second-raters: he reduces matters to simplicities they can understand; when he goes farther, they can sneer at him from their superior perches. Little or no factual knowledge is needed to report on him. But Clinton and Kerry arouse their anxieties; how much easier it is to trash "detail-oriented policy wonks" than to know (or learn) something.

[CapitalistImperialistPig]

Much of the press just isn't that bright. But don't discount the axe grinders who just hate Clinton.

Kakutani can probably do a good job reviewing a 200 page novel, but long, thoughtful stuff is not her cup of tea. Actually, even the 650 pages of Harry Potter's latest adventure were pretty opaque to her. Her spot in hell has already been picked out - she will have 24 hours to write a review of "Finnegan's Wake."

[piotr]

CapitalistImperialistPig: I prefer Tartaros for people I detest. Once there, Kakutani (or any of the idiot scribes who deserve a similar fate) will have 24 hours to write a review, the review will be rejected because of inaccurances and inane observations, she will have to read again and write the review again only to be ...

For the full picture, we have to invent a compelling reason to write a review. A condition to partake in food and drink? One can combine Sisyphos and Tantalos.

Question to ponder: why are those people still at their jobs? Are their bosses thinking in the same way, or is it merely the bussiness judgment that catering to cretins (not necessarily in IQ sense, just glib and shallow) allows to capture the largest part of the market?

[Julian Elson]

Yeah. People shouldn't be boring and talk about the arcana of their particular jobs. Like, I remember, I had a leaky pipe, and I hired a plumber, and he fixed the pipe alright, but he went into all this boooooooooring detail about washers and corrosion and all that stuff. Then next time, when I found that in another part of the house, my roof was showing mysterious water damage, I hired another plumber. This one turned the persistent leak in the pipe that was causing the water damage into a major disaster, and our kitchen is now ruined, but at least he didn't prattle on about plumbing all the time.

[marquer]

>Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (New
>Republic Edition)

I am given to understand that Michael Kinsley is freshly available. I very much doubt that the current proprietors of _The New Likudnik_ would deign to have him return, but they could do worse. And have. Much worse.

TNR was actually a rational and respectable journal of opinion when edited by Kinsley and Hendrik Hertzberg. This was, mind you, before Andrew Sullivan and Michael Kelly began the magazine's precipitous slide into lunacy. Today? It has become entirely unreadable and preposterous: the _American Spectator_ of the left.

Thank goodness for the blogosphere. It has filled the vacuum left by the implosion of TNR with remarkable efficiency.

[camille roy]

Clinton was the closest thing to a true friend to the people that this Kiss Rich Butt paradise is capable of producing. I know for some that qualifies as joke. But I miss him still Even more, I miss the Clinton economy! If we still had the latter, I'd never have gotten into the habit of reading these econ blogs.

As for the supercilious twats -- & dicks (equal opportunity!) -- of the press, I am once again twice as enraged as anybody else. I could not believe the glee of those strumpets when they thought they had Clinton by the balls. I've never forgiven how they took the hatchet to a seriously competent executive, the country be damned. Now we see what effects those flagrant, sinister, preening, poseurs have had, in helping our country to vomit up another 'Bush'.

Nightmare! Shame, shame.

[Jaseem]

Great stuff Prof! And no mention of the "impeach..impeach him now" stuff you (occaisonaly) lapse into. Still, I felt a pang at the attack on M.Kakutani. I had always assumed she was the daughter or some close relative of the great Kakutani of fixed point fame.

[Michael]

Great post by Kevin and great add-on, Brad. You're absolutely right.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

A better criticism of Clinton would be that it is too bad he waited until his post-presidency to engage with public policy.

[cymack]

"M.Kakutani. I had always assumed she was the daughter or some close relative of the great Kakutani of fixed point fame."

She is his daughter---see the obit link from Rasmussen: http://www.rasmusen.org/x/archives/95 ---just as GWBush is the son of a president. In a real meritocracy you could add two dollars to facts like that and ride public transportation in just about any American city.

[bad Jim]

It isn't clear whether Clinton's worst perceived failing was his caring about people we prefer to ignore or his caring about policy in general, but, to a country whose electorate prides itself on its ignorance, it's certain that this sort of solicitude would have limited appeal.

[Randolph Fritz]

Jealousy. Isn't it obvious? Clinton, for all his faults, shows these guys up. Al Gore is even worse--how many newsmen have gone on to have distinguished political careers and then--for yet another career--gone out and started their own television channel?

The motivations, I suppose, are not complex. Why it is these motivations are in charge--that, I wish we knew, and knew how to change.

[robert waldmann]

I think you put it best back when you were the assistant secretary of the treasury for policy analysis. You quoted Maureen Dowd describing an interview with Clinton"Maureen Dowd wrote "At least he didn't want to talk about GATT and NAFTA or is it NATT and GAFTA"". Then you asked me why she wrote about public policy if she found it boring. I am ashamed to say that I haven't come up with a halfway plausible answer. I note only that you haven't either.

By the way, how is the essay you said you would write when you left office "Maureen Dowd Threat or Menace ?" coming. I sure hope you haven't retitled it "Maureen Dowd just like the rest of the elite press corps but a little more self aware and inclined to celebrate her own shallowness."

some context for your quote etc.

First you complained about the forest of tripods on the White House lawn, then you said something like "I am alarmed that I find myself turning into H.R. Haldeman." This is, indeed, a very alarming thought, but you just meant that you were beginning to hate the press.

Now I realise that it is both presumptuous and pathetic to present myself as such an expert on the thought of Brad DeLong that I can usefully contribute this expertise to this comment thread, but, tell me honestly, do you remember what you said in the conversation which I am quoting ?

[John Emerson]

I have not yet figured out why so much of our elite press--the Crowleys, the Kakutanis, the Isikoffs, and the Kosovas--is so... what should I call it? Feckless.

Apparently the people who write their paychecks like them that way. Martin Peretz and his new partners, Donald Graham, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., Rupert Murdoch, Jack Welch, the Rev. Moon, and so on.

Normally, if a business has a continuing problem, management is held responsible. If a whole profession has a problem, perhaps there's been a change in its purposes. The media have been rationalized to maximize advertising sales, and both the advertisers and the media owners have a political agenda -- low taxes and a "strong foreign policy".

The fundamental beliefs of the media bosses, if they have any beyond revenue-maximization, are not like ours.

I wish Brad would quit asking these questions rhetorically. They are real questions with answers. The media are run by our enemies. Politically, we have no hope unless a new media is built from the ground up. Air America is a good (but very small) start.

[John Emerson]

The belief that our media problems are the result of the coincidental incompetence of a very large number of separate individuals is quite a silly one, no?

As long ago as 1984 I starting realizing that the vast majority of bright Ivy Leaguers think of school primarily as a place to have fun and to "network". They had only a moderate work ethic and no high intellectual ambitions, but definitely wanted the good life. They may have respected a Nobel physicist earning $200,000 a year slightly more than a TV personality earning the same amount, but they knew they were too lazy and dumb for physics.

But they were verbally fluent and quite rightly felt that they would be able to figure out what the audience wanted and what the bosses wanted. The best of these floated to the top, and the American hive mind is, in fact, being massaged very effectively. And that sells a lot of advertising.

And even smart, hardworking people often would rather be celebrities than scholars. I blame the counterculture and drug use.

[Oberon]

Bravo, Professor.

[glenn hefner]

This is just another way of saying, "most Americans would prefer to have a beer with Bush." Ok. Fine. Bush belongs in a pub, and preferably one FAR from Washington...

[sgiff]

All these reporters now seem more enthralled with the pr campaign than the actual product. Every news round table and a lot of "hard news" stories spend more time on whether the presentation convinces the American people, like they were all employees of an advertising agancy and their only concern was analyzing the commercial. They all have lost track of the fact that they are consumers of this product, and no matter how great the commercial was, the product still doesn't work when we take it home.

[JR]

News is entertainment, and public policy is boring. Why do you think Clinton's sex life got so much attention?

[Dan Hardie]

Why does J. Bradford DeLong find it possible to write a lengthy post in large part extolling Bill Clinton's knowledge of and concern for Africans without once using the word 'Rwanda' or the phrase 'sat idly by during the murder of at least 700,000 human beings'? Why does J. Bradford DeLong imagine that a tedious piece of boilerplate prose about Nigeria's elections counts for more than Clinton's inaction in the face of the worst slaughter in modern African history?

It is a mystery to me.

[Michael Robinson]

Douglas Adams captured this crew perfectly in "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish." We are ruled by Golgafrinchans. Why we are beset by these people and why they behave as they do is a mystery, but that is what we've got.

[John Emerson]

Non. no, NOT a mystery! I keep trying to tell ya. It's easy to understand why.

[John Emerson]

Buce, your contrarian post might make some sense in an alternative universe where Bush was not President, or where Clinton had been a bad President and Bush had been a good one.

Mastery of detail does not automatically make a good leader, but it's intrinsically a good thing, and it's offensive when opinion leaders try to make it seem that it's not. Especially in times like these. (Of the examples you gave, only Carter was an ineffective leader. Nixon was an effective but evil, and Wilson's legacy was mixed -- and both served in the most difficult of times.

Professing amusement at others' posts is a pretty faded ploy by now, as is contraraianism for its own sake.

[Rejectomorph]

Perhaps they were just disappointed to find that they themselves were not mentioned in the book? Clearly, they (and most contemporary reviewers in the elite press) would rather write about themselves-- their likes, their dislikes, their boredom, their outrage, their disapproval-- than about the books they are forced to review in order to get paid. It must be terribly frustrating for them to know that they will never be the protagonists of any of those books.

[Rich Puchalsky]

John Emerson is quite right. The majority of the news media are owned by a few people with decided opinions about how certain stories get covered. There is no mystery about why articles by these twits keep popping up. And it's a self-reinforcing spiral, the media create an audience for the type of news that they like to give out.

[bakho]

Honestly, Brad, if you would just hang out at a couple of Frat parties, the anti-intellectualism and disdain for the disadvantaged would numb your mind, too. These reporters are merely practicing the values learned from their wealthy peers on college campuses. Because these reporters do not understand the problems of poor people, they have difficulty writing about them and people, like Clinton who bother to discuss them. It makes them uncomfortable.

[save_the_rustbelt]

In the dictionary beside the word "meglomaniac" is a picture of Bill Clinton.

At least he is no longer bombing aspirin factories.

Both parties work very heard to winnow out anyone really qualified for the presidency.

[John]

I'm sure glad somebody at last takes Michiko Kakutani to task. She is the most gawdawful book reviewer I've come across in ages. Why does she waste her time reviewing books if she doesn't like to read?

Her latest unreview is of Tracy Kidder's memoir of his military service in Vietnam, apparently ASA, monitoring radio transmissions. Her objection to the book is that she doesn't like Kidder. No kidding. What about the book, Michiko?

From what I can glean from her unreview the book is an honest account of service in the military. Since Michiko doesn't like it, I must read it.

Her main purpose at the NYT is to give you reasons not to read books that are important. Is her distaste political I wonder? It certainly isn't artistic.

A. O. Scott also needs taking to task. He dislikes good movies so much he shouldn't see them. Why does he review things he doesn't like?

[bcinaz]

Clintons book was so much NOT about Monica, and so TOO much about policy; whereas, for the MSM, his Presidency was ALL ABOUT MONICA, and NOT about his two terms in office.

Well, since they are more interested in Presidential Porn, they should stick with Bush and The Cronies. I hear there's a webside peddling amateur sex porn for hard core professional war porn. (won't link there from here.)

[john kinsey]

I wonder if thise people ever go to a doctor that brags about how little they did in medical school?

[pat]

The following sentence came to me a lot during the times of Monica saga: "This nation does not deserve Bill Clinton." The press is, to a large degree, a reflection of the people.

And 53+ million people deserve GWB.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Buce writes that "the job of a president is to lead. "

Too short. The job is to lead in a sensible direction, following a reasonable route. This cannot be done without understanding policy questions or having staff who understand them.

[David Ehrenstein]

SING OUT LOUISE!

The main thing I miss about Clinton is is sheer, simple competence.

But to the Heaters, competence is "boring."

[JAV]

Bravo. Very well written.

[Davis X. Machina]

Two simultaneous, confluent streams --

(a) Crab-bucket syndrome among the media at their point of interface with the people in question (Gore, Kerry, Clinton, etc.)

(b) Diametrically opposed interests of those who cut the paychecks for those above.

Each can blame the worst on the flaws of the other, so that there's a corpse, but no fingerprints on it.

[JRoth]

I'd be surprised to find "meglomaniac" in the dictionary at all....

I finally started reading My Life on a recent vacation, and will be blogging it a bit. I was stunned at how rich the first 50 pages were, and really felt a deep contempt for Kakutani and the rest. As he describes his first 10 years, I was moved, literally, to tears at least 3 times. When the man says "I feel your pain," he means it because, unlike an actual megalomaniac (and unlike our current sociopath-in-chief), he is staggeringly empathetic. He sees the good and the human in everyone he encounters (and extrapolates it to those he never meets), and that is what lead him to progressive politics, and what lets him work with Bush Sr. to do good. His grandmother, who had a big role in raising him, was apparently a horrible woman to her husband and daughter, yet she could be loving to Bill, and he was able to see all the forces (or results of forces) that filled her with such rage without stripping out all good.

As for Sebastian's snarky comment, I think it's sad that supporters of the party of anti-policy would dare to question the afforts and achievements of what is unquestionably the most policy-oriented administration of the last 40 years. But of course, that's the point, isn't it? Ideology is more important than good public policy, so Sebastian chooses to disdain the real policy achievements of a progressive administration rather than decry, in full throat, the policy disasters of a conservative-in-name one. Brother, see you not the plank in your eye?

[alan]

What you are seeing folks, is simple, green envy. And jealousy that trumps any capacity for objective observation or reason.

[Auros]

I just want to note the irony in the example analogy of a tone-deaf reviewer of Beethoven -- Beethoven composed the Ninth Symphony after he had gone almost completely deaf. :-)

[Rich Gibson]

Hi Brad,

This entry is very good, and correct me if I am wrong, but it is mostly recycled from this comment:

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/001069.html

Which perhaps is only interesting as an example of my ability to use google...

[bill]

We need a freakin' military draft now, and the first people who need drafting are these snot-nosed, elite GOP presstitutes so that they can meet some real Americans, some real third worlders, and some real adversity.

[sm]

I think that this has been said above, but I'm not sure.

Who owns the press may be to blame for some of its corruption, but the widespread corruption says something about the corruption of the wider society.

[Stormy]

Delay indicted! There is a god! Now watch the media spin it as just part of the ethics wrangle, reaching back into the Clinto era. Oh spinmeisters, well-coifed newscasters, spin this.

And watch the Abramahoff scandal reach right into Rove's back pocket.

[jmk]

This is simply the best post I have observed on this site and reconfirms why I make more than occasional visits. Thank you for your insight and good sense.

[David]

Thank you. I read the Crowley piece in somewhat slack-jawed fashion myself, waiting to see what was Clinton's next big thing. According to Crowley, Clinton wants to be, what, Christ?

Even in a publication like TNR, the snark-meter went off the chart with that piece. And this from a magazine that endorsed Joe Lieberman in 2004?!

Al Gore comes in for the same sort of abuse all the time. Compared to the vast majority of politicos out there, what exactly has either of these two men done that has so offended professional wise-asses like Crowley?

Love them or hate them, at least Al and Bill were serious men. Compared to our current crop at the top, I'm left baffled at how popular the sport of Clinton/Gore bashing remains.

[Alex Tabarrok]

Excellent post Brad. But I think that you need to stop blaming the press and this particular president and think deeper about politics and the media.

If you want to explain why the market produces Harlequin romances and Chia pets don't look to the suppliers for an answer. Look to the buyers.

Why can't we get a better press corp? Why are presidents too often mediocre or worse? Politics and the press provide what is demanded.

Best

Alex Tabarrok

[satchmo]

Alex, this free-market propaganda hardly explains why bought-and-paid-for media institutions sell precisely what they're paid to sell and present precisely the ideological slant they're paid to present. If you think the media are giving people what they want in a free market, I have a campaign to help democracy flower in Iraq to sell you.

Overall, an excellent post by Brad.

[wkwillis]

I think the reason that no one blames Clinton for not stopping the massacres in Rwanda is that the military went on record as not wanting to invade a country with malaria, tse-tse, river blindness, and lots of trees, and Clinton listened to them.
The reason that everyone blames Bush Jr. for the insurgency in Iraq is that the military went on record as not wanting to occupy a country with that many guns, explosives, ethnic hatreds, and ambitious neighbors, and Bush Jr. did not listen to them.
This is not to say the military was right in the case of Rwanda...or Iraq...

[Matt Austern]

I'm not sure whether Brad meant it as a rhetorical question, but I think there's a pretty simple question for why reporters who don't give a damn about government policy choose to go into political reporting: it's a simple matter of how people respond to incentives. If you're an ambitious reporter who wants name recognition, a high salary, and a high-status employer and job title, then politics is what you cover. There are roads to career success in other fields of reporting, but they're harder.

Besides, for most reporters, it's not too much of a sacrifice. Being around the rich and famous and powerful has rewards of its own; some of the fame might rub off. There's nothing hard about writing the same stories about today's politicians that you would write for the "society" pages of a century ago.

[arles]

Excellent Post!!!

[FDRLincoln]

Oh, Shrill Ones, Yog-Sothtoth has answered our entreaties, and has cast the foul daemon Tom DeLay into the pit of political despair, assuring his indictment on conspiracy charges!

Let the Shrill Unholy Madness wash over you! One Vile servant of Shrub-Crawfordath has been bound. But is this a mere temporary reprive?

Oh, Eldest of the Shrill, hidden author of the darkly shrill Krugmanomicon, is this the beginning of the end for Shrub-Crawfordath?

[FDRLincoln]

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Ronnie Earle R’lyeh wagn’nagl fhtagn!

[Nicholas Mycroft]

Wonderful post.

[pebird]

They shoot journalists, don't they?

[ricardo]

How about the media making some effort to professionalize itself, much as medicine, law, and architecture did years ago???...something along the lines of a "Society of American Journalists"...such accreditation requiring a basic knowledge of American history, world history, current events, economics, race, gender, ethnicity, etc...might help the media's credibility issue with the American public, too.

I wanna see Maureen Dowd and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. (to name a couple of media types at random...lol) sweat over the course of several days in July in a packed gymnasium (without air-conditioning, preferably) taking the rigorous SAJ (pronounced "sage") accreditation exams...strictly voluntary, of course - the free press and all that - but without the "SAJ" at the end of a byline we can assume the reporter or publisher in question is a poseur from the world of celebutainment...

[John Emerson]

Buce, as I said, in some alternative universe your post might have made sense.

[jon livesey]

I think this deserves a more balanced answer than those I have seen here so far. Demonising Bush or mocking Clinton is not the answer. There is a genuine difference of philosophy at work, and until Americans recognize that, they will continue with their current angry dialog of the deaf.

There is a strong tradition in the US of enabling success, but leaving it up to individuals to take advantage of it. There is an equally strong tradition in Europe of looking to the state to intervene to assist the disadvantaged, even if this intervention turns out to be expense and ultimately self-defeating.

I often find Bush inadequate when judged by the second philsophy, but I recognize that he was elected mostly by people who follow the first. I think that there is a sizeable constituency in the US who, however much they sympathise with the Third World and its ills, see direct intervention by the US at a "retail" level to be a fiscal quagmire that in the end costs much and helps little. On the other hand, they see globalisation as a "wholesale" solution that will eventually allow the Third World to create its own success. To such people, yes, the inauguration of a Nigerian President is a footling irrelevancy, and getting up at 4am to watch it is pandering. Instead, we should get markets opened for Nigeria, and then Nigerians can help themselves, and no-one outside Nigeria needs to know or care who their President is.

It's a harsh and uncompassionate philsophy, and people die in the short term who might be saved by constant intervention. But suppose that opening markets works in the long term, and European style intervention only leads to foreign aid dependency? What then?

[CB3]

Jon I really don't think that's the point of the post. I don't think these reporters find Clinton boring because they have other policy beliefs I believe they just don't give a damn about what they cover and are only in political/economic reporting for fame, money, and connections. If Clinton were giving a talk about how we should open up free markets to Nigeria they'd still be complaining and bored. I think its the fact that Clinton wasn't talking about Monica enough is what got these "reporters" all steamed. Journalists just seem to want life to be one big Soap Opera and I'm sure they'd all love to have jobs working for Entertainment Tonight. There seems to be an element in US culture that doesn't like it when people know more then they do or are interested in things other then celebrities and sports.

[João Carlos]

Opening markets to Nigeria?

So, USA need stop to subside cotton to help tthe african cotton farmers? Or maybe USA and Europe need stop to subside agriculture to give the third world countries a fair market?

Let's be real, I am from Brazil and I know that when USA talk about open markets you just want we open our market to you while you close your market to us.

You just don't like open markets....and evidently you don't like democracy, you ever helped non-democratic governments here at Latin America...

João Carlos

sorry the bad english, my native language is portuguese.

[a different chris]

Regardless of whether you think like Buce or have a very high view of Clinton, this should just gobsmacked you:

>he had to fabricate an excuse to escape his long-winded ruminations.

Jesus H. Christ. There are only 43 men in history that have been President of the United States. And there have only been a handful in the hot seat since the US became a world-striding colossus, Ancient Rome with nukes.

How the heck could anybody be less than fascinated that such a historically significant person would, holy hell, be interested in speaking to them?? Your great grandkid could stand up in class and say "here's my ancestor's notes on the day he spent some time with a former President of the United States."

An excuse to escape?? That is unbelievably sad. I guess a Lakers game was on or something - I wonder if he/she'd be so quick to escape Shaq O'Neill or Madonna's company? Sadly, I don't think so.

[BRT]

Yes a great post, and it answers questions I have about other so-called professionals, in my case equity analysts. I am an equity analyst that comes from the sector I cover, a rarity. It is bizarre how little analysts actually understand, or even give a rip, about the businesses they cover. Operations and working for a living are ever so boring compared to gratuitous swips at managements (when the analyst's call goes wrong), junkets with clients, and sagely talking about what to do with capital (have to use that new CFA for something). Like elite journalists want to talk about "politics" wthout policy or real issues soiling their rhetoric, equity analysts want to talk about "stocks" without caring about what matters for companies at a fundamental level. I fear this is a problem of the "elite" human condition and has no solution except to discourage the formation of the "elite" in the first place.

[Buce]

Pardon for being a bore, but this discussion has really caught my attention. As to wanting to get away from Clinton--be truthful now, haven't we heard others say that Clinton is really spellbinding for the first 20, or 45 minutes, but after that you start looking for the doors? For the purposes of having something to tell you grandchildren (or Larry King), yes, I suppose you want to hang on--but in human terms it will be an exercise. Ask the elevator test: would I rather get stuck in an elevator with this guy, or commit suicide? Not many presidents would keep you alive-maybe Gerald Ford, but that is another story.

There is a fundamental point here that needs to be laid out: Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, Carter. We like them because they are wonks; we are one billionth of a percent of the vote. The rest like them, if at all, not because of this virtue, but despite this human failing. I thought you knew.

This may mean the electorate needs to shape up, but recall Berthold Brecht: if the government has lost confidence in the people, then maybe it is time for the government to elect a new people.

[Th. Br.]

What an absolutely marvelous post. This has needed to be said for a long while. Thank you.

[John Emerson]

But voters DID like Clinton. It was the fluffy, execrable media people who didn't like him. That's the point of this post.

Quit trying, Buce.

[Johnny]

I think a lot of Clinton bashing in the press is class based... The vast majority of the media elite are East coast Ivy leaguers, so when a guy from Arkansas can runs rings around them intellectually, they ridicule him in every way they can.

[modus potus]

Damn fine post, but it's really getting me depressed...

Great comments, too, except for the occasional gibe from the Kool Kids.

[mwg]

Sort of OT: when I was in Beijing in June, we saw 4-5 street peddlers with copies of Clinton's My Life. In at least one case that was the only English language book they had.

[fling93]

This is a great post with many good points, but I think the reviews of "My Life" are not so much reviews of Clinton the president or the man as much as reviews of the book, and the reviewers job is to tell their audience whether the book is worth reading.

And most of their audience are not policy wonks and would be bored by the things they say are boring. This may be partially the media's fault, but I think it's mostly just a sad fact of life. Your average Joe-sixpack voter is tone-deaf, yet is called upon to judge symphonies (or more aptly, compare Britney Spears to Matchbox 20 anyway). No amount of poking or prodding from the media would fix that.

And after all, the original intent of the Electoral College was to prevent this in the first place.

[Buce]

"Quit Trying Buce."

Actually, I think I'll declare myself winners and go crack a Chardonnay.

[John Emerson]

Hey, if you promise to leave I'll agree to anything.

[Martin James]

It is honest and respectable for a policy wonk to write about policy issues in policy issue language.

It is not honest and respectable for a power broker to write about policy issues as if he were only a policy wonk.

It is not the policy issues per se that rankles the reviewers but the pretense that policy issues were the main source and use of Clinton's power.

Does anyone here in the self-professed reality based community wish to hold the proposition that My Life is a reality-based portrayal of Clinton's political life and of his rise to power in America?

Does anyone, anywhere with power tell the truth about the uses and abuses of that power?

Two wrongs don't make a right, but a fantasy review of a fantasy book do seem to deserve each other.

[Gabe]

What about the worst thing Clinton did, and that not one post has mentioned: Plan Colombia. Anyone who understands drug policy knows--to a statistically certain degree--that spraying poison on villages, farms, children, and rainsforests wouldn't do squat for the price of drugs. They also know that it will cost the taxpayers a few billion dollars. They also know that by restricting supply they'll be enriching the very organizations that they're trying to dismantle.

Rwanda was a terribly sad miscalculation; Plan Colombia can only be considered evil.

[david]

Clinton-worship is a dangerous phenomenon, politically too, what with the loss of all three branches of gov't by 2000. So, you're right in general but:

Clinton's a starf+++ker. I'm an Elvis Costello fan, but there's reason to be skeptical of the event.

Clinton writes nice things about Nigeria, and he probably knows a ton, but free trade in practice under Clinton means Aids drugs cost too much. It's very cheap to write about inaugurals, and it pisses off precisely zero donors..

Welfare reform met an awful political imperative at the expense of poor people. Enough about the pain feeling.

Michiko Kakutani is not the worst book reviewer in the NYT. It's close, but Maslin is worse. Kakutani's review of My Life was mediocre for her, miserable objectively.

Amazing how bad for how long Dowd has been. And she's the third best on the page. Wow.

[Jim Dandy]

Good discussion here, pointing to a number of relevant answers, macro and micro, to the “mystery”. Here are some additional thoughts on the apparent “boredom” of the media pundits (from the perspective of observations on the ground here in the heart of the capital and elsewhere).

Evidence: Very few of the pundits, if any, ever show up in the halls of the Library of Congress, at seminars of the leading think tanks or great centers of learning in this town. The “experts” they rely on for analysis of issues in their talk fests on cable and broadcast TV are fellow journalists (e.g. the great, facile, word-merchant Tom Friedman) or political spokesmen for one side or the other – see, for instance, studies by Pew, Annenberg, Columbia J School and others of the people used to provide media commentary on the Iraq war before and after the invasion. They shy away from “scholars” who could provide in-depth analysis instead of snappy sound-bites ((like Juan Coles, considered to be too boring, and perhaps likely to expose their own lack of knowledge, hence arousing an inferiority complex).

Analysis: It’s "hard work" to do the reading and research and leg work needed to come up with a more substantive understanding of issues (pressed against the deadlines of the daily news cycle and continuous 24/7 coverage).

These folks would rather rub shoulders with the elite at cocktail parties to pick up on the latest inside gossip which provides the stuff of “exclusives” and “breaking news”. Since the competition among media conglomerates for ratings pushes towards the common denominator of news as entertainment, the pundits are highly paid by their media bosses to do just that. The financial reward and their social status as members of the elite circles provide enough of an incentive to sustain their lack of substance as well as indifference to the realities of existence outside of their class position.

Lastly, there is a premium on being a poseur – a contrarian position sells. This is especially observable among book reviewers and movie critics, but no less true of political journalism and news coverage in the press, radio, and television.

[Peter Eggenberger]

Clinton has many admirable qualities-- is much much better than Bush. No doubt Clinton feels for Nigeria and is at one with the Nigerian people,and the sufferings of every single ethnic group. An enormous liberal heart. But what about Ruwanda? Here's a quote from 1998:

"In Rwanda, Clinton delivered another apology, this time over the failure of the US to halt the mass slaughter which claimed a million lives in 1994. Clinton vowed, "We must have global vigilance. And never again must we be shy in the face of the evidence." He suggested that the US must be prepared to intervene militarily in the event of a similar outbreak of violence in the future.

The mea culpas from the US president suggest that both the atrocities in Africa and the sins of the United States are things of the past. Apologizing is somehow supposed to wipe the slate clean. The historical relationship of oppression and exploitation supposedly has been transformed into a "partnership of equals." However, the rhetorical breast-beating raises many more questions than it answers.

Even as Clinton spoke in Rwanda, civil strife continued between Hutus and Tutsis in that country. Because of security concerns, the Secret Service determined that Clinton could not leave the airport even to walk 150 yards to a genocide memorial of human bones erected shortly before his visit."

[CMike]

How confusing. I knew I had read some of this before and it turns out Prof. DeLong had previously posted his slams of both the Kakutani and the Kosova and Isikoff reviews back on June 22, 2004.

If you want to read an additional smackdown of the Kakutani review of the Clinton book try the November 18, 2004 Daily Howler.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh111804.html

[DuckedApe]

"Pathological need for adulation": Clinton is a know-it-all show-off, and NObody likes those! Reads a lot like "If you're so smart, why aren't you entertaining? Don't be so serious all the time!"

BTW: "Details of Clinton's 2002 speaking engagements, released Friday in the annual financial disclosure statement of his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., suggest the former chief executive is as popular with audiences in his second year out of office as he was in his first. He earned $9.5 million for 60 speeches last year, slightly more than the $9.2 million he was paid for speaking engagements in 2001." (http://www.detnews.com/2003/politics/0306/18/politics-192566.htm) Not too shabby (for a bore).

Maybe he should have done "My Life" in Powerpoint to make it more accessible...

[John Emerson]

Mindless adulation of Clinton wasn't the issue here. It's the aggressive stupidity of the people who disliked Clinton **because** he was (among many other things) a policy wonk who knew what he was talking about. Brad gave three examples here, and Somerby has given more at the Daily Howler.

When a Clinton-bashing thread comes along, I'll have my hits to get in. It's not likely to happen here at SDJ, though.

[CB3]

Let's get it straight here. These journalists are not bashing Clinton because they feel he's a poser - they are bashing him because they are not interested in the topic: policy. And the reason they aren't interested in what he's saying isn't because of Clinton's failure to help sort out the situtation in Rawanda or the Columbia Plan or anything of that nature - they simply don't like what they cover and only do so for fame/money/social status. The point of the post, in my opinion, is to show that there is a problem with people in the media. If these journalists were really interested in the things they cover but just felt that Clinton had too many failings to be considered a real policy wonk then you might see the presence of these journalists at coferences given by real experts but you don't - and that's the whole point.

[Kate Gilbert]

Great Post, Brad. And CF everything that Bob somerby ever wrote before he went off the deep end this year. I remember an excellent essay on Dowd? travelling with Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea in India and being enraged *enraged*! to find Mrs. Clinton insisting on talking to her about policy issues.

To my mind one problem is that these reporters really are nothing more than social climbing/social secretary wannabes. They think of all the policy stuff as things that politicians have to *pretend* to care about to fool the "little people" into voting for them. When they, as reporters, cover the politicians they are really wanting simply to kick back and be part of the elite, part of the wealthy, globe trotting elite. They become angry (and write these tedious stories) when they get a minute to be alone with powerful people those powerful people insist on still talking policy rather than sharing social time/dishing the dirt/just taking their ppublic persona off and welcoming the reporter into some fantasied inner sanctum of personal, not political, intimacy. One reason the press loved Bush was that he insisted in his actions that he had the same contempt for politics and the political process, for issues and policy that they did.

Kate Gilbert

Of course that analysis doesn't negate all the other stuff about the abysmal nature of corporate media whores.

[CMike]

Kate Gilbert,

I believe you are referring to Somerby's smackdown of the Margaret Carlson book (DailyHowler June 12, 2003: "Margaret's Choice [part 2]"). Somerby reproduces this passage:

She [Hillary] used up our time with chatter about the Taj Mahal and the ambassador’s gardens—all about as newsworthy as someone showing you slides from their summer vacation. About midnight, an aide showed us the door, literally. Our time was up. Valiantly, Klein reeled her back in with a question about health-care reform. As we descended into the swamps of single-payer insurance and Klein’s very own plan for universal health care, I leaned against the open door—and fell asleep. I woke up when my notebook clattered to the floor, embarrassed that jet lag had struck so hard, but unworried that any news had been committed.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh061203.shtml

Don't miss the rest of the smackdown, posted over several days at the Howler site. And hey, I think Somerby has established himself with enough good work over the years to get a pass for ruffling a few feathers lately.

[Debra Riley]

746604: Hey, does anyone know where I can find a list of gas stations with low prices in my area?