Where Are the Heirs of Walter Lippman?

Where are the heirs of Walter Lippman? Disconnected and incomplete thoughts... PARTIAL DRAFT ONLY...

George W. Bush on Tuesday said:

Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit. You might remember those debates. You endured that rhetoric hour after hour on the floor of the Senate and the House. Today's numbers show that that was a false choice. The economic growth fueled by tax relief has helped send our tax revenues soaring. That's what's happened...

And the media fell into line, writing "he said, she said" stories--Bush says revenue is up because of the tax cuts, Democrats say not so. Here are six examples:

Stephen Dinan: THE WASHINGTON TIMES: This week's lower deficit figure has been a shot in the arm for tax cutters in Congress and has reignited the debate over supply-side economics and whether President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts helped or hurt the federal budget. "Supply-side economics are alive and well," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Texas Republican and the budget point man for House conservatives, who added that tax cuts are the only explanation for the declining deficit. "Spending's not down; spending has increased every single budget. What happened is we're awash in tax revenue because supply-side economics is alive and well"...

Richard Wolf: USATODAY: Led by President Bush, Republicans touted the $296 billion deficit estimate for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 as evidence that five years of tax cuts have worked. They said the tax cuts fueled economic growth, which raised corporate profits and individuals' wages. "Today is a good day for the American taxpayer," Bush said at a White House ceremony to tout the new forecast. "Tax relief is working, the economy is growing, revenues are up, the deficit is down." Democrats noted the new estimate isn't much below the 2005 deficit of $318 billion. They said the original estimate was too high, allowing Republicans to boast about the lower number four months before mid-term elections, when control of Congress is at stake...

Christopher Swann and Krishna Guha: FT: The improvement in government finances will strengthen the administration's efforts to secure a permanent extension of the tax cuts passed in President George W. Bush's first term in office. Mr Bush yesterday said the bumper receipts were proof "the tax cuts we passed work."... Chris Edwards, head of fiscal studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, said: "Soaring US economic growth and surging tax revenues have put sceptics of the Bush tax cuts on the defensive." However, critics argued that there was little evidence that the tax cuts had produced any supply side response, and said the deficit remained large for the fifth year of an economic expansion...

Paul Blustein: Washington Post: The Bush administration on Tuesday lowered its estimate of this year's federal budget deficit by 30 percent, to $296 billion.The new figure prompted the White House to claim vindication for its tax cuts, and Democrats to issue new denunciations of the nation's fiscal problems.... [T]ax revenue... is "much better than we had projected, and it's helping us cut the budget deficit," President Bush said in a White House ceremony to release the report, which is usually a low-key midsummer event. "Tax relief is working. The economy's growing. Revenues are up. The deficit is down"...

Jeremy Peters: New York Times: Surprisingly high tax revenues will help the federal government reduce its budget deficit faster than planned, President Bush said today, as his administration delivered its annual mid-year review to Congress.... The projected deficit decline helps Mr. Bush make a case that the tax cuts his administration pushed through Congress in 2001 and 2003 should be made permanent.... Mr. Bush said the latest budget figures were evidence that his administration's program of tax cuts was behind the country's prosperity. "Together, these tax cuts left nearly $1.1 trillion in the hands of American workers and families and small business owners," he said. "They used this money to help fuel an economic resurgence"...

Joel Haveman: Los Angeles Times: President Bush on Tuesday delivered what he called "some good news for the American taxpayer" -- a budget update that shows the deficit for this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, shrinking from the $423 billion forecast five months ago to $296 billion now.Bush's budget office said faster-than-expected increases in tax revenue accounted for $115 billion of the improvement. "The tax cuts we passed worked," Bush told a White House audience of aides and Republican members of Congress. The president said the tax cuts generated unexpected economic activity and consequent tax revenue. Most Democrats were unimpressed...

Andrew Taylor: The Boston Globe: President Bush touted new deficit figures yesterday indicating considerable improvement upon earlier administration predictions, saying they show the wisdom of his tax cuts. Bush himself announced the figures -- a task that for the most part has been left to lower-ranking officials in the past.... Bush said the improvement is due to tax cuts he pushed in 2001 and 2003 and his clampdown on domestic agencies funded by Congress. "These tax cuts left nearly $1.1 trillion in the hands of American workers and families and small-business owners. And they used this money to help fuel an economic resurgence that's now in its 18th quarter," he said. "Economic growth fueled by tax relief has sent our tax revenues soaring"...

Only two news organizations got the real story--David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal NEWS PAGES:

David Wessel: WSJ NEWS PAGES Washington Wire: Do Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves?: Not if you read the fine print in the new White House midsession review of budget trends. "While difficult to estimate precisely," Treasury long-run analyses of the effects of President Bush's tax cut would "ultimately" raise total national output of goods and services by 0.7%.

So is that enough to pay for the tax cuts, even after allowing them to work their economic magic over the next 10 years? The Center for Budget Policies and Priorities, a Washington think tank and advocacy group that is distinctly unfriendly to Bush fiscal policies, says it isn't. "A 0.7 percent increase in the economic output that the Congressional Budget Office has projected for 2016 would represent an additional $146 billion [in gross domestic product]," it says. "If new revenues equaled as much as 20% of the additional output, the increase in revenues resulting from making the tax cuts permanent (assuming Treasury's best-case assumptions) would be $29 billion."

That's a lot of money. But how does it compare to the size of the president's tax cuts? The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, using conventional analyses, says making the president's tax cuts permanent would reduce federal revenues in 2016 by $314 billion. That is more than 10 times what the Treasury analysis suggests tax cuts would generate by prompting more hours of work, more savings and investment and more efficient use of resources...

And the London Economist:

And the money comes pouring in | Economist.com : Mr Bush's tax policy may have played a modest role in boosting a temporary revenue surge. But that is very different from suggesting, as the White House does, that tax cuts were the main cause or that they permanently pay for themselves. Most serious economists have long laughed at the idea that Mr Bush's tax cuts raise revenue. Now, it seems, the president's own boffins agree. Deep in the Mid-Session Review is a claim that the Bush tax cuts could eventually raise the level of GDP by 0.7%, a relatively modest effect, and one that itself depends on the tax cuts being financed by lower spending...

New York University economist Jason Furman ventured out into the media storm and found:

It's been a surreal day. I was just on Fox News debating whether the deficit is higher or lower this year because of the tax cuts.

The official [administration] scoring shows the tax cuts added $200 billion to the deficit this year (not counting the higher debt service on the tax cuts in previous years). The academic "dynamic scoring" debate is whether the tax cuts raised this year's deficit by $180 billion (if they contributed to growth) or $210 billion (if they reduced growth).

And the Fox News debate is in outer space.

Jason went on to note:

Fortunately the [Bush] administration [Treasury staff] is on our side. They estimate that the tax cuts add AS MUCH AS 0.7 percent to national income over the long run. That's consistent with paying for AS MUCH AS 10 percent of themselves. And that's with their unrealistic financing assumptions...

Brendan Nyhan comments:

Brendan Nyhan: Bush vs. his economists III: [E]ven Bush's own economists don't believe this nonsense. Does that sound familiar? It should.... [T]he 2003 Economic Report of the President "directly contradicts a number of public statements by the President and other administration officials on two key economic issues: the effects of tax cuts on revenue and the relationship between budget deficits and interest rates." Then, in May 2003... "President Bush is again being contradicted by [his Council of Economic Advisers] and his nominee for chairman of the council, N. Gregory Mankiw, on the date a recession began in 2001, the revenue effects of tax cuts and the number of jobs that would be created by his tax cut package." We know the White House dislikes experts and shuns membership in the reality-based community. But to make a claim about a new report that your experts contradict in the report is chutzpah indeed...

To which Jay Rosen appends another comment:

Brendan: I certainly agree that to "make a claim about a new report that your experts contradict in the report is chutzpah indeed," but I think you have to see it as "strategy indeed." You're studying politics--study this! It's a new kind of political strategy based on the insight that if you do make a claim like that, and you don't have to back off because the forces do not exist to make you, then you have, in a way, demonstrated your Administration's power "over" reality, and you can roll over other realities, other people, that way. What if this method Bush has is a basic tool of governing? I think it is.... This is combined with another strange fact about the Bush White House. It is organized to make sure that a lot of "contrary" information never reaches Bush, which is the way he wants it...

And journalists wishing to be anonymous email in:

I haven't seen Wessel's column yet on dynamic scoring but it does look very well done (and characteristically so). I would point out, though, that he is performing a different function from those of us who have to churn out a decent news story... us ink-stained wretches...

The story has to have its principal slot reserved for what the president says. Wessel's chain of reasoning is much too opaque for my readers (or my editors) to understand. As much as you want me too, I cannot lead with: "Once again the president lied about the estimated effects of his economic policies"...

No argument with the [substantive] points.... I suggested to my editors yesterday that I ought to do a more analytical piece for today's paper, but they needed a hard-news story to lead the business front. It's tough...

The net result of the administration announcement as filtered through the mass media is yet another defeat for the country. It's a defeat for the country--and an especially big defeat for my reality-based Republican friends--each time a reader scans the front page and thinks "maybe tax relief is working: maybe the deficit is falling because of the Bush tax cuts." It's a defeat for the country each time an administration staffer thinks "experience shows that if we highball our estimates of the deficit in January, we can get a lot of favorable press in July." The chances of a sane, sensible fiscal policy go down, and the chances of some long-run fiscal crisis that will be terribly damaging to the American economy go up.

---

Let's back up. Democracy was born in classical Athens--a population of 200,000 of whom 30,000 were the adult male citizens who, when they had nothing better to do, assembled in the afternoon as the Assembly of Athens. They listened to speeches made by prominent orator-politicians (some of them bribed by the King of Macedon), and voted on the issues of the day. On Monday they would vote to put all adult male inhabitants of Mytilene to the death. On Tuesday, after a panicked round of borrowing, bribing, and begging by the ambassadors from Mytilene, they would be persuaded to revoke Monday's decree--even though the war-galley carrying Monday's orders to the fleet in the eastern Aegean had already left. On Wednesday, they would vote to put the advocates of Monday's law on trial for the crime of convincing the Assembly to pass a bad law. Politics by sound-bite. Rule by those who had nothing better to do with their time that afternoon than hang out at the Assembly eating shishkabab, gossiping with their friends, listening with one ear to the orator-politicians, and voting on critical issues.

It was with this historical memory of classical Athenian democracy as background that Alexander Hamilton could tell the American constitutional convention that the best-organized system of government the world had ever seen was that of... eighteenth century Britain. Britain had a popular government, for in the last resort the elected House of Commons had decisive power. But Britain had all these institutional mechanisms--restrictions on the franchise, principle of representation, independent judges, king, ministerial responsibility, control of ministers via impeachment and attainder, lords spiritual, lords temporal, et cetera--that were designed to filter and process popular wishes into good policies. And in Philadelphia in 1787 Hamilton, Madison, and company reworked the British system into a republican pattern that they thought of as a distinct improvement over the government they had just overthrown.

Time passed. The world changed. Mass political parties, mass communications, nationwide presidential campaigns, popular election of senators--a whole bunch of things happened that moved American politics away from the eighteenth-century Westminister model and back toward the Athenian model. And in response Walter Lippman and his peers decided that the proper balance could be maintained by the construction of a sacred and holy profession that would make the public opinion piper to whom politicians danced in this age of mass communications into an informed, sober, rational judgment about important issues rather than into gossiping-and-shishkabob-eating offhand judgments. This sacred and holy profession? Objective journalism, as we have known it for the twentieth century. Walter Lippman himself. Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London about Churchill and the Nazi bombing. William L. Shirer broadcasting from Berlin about Hitler. Walter Cronkhite. William Greider on the Reagan economic policy team and its tax cuts. Woodward and Bernstein on Richard Nixon and Watergate.

Now it seems that the press corps cannot fulfill this function. Americans do not need to have their government covered not as an arena for celebrity gossip (the stars of Hollywood photograph much better and have much more interesting personal lives). Americans do not need to have their government covered Teddy White "Making of the President"-style as a sporting contest with winners and losers, great shots an flubs (the World Cup is a much better sporting spectacle). Americans need to have their government covered as if the government were their common agent doing important thing that affect their lives. Suppose your mother owned a Florida condo that she rented out during the spring and summer. And suppose your siblings asked you how the agent she hired to rent out the condo was doing. How you would report to them--that's how the press should report on government. In the case of Judd Gregg, the proper report is analogous to, "Well, he's worked really hard and he's said he's saved a lot on maintenance, but actually the savings are really small." In the case of George Bush, the proper report is, "Well, he said that cutting the rent would mean that we'd get more money because we'd be able to rent the condo more weeks, but it turns out he's completely disconnected from reality."

But that's not a task that it seems that our daily newspaper press can carry out. Reporters describe themselves as under pressure to do "hard news" rather than "analytical" pieces, and "hard news" seems to mean a "he said, she said" story which opens "the President said X" and goes on to say "experts differ" leaving readers with absolutely no clue and no way to judge whether the guys whom we hired last election to do the public-finance equivalent of the family-finance job of managing our mother's Florida rental property are in fact doing a good job.

Note that my examples are budget examples. I'm one of the budget people. But I have peers in other issue areas. They see the same deficiencies. Whether they are bombs-and-bullets people, striped-pants-diplomacy people, welfare-and-social-policy people, science-and-technology-policy people--they all see the same patterns.

And it is not clear to me whether things were ever any better--they seemed better to me in the 1970s and 1980s (but not the 1990s), but maybe I was just young and naive. After all, even Walter Lippman had his anti-particle: Walter Winchell. And for every I.F. Stone trying to tell truth about power (and occasionally falling victim to crazed conspiracy theorists) and every Jack Anderson, there were fifty reporters willing to do the bidding of a certain junior senator from Wisconsin.

So where are the true heirs of Walter Lippman? And how do we build and organize institutions to give them the prominence and influence they deserve in order to make our Public Opinion much better than that of the Ekklesia of Athens?

Here are a couple of modest steps. Should the Democrats retake congress in November--should a Democrat be elected president in November 2008--no reporter should be allowed to write anything about Democratic economic policy proposals without checking and digesting (a) the Financial Times, (b) the news pages of the Wall Street Journal, (c) the Economist, and (d) the comments of a trusted list of Republican weblogs. If I artificially restrict myself to four (sorry guys), they would be:

• http://marginalrevolution.com/
• http://voxbaby.blogspot.com/
• http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/
• http://www.janegalt.net

In any event, reporters (and economists) also need to read, memorize, and religiously follow Susan Rasky's and my Dutch-uncle advice:

• Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > Twelve things economists need to remember to be helpful journalistic sources
• Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > Twelve things journalists need to remember to be good economic reporters

MORE TO COME SOMEDAY...

Comments

[Bernard Yomtov]

"As much as you want me too, I cannot lead with: "Once again the president lied about the estimated effects of his economic policies"..."

To which the appropriate response is, "Why not. Aren't you supposed to report the facts?"

[Bruce Wilder]

This trust you want to place in Greg Mankiw -- you've really got to explain that to those us, who have read his commentary.

And, Jane Galt! Please!

[John Emerson]

The "hard news / analytic piece" dichotomy is already an evasion.

"Hard news" is a euphemism meaning "he said / she said journalism which allows President George W. Bush to use the press as a propaganda organ."

There isn't more hard stuff in "hard news" than in analytic pieces, there's just the total absence of analysis.

In a better world there'd be nothing wrong with reports on Bush's speeches which consistently took the form "President George W. Bush said X..... but in fact Y". These would be boring things to read, but there wouldn't be a lot of them, because Bush would quickly have to change his ways.

[andres]

""As much as you want me too, I cannot lead with: "Once again the president lied about the estimated effects of his economic policies"..."

"To which the appropriate response is, "Why not. Aren't you supposed to report the facts?""

The reason why not is that both the reporter and the editor lose their jobs once the President and his upper 1% base start applying political and financial pressure on the newspaper. In our current system, money makes might and might makes right.

[Brad DeLong]

There will be things wrong with Democratic pollcy proposals. And Greg Mankiw will point them out. And Jane Galt will point them out to. And she needs protection from competing weblogs (like Greg's) that are unfairly albeit indirectly subsidized by the state through its charitable gifts exemption.

[andres]

A very nice and eloquent post, Brad. My only complaint is that you do democracy as such a disservice by using Athens circa the Pelopponesian War as the main example.

Though Athens was a restricted democracy on paper at that time, in actual fact it had devolved into an oligarchy where the wealthiest Athenians, who had business interests in the Aegean and further abroad and who also controlled the Athenian treasury, effectively made policy. And they did this by fanning the flames of Athenofascism(tm). That is, they could effectively swing the electorate towards their own interests by cheering about the great empire that Athens had established and how no one, not Mytylene, not Thebes, not Sparta, not even Persia, could gainsay Athens as the leader of the Greek world, and that Athens had a right to launch preemptive attacks against city states such as Syracuse that were about to side with its enemies. Sound familiar?

Needless to say, in oligarchical Athens there was no objective press either. But the ultimate downfall of Athens as a major power, and the potential downfall of the US as such, should be blamed on its lack of true democracy, and not on an excess of it.

[anne]

Well done, Brad; fine comments with special note of Andres.

[Robert Waldmann]

Is this the way a democracy dies

"The story has to have its principal slot reserved for what the president says. Wessel's chain of reasoning is much too opaque for my readers (or my editors) to understand" ?

Now the use of "hard news" for "Bush says, she says" is clearly unnacceptable. The 0.7% quoted by Wessel is just as hard a fact (I have no doubt that it is basically intellectual fraud and that they massaged the model to get the estimate as high as they could).

Multiplying 0.7% by GNP by the current average tax take can't be too opaque for editors to understand if they were willing to spend 5 minutes listening once in their lives. I mean you know multiplication, you don't have to do it yourself anymore you can use a calculator or a computer.

Athens in the Pelopponesian war indeed. Cleon was a businessman, he knew how to multiply.

Oh and Anders he was, extraordinarily, not a landed aristocrat. I think the most blood thirsty Athenian politician was not one of the oligarchs you blame. You can make your argument only by arguing that all historians were in on the scam and lying. That's tinfoil hat territory.

[leo]

Excellent disconnected and incomplete thoughts!

[anne]

Athenian democracy was a troubled, partial, fleeting democracy even for those for whom it was democratic :)

[happy]

Brad, I've got good news for you! Such good news, you won't know whether to laugh or cry!

Here it is: if we ever see a Democrat in the WH, you can be *absolutely* sure that the press will rediscover its teeth, and go after every statement that the Democrat makes. They'll subject every policy, and every change in policy, to scorching scrutiny.

News anchors will routinely express skepticism and doubt about anything the new President says. Columnnists will start from the assumption that what the WH says is wrong, and do their best to show it.

Yes, you'll have so much responsible journalism, you'll just die of happiness.

And I'm not making this up--we can be *sure* it will go that way, because only six short years ago, we had been enjoying that delightful spectacle for about eight years.

The press is a big part of the problem. But they aren't the only problem. There's something about the interaction between the press and the other actors in DC--the consultants, the lobbyists, the insiders of all sorts--that exacerbates the journalists' timidity when a Republican is in power, and exacerbates their love of cheap shots when it's a Democrat.

We need to understand the whole media pathology, because it's not just the press proper.

[Brian Boru]

Good news on the deficit, Mr. President. Now, about the debt -- not so much.

[Cranky Observer]

> Here it is: if we ever see a Democrat in
> the WH, you can be *absolutely* sure that
> the press will rediscover its teeth, and go
> after every statement that the Democrat
> makes. They'll subject every policy, and
> every change in policy, to scorching
> scrutiny.

As the saying goes over in the wingnutosphere, Happy nails it! The storm of press criticism that will face the next Democratic President who isn't Hillary will make global warming look like a spring shower.

The storm of press criticism that a President Hillary would face would make "The Day After Tomorrow" look like a spring shower.

Cranky

[marc]

Brad,

I agree wholeheartedly that reporters, and those who wish to be educated readers, should make a practice of reading the more responsible critics of whomever is proposing a policy. I like your list, although I would note that most of those writers are more liberarian than mainstream conservative. Also, reading 'JaneGalt' and the Economist on US economics may be a bit of a duplication.

Which economics weblogs (other, of course, than this one)would you recommend for reporters writing on Republican proposals? The blogs I read on the left tend to have a more political, and less economic focus than those I read on the right.

[Movie Guy]

Brad,

An excellent post.

It's true that we do not have the public benefit of consistent quality research and thorough presentation by news media representatives and news organizations.

U.S. citizens have been denied adequate facts and proper analysis by the news media which adversely affects the ability of citizens to properly evaluate the performances of their national, state, and local governments.

As you stated, "Americans need to have their government covered [by the news media] as if the government were their common agent doing important thing that affect their lives."

[Mike]

Seem to me, DeLong's rant amounts to little more than an elaborate attempt to blame the victim(s).

Seems to me, America's problem is TOO LITTLE democracy, not too much. Seems to me, the elites of BOTH of the 'established' political parties are FAR more interested in (maintaining their political duopoly while) vying for power, priviledge and patronage among themselves than EITHER of them are in serving the public interest.

And, what with 'designer' (congressional) districts, corruptible (and corrupted) ballotting processes, the 'institutionazed' perversities of the Electoral College and a 'money equals speech' Supreme Court, NEITHER of them appear to be much troubled by the fear of EVER being held accountable by the public (OR the 'corporate' press) for their (mutually beneficial) 'failings'...

[Jon Fernquest]

Excellent! Statements of first principles like this are absolutely essential to maintain focus in the face of information glut.

(particularly the part about checks and balances, democracy as a religion of uncritical participation has been fueled by web reader's choice polling, info glut, reduced attention spans, diminished capacity to follow a long well-reasoned, perhaps boring, ***but correct*** argument)

If a rich and powerful country like the United States with nobel prize economists galore can't even practice what it preaches, what hope is there of the rest of the world taking a rational and balanced approach to economic life?

[Gene O'Grady]

I'm puzzled as to how bribery by the King of Macedon (presumably Philip II -- hope the number is right) has to do with the Melian dialogue. In fact bribery from the outside (whether by Philip or various Great Kings) almost always aimed at a quietist Athens focused on domestic consumerism. It's a pity that Demosthenes (who almost has to be read in Greek to come across as a great writer) can't compete with Thucydides, whose merits by and large come through just fine in Crawley's 19th century translation, in our current educational system.

For what it's worth, Calvin Coolidge, who may (or may not) be the mainstreams economist's beau ideal of a president, cited Demosthenes as the reason it was worth the effort to learn Greek, even with the low level of proficiency he claims to have attained.

But to come forward a few centuries, if they had had weblogs when Clinton's largely successful economic program of, inter alia, tax cuts and a raise in the minimum wage, went in, I'm sure your usual suspects would have been weeping and moaning that C's program would lead to wrack and ruin. They would, of course, have been dead wrong, and not wrong in a way that was useful either in advancing honest debate or positively influencing policy. What am I missing? (I mean, other than academic training in economics.)

[CapitalistImperialistPig]

Should I guess that Berkley's leftward drift has now carried it beyond the international dateline?

[roublen]

I really, really like this post. But I could not trust any economics analyst not capable of writing the sentence "The Bush administration has been more dishonest on budget policy than the Clinton administration". I think that disqualifies the four weblogs you mentioned. If they're not capable of writing the above sentence, how can you possibly trust anything else they might have to say about economic policy? I'm not asking a rhetorical question, I really want to know.

You should be willing to work with them, to find common ground, to collaborate with them, to love them, but how can you *trust* them? On what grounds?

[roublen]

On the other hand, I can definitely agree with the principle that you should place people in a position of trust even when they don't necessarily deserve it. If they live up to it, you've gained something. If they don't, you might not have lost anything, depending on the circumstances.

[andres]

"Athens in the Pelopponesian war indeed. Cleon was a businessman, he knew how to multiply.

Oh and Anders he was, extraordinarily, not a landed aristocrat. I think the most blood thirsty Athenian politician was not one of the oligarchs you blame. You can make your argument only by arguing that all historians were in on the scam and lying. That's tinfoil hat territory."

Er, I didn't say they were landed aristocrats, Robert. Landed aristocracy and helotdom was the realm of Sparta, not Athens. And usually landed aristocrats are so secure in their wealth (barring helot rebellions) that they see no need to invest in either business or military ventures. It usually takes a merchant/businessman in perpetual paranoia/competition with other merchant businessmen to engage in both creative destruction and destructive creation.

The bloodthirsty politician you have in mind I think is Alcibiades, who initially led the attack on Syracuse. But for every Alcibiades/Bush who wants military glory, there is a Cleon/Nicias/Cheney willing to bankroll the scheme for his personal profit.

Hah. If he was looking to keep the comments on topic, it looks like Brad blundered by bringing up ancient Greece.

[roublen]

I also could not trust any economic policy analyst not capable of warning unsophisticated investors about possibly overvalued assets when they are, by conventional measures, in a bubble. Vice-versa (i.e. not capable of recommending undervalued assets in an asset slump) is also true, but much less common. And in going to Mankiw's blog, I see that he asserts that one shouldn't expect investments in public health to improve economic growth.

See, this is what I mean. I'm willing to take your word for it that Mankiw is a good technical economist. But I assert that there seems to be just something fatally flawed about his judgement, which makes Mankiw, for all his knowledge, a very poor economic policy analyst. I don't want to be a know-nothing, but isn't it common sense that while there doesn't seem to be a correlation between public health investments and poverty reduction, correlation is not necessarily causation, and since nobody really knows how to increase growth or reduce poverty, we should temporarily put aside looking for one big solution, and try to get lots of little things as right as we possibly can, including public health investments?

In other words, though it hasn't solved the problem yet, the cost is modest, the theory is sound (i.e. healthier people are more productive), so it's worth a shot. This kind of simple common sense seems missing in nearly all of Mankiw's policy analysis, which is why he nearly always reaches the wrong conclusions.

And most fatally, Mankiw asserts that public health investments will not increase economic growth, without addressing what the money would be spent on otherwise (i.e. repealing the "death tax"). This is not just obtuseness, this is deliberately ignoring opportunity costs, which in a first-rate technical economist is just flat-out dishonesty.

In *all* your criticisms of the Bush adminstration economic policy, Mankiw would disagree with you. Maybe the disagreement would be couched respectfully, he would agree with you whenever it doesn't matter, he wouldn't adopt the same dishonest Bush arguments, he would invent new, quite clever, semi-intellectually consistent arguments on the spur of the moment. But the policy would be the same. So why do you trust him?

I don't want to poison the well and further polarize an already too polarized world. But there's a disconnect between your contempt for Bush and your respect for Mankiw et al. I'm not sure whether the solution is to be more respectful of Bush, or the other alternative.

Or perhaps, the answer is to bypass this pointless debate (are conservative economists trustworthy?) entirely, and simply to search for the policies which really will increase growth and reduce poverty, implement them, perhaps on a small scale over time, and simply win over all people willing to be persuaded by evidence, whoever that list includes, over time.

[marc]

roublen,

I think you are missing the point in De Long's recommendation that reporters read those blogs. It is not that he 'trusts' them to provide a balanced view. Read his comment above -- "There will be things wrong with Democratic pollcy proposals. And Greg Mankiw [and the others] will point them out"

What he left unsaid is that more Democratic bloggers and pundits may have a tendency to be less critical of a new Democratic administration. It is important for reporters to get both sides of a story; to do so they should seek out the better critics of any proposals. For this purpose it doesen't matter that Mankiw won't say that "The Bush administration has been more dishonest on budget policy than the Clinton administration" because he is not recommending Mankiw as a critic of the Bush administration. What matters is that Mankiw et. al. are likely to provide a critical, yet reasonable, view of the H.Clinton/Warner/Edwards administration's proposals. The reporter shouldn't take this view as gospel, but use it to balance the spin from the H.Clinton/Warner/Edwards administration, and the -- likely too uncritical -- views of Democratic economists like our friend DeLong.

[bad Jim]

The problem here, as elsewhere, is that too few of us expect the next president to be a Democrat.

[thesoapleft]

Yes, but ...

So-called journalists are doing the jobs their employers want them to be doing. If the so-called journalists wrote stories as Prof DeLong wanted they would not see the light of day and those so-called journalists would be unemployed.

The problem is not so-called journalists. This is not a bottom-up problem. It is a top down problem.

[anne]

Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman and Louis Uchitelle and Edward Rothstein and Frank Rich and Molly Ivins and James Carroll, are as fine heirs as I might wish, and there are of course more.

[Matt]

I think it's important for reporters to know, without any ifs ands or buts, that they're propagating lies-- And to know, again, without any doubts-- that the propagation of lies is part of the story-- even if that particular part of the story doesn't happen to show up in the particular front-page dead-wood version under discussion.

[DOD]

Is anyone else seeing strange things in the ordering of posts? Why is this post stillat the top of the blog?

[NeilS]

The President's statements are so vague that they are difficult to attack.

Examples: "The tax cuts are working."

"Revenues are greater than expected."

Pundits and others take this farther and argue that the tax cuts pay for themselves. This is demonstrably false, but Bush's statements are not.

I say this having just left Howard Kurtz's online discussion at the WP. I wanted to quote IF Stone's question: "When the government lies, must the press fib?" But I couldn't find any clear lie to use as an example.

[Ellen1910]

And the Alsop brothers -- thanks a lot Walter.

[kharris]

Did Brad list rightish weblogs for Straussian purposes? Probably not. He has said nice things about the authors of each blog in the past.

Why did Brad list 4 weblogs rather than 2? The last 2 are busy at being partisan as often as they are at being principled. Here, I think Brad has erred. If whatsername over at Jane Galt is a good economist (well versed is not the same as good), that's fine, but asking reporters to check in just because somebody is technically good is a mistake. The armchair economist guy may not be teaching at Harvard, but he speaks a language that reports may be able to understand, and more important, that they may be able to use.

Mankiw has the aura of authority, and uses it to try to dirty up Krugman more than just about anything else. Is that what you want impressionable journalistic minds reading? No thanks.

The point to take away, even if it isn't the point Brad intended, is that a highly trained economist widely familiar with expert weblogs written by economists, could find just 2 on the write that are honest, even if they tend to see things through a conservative lense. The others will point out faults with Democrat policies, even when there are no faults to find.

[kharris]

"...on the write..."??? Oops.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"And most fatally, Mankiw asserts that public health investments will not increase economic growth, without addressing what the money would be spent on otherwise (i.e. repealing the "death tax"). This is not just obtuseness, this is deliberately ignoring opportunity costs, which in a first-rate technical economist is just flat-out dishonesty."

We are well past the point where we can talk about the extra money laying around being spent on things. Considering the current deficit, you have to ask what other things will I cut to get public health investment? You have to ask, what will increased taxes for the public health investment crowd out? You are making Bush's error if you think that there is lots of uncommitted money to spend.

[anne]

"Considering the current deficit, you have to ask what other things will I cut to get public health investment?"

Oh, I know, we can cut the needless lunatic $10 billion dollars a month we are spending on Iraq and spend the same on public health investment which would be grand. Not that we cannot spend what we need on public health investment anyway no matter the deficit, but we could leave Iraq immediately and save American lives and minds and morals along with the lunatic material cost. Terrific.

[Barry]

Yup, here's Sebastian with Phase II of 'tax cuts lead to increased revenues - trust us'. This one is titled 'there seems to be a huge defict, which came from the Gamma Quadrant.'.

Aside from the Iraq War, Sebastian, an excellent source of government revenue would be to tax the rich - put rates back to Clinton levels. If you'd care to recall reality, we certainly had lots of funds being invested back then, so it's not like those tax rates were starving anybody of investment.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

Anne and Barry, you are projecting a defense of Bush's tax cuts that absolutely isn't there.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

In fact, I realize that you have no reason to know this, but over at ObsidianWings I advocated a tax increase for the war in Iraq.

[Adam]

I seem to remember Brad recommending Paul Blustein's reporting several months back. And on Brad's advice, I read his book on Argentina (which wasn't as good as his book on the Asian crisis).

Is it the Post that makes hack journalists out of good writers, or something else?

[anne]

No; I do not in the least wish a tax increase for the tragic occupation of Iraq. I want us to leave immediately, and have wanted this for more than 3 years. The deficit does not bother me, at least not now, what I want is to leave Iraq. Leave Iraq, and use the saving for health care investment as suggested.

[liberal]

Brad DeLong wrote, "And Jane Galt will point them out to."

Why are you helping to give an aura of respectability to Jane "2x4" Galt?

[liberal]

Sebastian Holsclaw wrote, "In fact, I realize that you have no reason to know this, but over at ObsidianWings I advocated a tax increase for the war in Iraq."

A tax on who/what?

[bartkid]

>Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit.

Some in Washington are members of "what we call the reality-based community" and others, like Mr. Bush are in the "creating other new realities" community, otherwise known as confabulists.

[Thomas T. Schweitzer]

Landres: "Landed aristocracy and helotdom was the realm of Sparta, not Athens. And usually landed aristocrats are so secure in their wealth (barring helot rebellions) that they see no nned to invest in either business or military ventures."
No, really!! So Sparta was not a militaristic society? Was the Prussian land-owning aristocracy not militaristic?? Were Attila and Djenghis Khan merchant/ busunessmen??? Is it worth while to waste time on reading Landres' rants????

[Bernard Yomtov]

"Why are you helping to give an aura of respectability to Jane "2x4" Galt?"

I too question the inclusion of Galt. Unless she's learned a lot since I quit reading her, I'd say she's careless about facts and entirely too eager to make claims supported only by the authority of vague "friends" or "former profs."

[gary1]

Brad,

This is dead-, spot-on, with one minor but crucial quibble. RE:

'Reporters describe themselves as under pressure to do "hard news" rather than "analytical" pieces, and "hard news" seems to mean a "he said, she said" story which opens "the President said X" and goes on to say "experts differ" leaving readers with absolutely no clue and no way to judge . . . "

If only! (If only, that is, they'd identify the dissenters as experts, of which there are always plenty). But, NOooo! The standard "he said/she said" formulation is not "President said"/"experts differ", but rather "President said"/"DEMS/CRITICS differ", thus reducing informed, substantive dissent from Admin lies and nonsense to mere partisan bickering. And that, of course, is the evil genius that Rove knows to exploit to the max.

[George Fiala]

Walter Lippman came back from the Paris Peace talks and couldn't believe that the US wouldn't join the League of Nations. He thought about it awhile and decided that was because of the propaganda of the press, or rather the nature of the ill informed American due to the poor nature of the newspaper profession and wrote Public Opinion. I read it recently and it not dated at all... unfortunately.

[andres]

Hey Schweitzer...First, please spell my name right; it's not that difficult. Secondly, please read more carefully. I wrote about the inclination towards military _ventures_, but did not write about militarism. There is no doubt that Sparta was a more militarized society than Athens (you have to be, if you rely on slave agriculture rather than food imports). However, most sources I've read, and I think Thucydides also, are in agreement that it was Athens, not Sparta, which started the Peloponnesian war. The Spartans may have been militaristic, but they were more politically conservative than their Attic neighbor.

As a favor to Brad and those commenters trying to stay on topic, could we please confine any further andres smackdowns on ancient Greece to e-mail? Thanks a bunch.