Kevin Drum on Joe Klein and the Little Deceptions of the Mainstream Media

Kevin Drum writes:

The Washington Monthly: THE POLITICAL PAST TENSE....In his column this week griping about blogger bile, Joe Klein lets us in on a trick of the trade. He's describing a blog post he wrote shortly after the vote on the war supplemental:

Congresswoman Jane Harman of California called as the debate was taking place. "Look, I would love to have cast a vote against Bush on this," she told me....

And then Harman changed her position. After we spoke, she voted against the funding. The next day, I was blasted by a number of left-wing bloggers: Klein screwed up! I had quoted Harman in the past tense — common usage for politicians who know their words will appear after a vote takes place. That was sloppy and... suspicious! Proof that you just can't trust the mainstream media.

Huh. Is it true that politicians routinely speak in the past tense in situations like this? This makes sense (and I've done it myself) if you're taping a radio show that won't air for a while, which makes the time context unclear to the audience. But in news articles that's not really true. The time context is usually obvious.

Anyway, I've never heard this before, so it's an interesting tidbit to know. Do all politicians do this? For print and broadcast, or just print? Or what? Inquiring minds want to know.

I think that there is a little more here that Kevin Drum misses. Let's roll back the tape and watch Joe Klein:

The Iraq Vote - Swampland - TIME: I was wrong, sadly, last week to say that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would vote for the Iraq supplemental bill. They voted against.... Voting against it means you're in favor of a precipitous departure from Iraq.... It's difficult... to have much respect for Clinton and Obama, who... are opposed to an immediate withdrawal, but voted for a measure which, if passed, would force one.... Yesterday I spoke with Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Ca.) just back from Iraq, who voted for the bill--as did a majority of Democrats who are not running for President. "Look, I would love to have cast a vote against Bush on this. We need a new strategy and I hope we can force one in September," she told me. "But I flew into Baghdad on a troop transport with 150 kids, heading into the field. To vote against this bill was to vote against giving them the equipment, the armor they need. I couldn't do that"...

Now there are two things wrong with Klein here. The first--the big one--is the claim that voting against the supplemental "would force" "a precipitous departure from Iraq." That's simply wrong--(i) "precipitous" needs to be redefined to mean "slowly and gradually over the next year or more," (ii) voting against this version of the supplemental has to trigger not a new round of Pennsylvania Avenue negotiations but an immediate reversion to the earlier supplemental, (iii) Bush has to--this time--sign the earlier supplemental, and (iv) all language in the supplemental has to be automatically rolled into the fiscal-2008 Defense appropriation for Klein's claim to have even a colorable chance of not being totally false. But let that pass.

But there is a second thing wrong with Klein here. It's the authorial viewpoint Klein adopts. The viewpoint he adopts is the viewpoint of someone writing and reporting about the supplemental vote after it takes place. After the roll call vote, he looks and sees which prominent Democrats he respects voted for the supplemental, and finds that Jane Harman voted against it. He talks to Jane Harman on a person-to-person level. She discusses her inmost thoughts with him. He is a Washington insider, with special sekrit access to the thoughts and ideas of powerful decisionmakers.

Suppose that a basement-dwelling bathrobe-clad weblogger had written Klein's passage. It would have read somewhat differently. Perhaps:

I thought that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would vote for the Iraq supplemental bill. But the clowns voted against it! By voting against it they voted for an immediate, cowardly withdrawal from Iraq, sacrificing the lives of thousands of our dedicated Iraqi allies! You can't respect them.

But there are Democrats you can respect. I have here a statement Democratic representative Jane Harman's office issued yesterday, before the vote, explaining that she planned to vote against it:

I would love to have cast a vote against the administration on this. We need a new strategy and I hope we can force one in September. But we have to think of the troops first. I flew into Baghdad on a troop transport with 150 kids, heading into the field. To vote against this bill was to vote against giving them the equipment, the armor they need. I could not do that.

UPDATE: Ooops! Jane Harman voted against the supplemental on this. I guess she found that she could vote against the troops and against giving them their equipment after all.

This second version makes no pretenses at being a Washington insider with special knowledge and insight into the hearts and thoughts of powerful decisionmakers. It makes no pretense at being able to get Jane Harman on the phone in the immediate aftermath of an important vote. It makes no pretense that one's interactions with Harman are one-on-one person-to-person talks that reveal inner thoughts rather than guarded and scripted interactions that are part of a superb politician's presentation of her public image.

One of the important things going on here is that Klein's error let slip the secret that the insider status which is supposed to create the knowledge that Time pays Joe Klein to convey to the readers is worth much, much less than Klein (and Time) with it were. After all, Harman didn't tell Klein what she was thinking, did she? She didn't say "I'm under enormous pressure here, with powerful political and policy arguments cutting both ways," did she?

Comments

[p.lukasiak]

not to toot my own horn too much, but I detailed the precise nature of the lies in Klein's column at http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/p_lukasiak/2007/jun/07/joe_kleins_big_lie

One example...

In his column, Joe claims he talked to Harman, posted about it to Swampland, "then Harman changed her mind." And the Swamplanders and the rest of the blogosphere had a hissy fit, despite Joe's good faith efforts.

except that Joe posted about harman at 9:37 AM on May 25...and the House vote is timestamped at 6:45 PM May 24th. And the reason people went batshit had almost nothing to do with getting the Harman vote wrong, but with getting everything else wrong...

[kate G.]

Still, I think Brad's point is a very good one. Exactly what kind of "insider" knowledge is Klein purveying when either his top secret insider informant doesn't actually know how she's going to vote, or he doesn't bother to follow the vote the way gthe most distant, unenfranchised, uninformed voter might and then explicate the politics for the readership. If Klein's selling anything its telling us rubes something we couldn't ascertain for ourselves. In this case we could have done a better job ourselves reading harman's statements in her local press and the local pressure she was getting that eventually forced her to vote just the opposite of what she told Klein. And this is, in fact, why I prefer unaffiliated blog coverage. Most of the blogs I read would have reported it this way:

Harman, a frequent supporter of Bush's more egregious policies and a defence hawk is floating the argument that she *will have to* vote for the supplemental because she says, aping the GOP line, that the troops will be hurt otherwise. But close watchers of her district and the pressure she is under from other dems and her own constituents make this a nail biter--she could be forced to change her mind. Lets wait and see.

That report, which pretty much any of the blogs I read might have written, would have been worth writing and reading if you really were interested in all the issues surrounding that vote.

but as brad points out Klein's whole shtick is that he's like a reporter so he embeds and hides his commentary by carefully positioning the "direct quote" and the supposed timing of the piece.

Kate G.

[Neil B.]

Klein is so....klein!
Brad's depiction of ordinary pajamahadeen writing style and informativity is a great way to show that, indeed, ordinary bloggers are so much better than the inslider jerks.

BTW, where does Klein get off griping about nastiness from the left bloggers? Doesn't he look at the trash from LGF, the Freepers, Ann Coulter, etc? All we can give him credit for recently is the rag against the aristocracy, (for which Brad rightly gave him props - can you imagine a dick like Glenn Reynolds being so generous to someone he usually picks on?)

[~~~~]

What interested me was that all this happened only a few days after the blogs were all over Klein for citing an anonymous source that supported an administration POV. He had some noble defense of that, of course. But now that we can see what goes on when he gets a quote from official sources, I really don't want to imagine what happens when anonymous voices speak through Klein.

[p.lukasiak]

another thing this dust-up reveals is "quote shopping".... Klein made up his mind, then went after a quote that (sort of -- not even Harman claimed the vote against represented "immediate withdrawal", just that it would "endanger the troops") support his argument -- and then criticise those who disagree within based on his own erroneous understanding and the quote he "found."

What is even worse is Klein's hypocrisy -- he lashes out at Clinton and Obama for bowing to political pressure and "changing their minds" based on the faulty premise that the vote against meant "immediate withdrawal" and they'd both taken positions against "immediate withdrawal."

Niehter Clinton nor Obama changed their positions on the bill...they never announced how they would vote prior to the vote.

But there is no criticism of Harman when she ADMITS TO changing her vote after pressure from her constituency. Clinton and Obama get convicted of a crime they didn't commit, while Harman gets a pass despite admitting to the same crime.

...and Klein wonders why he gets "wanker of the day" so often from Atrios?

[SqueakyRat]

See, I would've thought the most basic thing wrong with Klein's column was that Obama and Clinton didn't vote for a measure at all. They voted against one -- a supplemental appropriation with no withdrawal provisions. It does make a difference.

[PeterB]

We can at least credit Klein with quoting Harman exactly how she wanted to be quoted - both from when she explained why she couldn't vote against the supplemental and how she didn't think any differently (personally) even after she voted against it.

As a constituent of hers, I feel much more informed about where she's coming from. Before learning of what she said, I interpreted her No vote and her No vote on the 'rules of debate' to mean she was through giving deference to Bush and would be willing to force him to change on Iraq, whether he liked it or not. Instead, it means nothing, and she's still an endorser - even after voting against the freaking supplemental - of the Republican talking point that not giving a blank check = denying the troops what they need. A talking point that will forever keep us in Iraq until we take it out of the media discourse on Iraq.

Right now, she's still "in" with the DC insiders like Klein by endorsing the "serious" view on Iraq while making her constituents think she's taking a harder line through her No vote and her press release. (A press release by the way, that describes the troop-defunding smear she said to Klein as "rubbish".)

[Robert Waldmann]

I think Klein's argument that voting against the supplemental is voting for precipitous departure is that, if no supplemental at all were approved and signed, the departure would be precipitous. That is, he is arguing that voting no on a bill means voting for no bill at all not for further negotiation and legislation. Of course this is nonsense. Klein didn't accuse Bush of vetoing for precipitous departure, but it is slightly different nonsense than you version of kleinthought -- worse nonsense I would say, but different.

[banana]

> But I flew into Baghdad on a troop transport with 150 kids, heading into the field.

Oops! US is using child soldiers?