Brad DeLong

Mammal Nate Silver vs. the Journamalistic Dinosaurs

Nate Silver: Politico Co-Founders Lack 'Curiosity For The World Outside Of The Bubble':

I thought it was a good interview. It's striking how preoccupied Harris and VandeHei are with the perception that Politico is too "insidery". My personal critique of their work cuts a little deeper than that, however. It's not that they are too "insidery" per se, but that the perceptions of Beltway insiders, which Politico echoes and embraces, are not always very insightful or accurate. In other words, the conventional wisdom is often wrong, especially in Washington.

Do Tom Friedman and David Brooks All by Themselves Make the New York Times Op-Ed Page a Value-Subtracting Proposition--One That We Would Be Better Off Without?

Dan Drezner makes the case with respect to Tom Friedman:

Man, the State and trust: Thomas Friedman captures the sentiments of a lot of the foreign policy community with today's column.  This passage in particular pretty much sums it up: 

Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11 — abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened. But I worry even more about another 9/11…. If there is one more 9/11 — or worse, an attack involving nuclear material — it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it. If there were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: “Do whatever you need to do to, privacy be damned, just make sure this does not happen again.”… That is why I’ll reluctantly, very reluctantly, trade off the government using data mining to look for suspicious patterns in phone numbers called and e-mail addresses — and then have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress — to prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government a license to look at anyone, any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime….

Friedman's… at least he's straightforward…. That said, here's what I worry about:

It Seems That the New York Times Has Gone Bat----: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Weblogging

Hunter S. Thompson:

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?" Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. "What the hell are you yelling about?" he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. "Never mind," I said. "It's your turn to drive." I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

In Which I Finally Make Time to Shape-Shift Back into My Direwolf Form and Think About Michael Kinsley: Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Bang-Query-Bang-Query Weblogging

So I finally made a chunk of time to read and think about Michael Kinsley's response to Paul Krugman's rebuttal of Kinsley's claim that Krugman was engaged in a "misguided moral crusade against" rather than a technocratic critique of "austerity".

First and most essential, I need to set some rules here: If I'm going to be called a canine of any form, standards must be maintained.

I insist that it be not "attack dog" but either:

• the Maoist "running dog", or
• Jon Snow's direwolf: Ghost.

Those are the approved options. Pick one. Use it. Stick to it. It's really not hard at all to do.

Capisce?

I hope that that is now clear...

Monday DeLong Smackdown Watch: Paul Krugman Calls Me Soft on Hippie-Punching and Soft on the Causes of Hippie-Punching Weblogging

Paul Krugman:

Macroeconomic Hippie-Punching: Brad DeLong interprets the Keynes-bashing opening of Ken Rogoff’s latest as strategic hippie-punching (see definition 2.2), designed to soften up his readers for the easy-money, debt-forgiveness message that follows.

Maybe that’s it, or maybe it’s just personal ire at some of the hippies. Either way, though, there is a question about whether it’s an effective strategy. I don’t think so.

Michael Kinsley's Repeated Factual Errors: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?

Dan Drezner is sick of trying to reason with Michael Kinsley:

Sometimes a factual error is just a factual error: I've spent a rather alarming portion of this week wading into intellectual pissing matches, so I'm loath to respond to Michael Kinsley's response to last week's brouhaha over austerity policies. But one paragraph does merit a response. After noting the backlash to his last column, Kinsley writes the following:

There are two possible explanations. First, it might be that I am not just wrong (in saying that the national debt remains a serious problem and we’d be well advised to worry about it) but just so spectacularly and obviously wrong that there is no point in further discussion. Or second, to bring up the national debt at all in such discussions has become politically incorrect. To disagree is not just wrong but offensive. Such views do exist. Racism for example. I just didn’t realize that the national debt was one of them.

Michael Kinsley Says: Leave Ben Carson Alooooonnnneeee!!!!: Thursday "WTF?!" Weblogging

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Scott Lemieux:

Did Michael Kinsley Invent the Concept of Same-Sex Marriage?: [T]his great moment in unwarranted self-aggrandizement: "The first known mention of gay marriage is an article (“Here Comes the Groom” by Andrew Sullivan) commissioned by me and published in this magazine in 1989." I… wow. I don’t mean to suggest that the Sullivan article wasn’t important in its way…. But “first known mention?” I don’t know what the very first was, but I do know that there were lawsuits claiming that bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional that made it to state appellate courts in Minnesota, Kentucky, and Washington between 1971 and 1974…

The context:

Ryan Cooper Talks to Michael Kinsley, as One Would to a Child

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

To extend a metaphor originated by R.G. Hawtrey: the house is on fire, and Michael Kinsley is out there screeching about how we dare not hook up the firehose because there was a flood 40 years ago. And now Ryan Cooper tells me Kinsley is back--this time screeching not just because those of us who know what we are talking about want to hook up the firehose, but also because we are not treating him with the sufficient respect he believes is his due.

So Ryan Cooper attempts a mitzvah, and tries to get through by taking the advice Saris offers in Galaxy Quest as to how one should talk to Mathezar:

Another Opinions-of-Shape-of-Earth-Differ Journamalist Who Doesn't Do His Homework: Charles Lane of the Washington Post

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Charles Lane emulates Clive Crook and Michael Kinsley in not citing and not quoting from the people he is criticizing. But he goes further: he doesn't even try to read what they have just written.

Daniel Kuehn delivers the smackdown:

Facts & other stubborn things: An email to Charles Lane of the Washington Post: Perhaps I'm missing something, but isn't your "compromise" option precisely Krugman's position? I think it's the right idea, but I think that's exactly where Keynesians are. The tough part is figuring out how to get the pro-austerity crowd to that point.

Keynes actually advocated separating the current budget from the capital budget, and it was the current budget that was supposed to be balanced, not necessarily the two together. Most economists agree that you can run perpetual budgets and still maintain a stable debt ratio as long as the deficits aren't too large.

Daniel Kuehn
Doctoral student, Department of Economics
American University

Daniel W. Drezner: MIchael Kinsley Produces the Worst Piece of Conventional Wisdom You Will Read This Year

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Daniel W. Drezner:

The worst piece of conventional wisdom you will read this year: Stagflation in the 1970s was caused primarily by an inward shift of the aggregate supply curve due to a surge in commodity prices, particularly energy. Some central banks responded with accommodating monetary policies that accelerated inflation even further. Fiscal policy was an innocent bystander to this whole shebang. So I honestly don't know what the hell Kinsley is talking about. More importantly, the current macroeconomic climate is really, really different from the 1970s. Inflation was a Big Bad Problem during that decade. It is not a problem right now. If inflation were spiking, then a genuine debate could be had on macroeconomic policy options. But that's not the case.

Sidney Hillman Would Be Really Pissed at Sidney Hillman Foundation President Bruce Raynor and Company, Is What I'm Saying: Tuesday Hoisted from the Internet from Eleven Years Ago

Why oh why can't we have better foundations?

Tim Noah:

Gore, Sullivan, and "Fifth Column": Andrew Sullivan wants to know why it was OK for Al Gore (in an interview with the New York Observer) to describe Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the Washington Times as a "fifth column," but not OK for Sullivan to use that same epithet to describe the tiny band of leftists who, after Sept. 11, opposed the war against al-Qaida. As one who criticized Sullivan for slinging the term "fifth column," Chatterbox will gladly explain: It's the context, stupid.

Department of "WTF?!?!": Education Gap Weblogging

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

For at least half a generation, liberals--at least liberals that I know--have been hammering on the fact that the stepping-away from the commitment to universal free or nearly-free education has been a long-run disaster for America. With Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz's The Race Between Education and Technology serving as its analytical spearhead, the liberals I know spend lots of time talking about how the pace of technological progress requires a more-educated and thus more-skilled workforce, and about how the rise in college costs starting around 1970 stopped the normal American pattern by which each generation gets much more education in its tracks--with rising income inequality between the 80th and the 20th percentile being a big consequences:

Solutions proposed vary from having your college costs be an income-contingent grant recaptured from those who earn much in life by a surcharge on your form 1040 to a mammoth federal commitment to universal access to broadband and to free provision of the highest-quality education online.

Some liberals (e.g., Larry Mishel of EPI) go further, and say that rising 80/20 inequality is the result not just of our losing the race between education and technology but also the collapse of labor unions. The Goldin-Katz alliance (or which I am a part) tends to see the collapse of the union movement as a consequence of the loss of the race.

Now comes Timothy Noah to tell me that none of this focus that I see among the liberals I talk to ever happened:

The 1 Percent Are Only Half the Problem: Most recent discussion about economic inequality in the United States has focused on the top 1 percent… that if we would just put a tight enough choke chain on the 1 percent, then we’d solve the problem of income inequality. But alas, that isn’t true, because it wouldn’t address the other half of the story: the rise of the educated class. Since 1979 the income gap between people with college or graduate degrees and people whose education ended in high school has grown….

Conservatives don’t typically like to talk about income inequality. It stirs up uncomfortable questions about economic fairness….

Liberals resist talking about the skills-based gap because they don’t want to tell the working classes that they’re losing ground because they didn’t study hard enough. Liberals prefer to focus on the 1 percent-based gap. Conceiving of inequality as something caused by the very richest people has obvious political appeal…

And it is at this point that I say: "WTF?!?!"

Now let me say that Timothy Noah is one of the very best of mainstream American journalists--he isn't an opinions-of-shape-of-earth-differ-both-liberals-and-conservatives-have-a-point clown uninterested in policy substance who covers our nation from a celebrity-gossip perspective.

But here we have, I think, another example of the Michael Kinsley-Clive Crook disorder: Noah provides no links to and no quotes from "liberals" who "resist talking about the skills-based gap because they don’t want to tell the working classes that they’re losing ground because they didn’t study hard enough". So he winds up just making stuff up--and the New York Times editorial process is sufficiently jelly-like that nobody asks him "who are you talking about?". This produces bad thought.

Indeed, read further down in the article and you find, near the end, links to Larry Mishel definitely not being resistant to talking about the decline of unions, to Josh Bivens not being resistant to talking about workers' reduced bargaining power and the 80/20 wage gap, Barack Obama and his staff worrying about the rising costs of college--in a story reported by Timothy Noah himself.

Are these people not liberals?

Seven Howlers from Michael Kinsley's Very Misguided War Against Paul Krugman

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Michael Kinsley is really confused:

People who favor austerity are “austerians,” a clever Krugman coinage that makes adherents sound like aliens from another planet…

Ummm… If you Google "first use of austerian" Google tells you about first uses of "Australian". If you Google "first use of austerian -Australian" Google tries to send you to first uses of "Austrian" that do not contain "Australian". If you tell Google you are serious, it sends you to WordSpy, which says:

"Remember, the political idea being expressed a year ago was that because the GOP interpreted its 1994 mandate as a call to budget-balancing austerity, the electorate would never give the White House to the GOP if its nominee was also a root-canal austerian." —Jude Wanniski, "Reminder from Forbes… Crossroads for Dole," The Washington Times, March 20, 1996.

So not Paul Krugman. Jude Wanninski. Howler #1.

Kinsley goes on:

It’s easier to describe what the anti-austerians believe than the austerians themselves. Anti-austerians believe that governments around the world need to stop worrying about their debts for a while and continue pouring money into the economy until the threat of recession or worse is well and truly over. Austerians want the opposite. But what is the opposite? Is President Barack Obama, for example, an austerian? To Republicans and conservatives, yes…

These two howlers--ascription of "austerian" to Krugman instead of Wanninski, and "yes" where he means "no", indicate that this is a first draft: neither checking-of-facts nor reading the ms. aloud to be sure that there are no "yeses" where there should be "noes".Which raises the question of what value is being added by the New Republic's editorial staff here, but I digress…

On to substance, rather than fact-checking and proofreading:

Why The New Republic Should Not Collect Subscription Revenue But Rather Have to Pay Us to Subscribe: Wednesday Hoisted from the Archives from Four Years Ago

I see that Jeffrey Rosen is still writing for the New Republic. Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Brad DeLong : Why Do Intelligent People Write for the New Republic?: It is a mystery.

James McKinley interviewing Jose Cabranes about Sonia Sotomayor:

Sonia Sotomayor: "She's tough and tenacious as well as smart," said Justice Jose A. Cabranes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a mentor and former professor of Sotomayor's at Yale Law School. "She is not intimidated or overwhelmed by the eminence or power or prestige of any party, or indeed of the media"...

What Jeffrey Rosen of the New Republic did to that quote from Jose Cabranes:

Jeffrey Rosen: The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor... was “not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench.... She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren’t penetrating and don’t get to the heart of the issue.” (During one argument, an elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, “Will you please stop talking and let them talk?”) The Second Circuit judge Jose Cabranes, who would later become her colleague, put this point more charitably in a 1995 interview with The New York Times: “She is not intimidated or overwhelmed by the eminence or power or prestige of any party, or indeed of the media”...

Jose Cabanes was not "being charitable" here.

A retraction and apology would be nice here, Chris. One of many you now owe the world...

Does Anybody Understand Why Clive Crook Thinks Krugman Believes in MMT and Is Lying When He Says He Worries About the Long-Run Deficit?

Clive Crook:

Krugman, DeLong and Radical Centrism - Bloomberg: Krugman proposed raising taxes on all Americans while the recovery was still very weak. He recognized this as a fiscal tightening that would put people out of work. He advocated it because the alternative of retaining the Bush tax cuts would have handed the Republicans a victory, and because -- get this -- he was worried about the long-term deficit implications. There you have it: Krugman the apolitical Keynesian.

I mean, this is damned weird.

Ryan Cooper Tries to Guide Clive Crook Back to Reality

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Ryan Cooper:

Clive Crook Doesn’t Understand Paul Krugman or Liberals Generally: Crook… made the quite specific claim that Krugman was using the 2009 stimulus for partisan ends….

Krugman and his admirers were at the forefront in casting discussion of the stimulus in left vs. right terms. For many Democrats, the top priority in the fiscal-policy discussion was not, in fact, to make the stimulus bigger but to reverse the Bush high-income tax cuts and to make sure that the composition of the stimulus, whatever its size, as far as possible favored higher spending over lower taxes.

Today, Crook is back… moving the goalposts. He conveniently forgets the stimulus debate, around which all his previous claims were centered, and digs up a Krugman column from December 2010, almost two years later…. What is unquestionably clear is that Crook’s earlier claim that “Krugman and his admirers were at the forefront in casting discussion of the stimulus in left vs. right terms” is completely bogus, and he clearly knows it….

Who Are the Right-Wing Republicans Whom Clive Crook Thinks Are "Thoughtful [and] Public-Spirited… [with] Vews… Worthy of Respect"?: Tuesday Crickets Weblogging

Paul Krugman observes:

Not Everything Is Political: Clive Crook demands that I engage respectfully with reasonable people on the other side, but somehow fails to offer even one example of such a person. Not long ago Crook was offering Paul Ryan as an exemplar of serious, honest conservatism, while I was shrilly declaring Ryan a con man. But I suspect that even Crook now admits, at least to himself, that Ryan is indeed a con man…

Alan Reynolds Has Submitted a Comment to My Weblog...

So I am writing him a letter:

I see you submitted a comment… It contains three things that are wrong.

You mischaracterize the liquidity trap argument by claiming "Krugman's 'lliquidity trap' means the Fed is completely useless. It can't stimulate demand and it can't raise inflation either." A liquidity trap means that if monetary policy works, it works not through the safe-and-sure channel of reducing short-term safe nominal interest rates but by changing borrowers' assessments of the future by either raising expected inflation or reducing risk spreads by taking risk off of the private sector. That's strike one.

Snark City!: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?

Dave Weigel Snarks at the Execrable Maureen Dowd:

Also, in this column, Dowd asks why Obama doesn't exercise power the way a Renaissance Pope did. Because derp.

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) May 1, 2013

Somebody please tell Dowd that members of Congress are adults who will not give up on principles if Obama hugs them nyti.ms/130hXQS

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) May 1, 2013

Why Oh Why Can't Clive Crook Find Any Examples of Thoughtful Public-Spirited Republicans with Views Worthy of Respect?

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Clive Crook is unhappy because Paul Krugman does not take him and his ilk of opinions-of-shape-of-earth-differites seriously:

Paul Krugman’s Proud War on Fools, Knaves and Lunatics: I think Krugman’s been right about U.S. fiscal policy -- the stimulus was too small and it’s being withdrawn too soon. But he’s wrong about many of the people who disagree with him…. A line has been crossed when the principal spokesmen for contending opinions have no curiosity whatsoever about their opponents’ ideas and radiate cold, steady contempt for each other. That’s dangerous. Civil society depends on a minimum threshold of tolerance and mutual respect…. Krugman stirs up the right in much the same way that Rush Limbaugh, for instance, inflames the left. Granted, if you’re going to have a spokesman, better a Nobel laureate than a talk-radio clown. The fact remains that Krugman’s weary disdain for roughly half the country is self-defeating…. I just wish he’d meet a wider range of people…. [T]he modern Republican Party includes a growing number of extremists who have no interest in the kind of discussion I’m recommending…. But if Krugman got out of his bubble a bit more, he’d find… a lot of thoughtful, public-spirited Americans whose views on the proper scale and scope of government are different from his, yet worthy of respect.

Spend $1000 to Listen to Tom Friedman Blather About What His Taxi Drivers Say!

nytfriedmanforum.com/index.php Taking place in only 1/3 of a Friedman Unit!#nytfriedmanforum

— Stuffed J. Bentham (@StuffedJeremyB) April 24, 2013

Yes. The Washington Post Is a Clown Show. Why Do You Ask?

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps? Because the Washington Post continues to pay hacks like Robert Samuelson.

Paul Krugman does the intellectual garbage collection:

Academic Non-Obscurity: Robert Samuelson tries to minimize the significance of the Reinhart-Rogoff affair; and that, I realized, offers an interesting window into why, in fact, the affair matters so much.

Samuelson starts by excusing R-R on the grounds that the economic crisis predates their blooper:

Follow Stuffed Jeremy Bentham (@StuffedJeremyB) on Twitter or Track #nytfriedmanforum for Important News About the New York Times Tom Friedman Forum!!

I have found a new target! nytfriedmanforum.com/index.php! #nytfriedmanforum

— Stuffed J. Bentham (@StuffedJeremyB) April 24, 2013

nytfriedmanforum.com/index.php Taking place in only 1/3 of a Friedman Unit!#nytfriedmanforum

— Stuffed J. Bentham (@StuffedJeremyB) April 24, 2013

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Yes, the Entire Washington Post Ediitorial Board and Its Columnist Robert Samuelson Are Clown Shows. Why Do You Ask?

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Outsourced to Jared Bernstein:

The Papers: Weirdness at the WaPo: First, on the oped page, a confusing, ahistorical editorial riffing off of the Rogoff-Reinhart (R&R) debacle. The piece starts… [saying that] absent [the RR] paper, the austerions would find other misguided sources…. The fact that one of those sources would indeed be the editorial page of the WaPo is where the editorial gets weird.  All the sudden, the ed board is all “austerity?…us?…really?…why, we’ve been veritable Keynesians over here, praising the stimulus and simply calling for long-term balance.” [I’m paraphrasing.] In fact, they’ve constantly criticized policy makers for not cutting deep enough and fast enough, and have consistently failed to blow the whistle on cuts that have us stuck in our current slog and Europe back in recession. It’s interesting to see reactions like this to R&R’s mistakes.  An optimist might think that some of those who’ve been relentlessly confident in their bad, contractionary advice might start thinking twice.  I am not such an optimist.

Next, just across the broadsheet, we come across an even weirder commentary by Robert Samuelson, on how economics has just become really confusing, and no one knows what to do because nothing seems to work. Huh? This is like someone who’s supposed to be getting in shape for a race saying “I’ve tried eating extra snack foods, sitting around watching TV, and napping…but nothing seems to be improving my speed.  It’s a mystery!”

Interestingly, on a different oped page today, Krugman writes:

The main reason our economic recovery has been so weak is that, spooked by fear-mongering over debt, we’ve been doing exactly what basic macroeconomics says you shouldn’t do — cutting government spending in the face of a depressed economy….

[T]he evidence, both from our own Recovery Act, and from research on the European situation (see box 1.1 here), is very strong, showing multipliers from Keynesian measures that are well above 1 right now. To say “we just don’t get it” is to stubbornly and willfully ignore that evidence.

No, I Don't See Why the Washington Post **New York Times** Employs Peter Baker. Why Do You Ask?

Margaret Sullivan:

Submitting a Correction to The New York Times - NYTimes.com: Requests for corrections should be submitted to The Times at nytnews@nytimes.com. This office works outside the newsroom and has no say in whether a correction is offered, but please contact us if you are dissatisfied with the response you receive from The Times. Please include the following in your e-mail to The Times:

A request for a correction in The New York Times:

Article Headline:
Date Published:
Web or Print:
Phrase in Question:
Your Concern (please limit to 300 words):

Your Name:
Your E-mail:
Your Location:

Michael Froomkin:

A request for a correction in The New York Times:

Article Headline: Rewinding History, Bush Museum Lets You Decide

Date Published: 4/21/13, Print (National Edition, p. A1)

Phrase in Question: “As president, he rarely had a chance to rest….”

Your Concern (please limit to 300 words): In the page A10 continuation of the front-page article in today’s paper by Peter Baker, “Rewinding History, Bush Museum Lets You Decide”, Mr. Baker writes, “As president, he [Bush] rarely had a chance to rest….”

In fact, George W. Bush spent 32 months at his ranch (490 days) or Camp David (487 days) — an average of four months away every year, according the the Washington Post’s POTUS tracker (as cited at http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/235844/deconstructing-the-5-most-ridiculous-myths-about-barack-obama).

I understand Presidents sometimes take their work with them when they travel, but I submit that there were plenty of chances to rest in those 977 days.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Weblogging and the Future of Financial Journalism: Kauffman Foundation 2013 Economic Webloggers' Forum

Panel discussion – Economic and Financial Weblogging and the Future and Sustainability of Financial Journalism (Panel: Cardiff Garcia, Joe Weisenthal, Allison Schrager; Moderator: George Kahn)

Weblogging and the Future of Mainstream Journalism: Kauffman Foundation 2013 Economic Webloggers' Forum

Panel discussion – Economic and Financial Weblogging and the Future and Sustainability of Mainstream Journalism (Panel: Bruce Bartlett; Megan McArdle; Josh Barro; Moderator: Felix Salmon)

Further Further Reading: Kauffman Foundation 2013 Webloggers' Forum

Recommended by Bruce Bartlett:

• * Nicco Mele and John Wihbey:* The end of big (media): When news orgs move from brands to platforms for talent: “What if news organizations confronted the reality that nearly all media will be ‘social media’ a decade hence?…What if news organizations acknowledged this — or even got out in front of it, ahead of the curve this time — and organized themselves as platforms for talent?”

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Michael Kelly: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?

TNC:

Some Thoughts on Michael Kelly - Ta-Nehisi Coates: I didn't really know Michael Kelly…. He does not come off as the sort of guy to opine on TV comforted by the safety of reports from Brookings…. Over at Gawker, Tom Scocca published a very hard--and very fair--assessment of Kelly's role in the Iraq War. I hadn't read much of the work Scocca referenced, so I did myself a favor and looked up some of Kelly's columns in the days leading up to Iraq…. Kelly's columns are not pro-war, they are ferociously pro-Bush, and gleefully contemptuous of liberals who thought otherwise. 

It's the glee that burns. There's a kind of writer who gets his kicks writing bad reviews of music and books. You see that same spirit in Kelly's mocking of Paul Krugman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Janeane Garofalo, or in his attacks on the French by evoking the ghost of Pétain. That glee turned Kelly  into a thin writer who spurned nuance in favor of hyperbole….

Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner Eat a Lot of Paste: Thursday Combination Idiocy and Hoisted from the Archives Weblogging

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps:

Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner eating an awful lot of paste: How to Save the Republican Party: Commentary Magazine:

Barack Obama should have lost the 2012 election. The economy… was weak…. The signature legislative achievements of the president’s first term—the Affordable Care Act and the stimulus package—were so unpopular that on last year’s campaign trail he rarely mentioned them…. [T]he Republican Party… was regarded as highly energized and poised to win. Michael Barone, one of the most knowledgeable political observers in America, predicted Mitt Romney would comfortably defeat the president. “Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections,” Barone wrote four days before the election. “That’s bad news for Barack Obama.” And yet Obama won going away, defeating Romney by 126 electoral votes (332 to Romney’s 206) and winning the popular vote by nearly 5 million…

I want you to pause and reread those last two sentences. Four days before the election Michael Barone got the popular vote edge wrong by 7% and got the electoral vote edge wrong by 218. And Gerson and Wehner use Barone as their "expert" to back up their claim that "Barack Obama should have lost the 2012 election",

You might say that Barone's fantasy-based meltdown was something new--that before 2012 he was a keen-eyed and reality-based observer of American politics. Not so! Here's Barone from eight years ago:

Robert Dole Says: "Who Made That Mess in Washington?"

Those of us who tried to deal with Robert Dole's root-and-branch opposition in 1993-1995 to so many of what had been his own policies from 1981-1992 are sardonically amused at (a) his distress at the Washington that he did so much to help make, (b) his apparent lack of self-knowledge of what he did, and (c ) Michael Kranish's gullibility and willingness to butter Dole up.

It really isn't funny, though:

Michael Kranish:

The story of Washington gridlock seen through the eyes of Bob Dole: It had been 16 years since Bob Dole stepped down as Senate Republican leader, ending a legislative career in which he earned a reputation as a master of bipartisanship. Yet there he was at the end of 2012, trying to close a deal.

David Warsh: The Newspapers and the War in Iraq

David Warsh:

The Newspapers and the War in Iraq: Like many others in the commentary business, I went back last week and read what I was writing around the time of the US invasion of Iraq. I was not very happy…. I was a reluctant endorser of what I understood to be the Bush Administration’s aims for the war, though by the end of the year, in "Texas against the World", I had, like many others, turned around.

Reading over my clips from 2003 I noticed… I was forming my views… from the newspapers that I read…. Over thirty years, [Wall Street Journal op-ed] editor Robert Bartley built his fief into the single most powerful venue in the print media, championing supply-side economics in the 1980s and the Whitewater investigations in the  ’90s, before stepping down in 2002 to write a column…. Equally interesting in September 2001 was what was going on uptown, at The New York Times. A new executive editor, Howell Raines, had just taken charge, determined to distinguish himself from his predecessor, Joseph Lelyveld, by “trigger[ing] news” instead of merely reporting it when it happened…. Aggressive reporting, especially by Judith Miller, helped set the stage for the war. As Times public editor Daniel Okrent later wrote, “To anyone who read the paper between September 2002 and June 2003, the impression that Saddam Hussein possessed, or was acquiring, a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. seemed unmistakable.”  Nor was Miller the only Times reporter whose stories proved useful in making the case for going to war….

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?: Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard Edition

Why do the Weekly Standard's writers work so hard to persuade me that they lack both intelligence and honor? I mean, they work really hard to do so--and they do so quite effectively.

Let's back up, and start with one of my favorite readings from Thomas Nagel (2012), Mind and Cosmos:

If I decide, when the sun rises on my right, that I must be driving north instead of south, it is because I recognize that my belief that I am driving south is inconsistent with that observation [that the sun is rising on my right], together with what I know about the direction of rotation of the earth. I abandon the belief because I recognize that it couldn’t be true…. If I oppose the abolition of the inheritance tax, it is because I recognize that the design of property rights should be sensitive not only to autonomy but also to fairness…. I operate in the space of reasons. The appearance of reason… seems… something radically emergent…. Like consciousness, reason is inseparable from the physical life of organisms that have it…. It was originally a biological evolutionary process…. This, then, is what a theory of everything has to explain… the emergence from a lifeless universe of reproducing organisms… greater and greater functional complexity… consciousness… [and] the development of consciousness into an instrument of transcendence that can grasp objective reality and objective value.

I claim that Thomas Nagel's mind is not an instrument of transcendence grasping objective reality and objective value. I claim that, as Thomas Nagel claims to transcendentally grasp objective value when he concludes that there should be an inheritance tax, he is wrong. I claim that, as Thomas Nagel claims to transcendentally grasp objective reality when he concludes that if he is facing south the rising sun must be on his left, he is wrong.

As evidence for his wrongness, I point out that I once was facing south and saw the sun rising in front of me: in the south. True story. During northern hemisphere winter, a plane flying over the pole from Europe to America can exit the earth's shadow at a point where the sun is due south, thus the sun can rise in the south, and it did.

Mike the Mad Biologist: The Profoundly Serious David Brooks on Iraq: Tuesday Ten Years Ago on the Internet Weblogging

Mike the Mad Biologist:

Ten Years Ago, What One Very Serious Person Was Writing About Iraq: Here’s what David Brooks, now respectable rightwing (but not too rightwing! Must…reposition…in…political…landscape…) pundit for the New York Times wrote in his then-home The Weekly Standard ten years ago to the day:

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Digby on Howard Fineman

Digby:

Hullabaloo: 10 years on: the press reconsiders:

If he’s a cowboy, he’s the reluctant warrior, the Shane in the movie, strapping on the guns as the last resort because he has to, to protect his family, drawing on the emotions of 9/11, tying them to Saddam Hussein, using the possible or likely rejection vote from the U.N. as a badge of honor. --- Howard Fineman 3/6/03

That's probably his most famous quote. But it wasn't the only one extolling the virtues of our manly president. One of the most notorious pieces of the Iraq run-up for me was this one in TIME, which epitomized the press's fawning crush on George W. Bush:

FINEMAN (11/27/01): So who are the Bushes, really? Well, they’re the people who produced the fellow who sat with me and my Newsweek colleague, Martha Brant, for his first interview since 9/11. We saw, among other things, a leader who is utterly comfortable in his role. Bush envelops himself in the trappings of office. Maybe that’s because he’s seen it from the inside since his dad served as Reagan’s vice president in the ‘80s. The presidency is a family business. Dubyah loves to wear the uniform—whatever the correct one happens to be for a particular moment. I counted no fewer than four changes of attire during the day trip we took to Fort Campbell in Kentucky and back. He arrived for our interview in a dark blue Air Force One flight jacket. When he greeted the members of Congress on board, he wore an open-necked shirt. When he had lunch with the troops, he wore a blue blazer. And when he addressed the troops, it was in the flight jacket of the 101st Airborne. He’s a boomer product of the ‘60s—but doesn’t mind ermine robes.

Today Fineman writes about that interview and the media's failure after 9/11….

For journalists, the most patriotic thing we can do is our jobs -- which meant that we all should have doubled down on skepticism and tough questions. Some did. I wish I could say that I was one of them.

He certainly wasn't one of them. Indeed, he was a very reliable, enthusiastic mouthpiece for the administration…. Here's a little quote from Fineman from 2003:

I am told by what I regard as a very reliable source inside the White House that aides there did, in fact, try to peddle the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife to several reporters. But the motive wasn’t revenge or intimidation so much as a desire to explain why, in their view, Wilson wasn’t a neutral investigator, but, a member of the CIA’s leave-Saddam-in-place team.

It actually makes you yearn for he said/she said, doesn't it? At least the other side would be represented…. [T]o me, it didn't take a professional journalist to see that George W. Bush and the Cheney cabal were warmongering liars. After all, they'd signaled their intentions for years. It was even on the internet. I hope he's wiser too, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Yes, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post Is Simply Incompetent. Why Do You Ask?

Scott Lemieux's Shorter Glenn Kessler: Raise the Green Lantern, Fact Chuck Edition:

Republicans aren’t lying when they say that President Obama doesn’t have a plan. Because if he was really behind a plan, he could shove it right down Congress’s throat. By having the leadership to lead, with leadership. Like that time Bill Clinton gave a speech and then something happened after that.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

What Is Jeff Sachs Doing? What Is Joe Scarborough Doing?

Outsourced to Kevin Drum:

Quote of the Day: Joe Scarborough vs. Joe Scarborough: Compare and contrast. Here is Joe Scarborough during his debate with Paul Krugman on Monday:

Q: Would you support an extra $200 billion a year in spending on infrastructure and education right now?

A: Oh yeah. I talk about it all the time. I go around and I talk to Republicans all the time.

And here is Scarborough writing with Jeffrey Sachs in the Washington Post today:

Both of us opposed the [2009] stimulus package, the increased spending in Afghanistan and Washington’s fixation on short-term thinking. We said that the only result of this short-termism would be exploding deficits. And well before Obama himself acknowledged the point, we said that there was no such thing as “shovel-ready” projects worthy of public investment in the 21st century.

I'm confused. During the worst of the financial crash, with GDP plummeting like a rock, Scarborough opposed stimulus spending and believed that there were no infrastructure investments worth pursuing. But today, with the economy fragile but recovering, he thinks it would be great to spend $200 billion more on infrastructure and education.

Something ain't right here. And I have to say, for a guy who talks about this extra spending "all the time," he sure missed a chance to do it again in today's op-ed. I wonder what Joe really thinks?

Eric Rauchway: Louis Menand and New Deal Denialism in The New Yorker

Eric:

Louis Menand and New Deal Denialism in The New Yorker: In the current New Yorker, Louis Menand says there is a puzzle about how Franklin Roosevelt got reëlected:

When Roosevelt ran for reëlection in 1936, the unemployment rate was 16.9 per cent, almost twice what it had been in 1930. Yet he won five hundred and twenty-three electoral votes, and his opponent Alf Landon, eight. When Roosevelt ran for the unprecedented third term, unemployment was 14.6 per cent. He carried thirty-eight states; Wendell Willkie carried ten.

When Menand says unemployment was 16.9 and 14.6 percent when FDR ran for reëlection, he is counting federal relief workers as unemployed. According to the economist who constructed the series Menand is using, people working for the WPA were morally the same as concentration camp workers in Germany in the 1930s. If Menand realized that, the puzzle would go away: FDR and his New Deal were popular because they gave people jobs and sparked a rapid recovery.

Gene Sperling Told Me "Be Sure to Think Twice" Once...

Paul Krugman is sad:

Gene Sperling Doesn't Respect Me: So, after reading the Bob Woodward saga of the alleged “threat” from Gene Sperling, the White House supereconwonk, I went through my own correspondence with Gene, and couldn’t find anything threatening — although I guess you could read his injunction, at one point, to “take care” in an ominous tone of voice. Hey, don’t I rate some proper intimidation?

Bob Woodward Says: Gene Sperling Threatened Me!

Defining "threatened" way, way down…

From: Gene Sperling … To: Bob Woodward … Feb. 22, 11:52 p.m.: “Bob: I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall -- but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.

But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying … that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand bar[g]ain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding -- from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios -- but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA [Budget Control Act of 2011]: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)

I agree there are more than one side to our first disagreement, but again think this latter issue is different. Not out to argue and argue on this latter point. Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously.

My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.

Gene

--From: Bob Woodward … To: Gene Sperling … Feb. 23, 7:23 a.m.: Gene: You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of a serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening. I know you lived all this. My partial advantage is that I talked extensively with all involved. I am traveling and will try to reach you after 3 pm today.

Best,

Bob

Sent from my iPhone

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

No, Amity Shlaes Has No Idea What She Is Talking About. Why Do You Ask?: WTF!?!?!?!? Weblogging

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Amity Shlaes: Gatsby, Galbraith and the Myth of Coolidge’s Crash:

[John Kenneth Galbraith writes that] the 30th president [Calvin Coolidge] was the one to fall asleep at the wheel of our economic car [as the 1920s stock bubble developed]… [Galbraith's] reasoning… [is] as substantial as a champagne bubble…. [I]t wasn’t as if Coolidge didn’t know or care about the stock-market jump…. Privately, Coolidge counted on a crash…. What Galbraith and others take for Coolidge laziness was actually Coolidge restraint. Coolidge didn’t deem it appropriate for the federal government to intervene in the stock market…. Policy at the Federal Reserve was not set by Coolidge but by the Fed and, to some extent, his mighty Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, whose autonomy Coolidge respected…

Robert Gilbert: The Tormented President: Calvin Coolidge, Death, and Clinical Depression:

About four months later [in January 1928], as the Federal Reserve Board prepared to curb wanton stock speculation, Coolidge made a statement to the press that stopped the Board in its tracks. This was largely regarded as the greatest single blunder of his presidency. On this occasion, he indicated--quite amazingly for the president of the United States--that…

Whether the amount at the present time [of brokers' loans] is disproportionate to the resources of the country, I am not in a position to judge accurately…. [S]o far as indicated by an inquiry that I have made of the Treasury and so on, I haven't had any indications that the discount was large enough to cause particularly unfavorable comment…

Coolidge's reassuring statement did not come until after the close of the market that Friday afternoon The next day there was an explosion of stock buying, making it one of the most active Saturdays in stock-trading history, The New York Times reported on January 8 that:

Stocks were turned over on high volume on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday largely because of the enthusiasm caused by President Coolidge's statement that he saw no reason for alarm in the large expansion of brokers' loans…

Not everyone, however, was quite so enthusiastic. When Hoover was told that Coolidge had made such comments about brokers' loans, he was incredulous, asking: "Did that man actually say that?"

Had he known of a conversation between the president and H. Parker Willis, editor of the New York Journal of Commerce, [Hoover] would have been even more appalled. In this conversation, Coolidge had admitted that his personal view and his official views on brokers' loans were quite different…. [A]s an official representative of the government, he felt compelled to stand on information he received from a department of that government [i.e., Andrew Mellon's Treasury], even if he disagreed with it. Willis reportedly replied that if Coolidge had only indicated his concern, he would have had a great impact in curtailing 'an unwholesome speculation'. Coolidge's January 6 press conference remarks and the follow-up conversation with Willis are rather remarkable…

It is not often that words genuinely fail me…

Paul Krugman: The Fever Swamp of the Center

The Fever Swamp of the Center, Continued:

I love Jonathan Chait’s phrase “the fever swamp of the center”; it really is true that self-identified centrists are sounding crazier and crazier, as they try to reconcile their fanatical devotion to the proposition that both parties are equally at fault with the distressing reality that Obama actually advocates the policies they claim to want…. [T]oday’s WaPo editorial… a new pitch. The editorial admits that Obama is calling for exactly the polices the WaPo wants… but the piece is nonetheless written as a criticism of Obama, because:

Mr. Obama has presented entitlement reform as something he would do grudgingly, as a favor to the opposition, when he should be explaining to the American people — and to his party — why it is an urgent national need.

Oh, Barack, you’re telling me what I want to hear, but you don’t sound as if you mean it!… [I]t’s all there: hyperventilating about the deficit, together with an absolute determination to blame both sides equally no matter how unbalanced they really are. And as Chait, Greg Sargent, and others say, this refusal to hold the worse parties accountable is in itself an important source of our political dysfunction.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?: Bob Woodward of the Washington Post Writes Fishwrap Edition

Ezra Klein:

On the sequester, the American people ‘moved the goalposts’: I don’t agree with my colleague Bob Woodward, who says the Obama administration is “moving the goalposts” when they insist on a sequester replacement that includes revenues…. [I]n 2011… everyone was perfectly clear that Democrats were going to pursue tax increases in any sequester replacement, and Republicans were going to oppose tax increases in any sequester replacement. What no one knew was who would win….

The sequester was a punt. The point was to give both sides a face-saving way to raise the debt ceiling…. The hope was that… something would… change… the supercommittee…[would come] to a deal… [or] the 2012 election [would resolve things]….

[In 2012] the American people voted for the guy who wants to cut the deficit by increasing taxes…. They also voted for a Senate that would cut the deficit by increasing taxes. And then they voted for a House that would cut the deficit by increasing taxes, though due to the quirks of congressional districts, they didn’t get one….

[T]he goalposts in American politics aren’t set in backroom deals between politicians. They’re set in elections. And in the 2012 election, the American people were very clear on where they wanted the goalposts moved to.

More on the Ezra Klein David "I Have Not Read Robert Rubin's Tax Plan" Brooks Smackdown Weblogging

Kevin Drum:

Quote of the Day: Defining "Politically Plausible" Down: avid Brooks… wrote (inaccurately) that the White House doesn't have a proposal to avert the sequester, "let alone one that is politically plausible"…. [Ezra Klein asked:] "What would you like to see [the White House] offer?"

[Brooks replied:]

My fantasy package, and I'm not running for office, would include a progressive consumption tax, and it would have chained CPI, and it would have a pretty big means-test of Medicare. I'd direct you to Yuval Levin's piece in the Times a few days ago, which seemed sensible.

I guess I shouldn't complain about this. I mean, props to Brooks for admitting that he went overboard, and props for being willing to talk to Ezra about it in a good natured way. Still, I have to chuckle when he complains about Obama not proposing a "politically plausible" plan, and then offers up an alternative that includes a progressive consumption tax, something that Republicans have been unrelentingly opposed to for decades…. I think we really need to have a little chat about just what "politically plausible" really means.

Ezra Klein Smacks Down David Brooks: "Centrism" Weblogging

Unbelievable:

David Brooks: In my ideal world, the Obama administration would do something Clintonesque… a budget policy… like… Robert Rubin… and if the Republicans rejected that, moderates like me would say that’s awful…

Ezra Klein: I’ve read Robert Rubin’s tax plan. He wants $1.8 trillion in new revenues. The White House… is down to $1.2 trillion…. [T]he White House’s offer seems more centrist…. People say the White House should do something centrist like Simpson-Bowles, even though their plan has less in tax hikes and less in defense cuts…

At this point David Brooks has a choice: he can say "I am an idiot who does not know what I am talking about"; or he can change the subject.

Guess what he does?

David Brooks: My first reaction is I’m not a huge fan of Simpson-Bowles anymore; I used to be. Among others, you persuaded me the tax reform scheme in theirs is not the best. Simpson-Bowles just doesn’t do enough on entitlements…

If I were running the New York Times, I would look at this and immediately say: We need to get Brooks out of our pages yesterday if not before, and we need an Ezra Klein of our own very badly.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

John Cook: "Mike Allen Wrote Today that Obama Avoids Politico Reporters Because They Ask Tough, Unpredictable Questions

John Cook: "I will now tweet every question Politico's Mike Allen asked President George W. Bush during a May 2008 interview":

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? War on Nate Silver Aftermath John J. Cook Captures Kyiv Edition

I will now Tweet every question Politico's Mike Allen asked President George W. Bush during a May 2008 interview

— John Cook (@johnjcook) February 19, 2013

I believe that this is the context:

• Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen: complain that President Obama is seeing other people: "President Barack Obama is a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House…. Media across the ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access…. The president has shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters… he spends way more time talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media personalities…. [T]his White House has greatly curtailed impromptu moments where reporters can ask tough questions after a staged event… The frustrated Obama press corps neared rebellion this past holiday weekend when reporters and photographers were not even allowed onto the Floridian National Golf Club, where Obama was golfing [with Tiger Woods]…. There’s the classic weekend document dump to avoid negative coverage. By our count, the White House has done this nearly two dozen times…. [T]he White House was exceptionally transparent during the Solyndra controversy, releasing details three times on a Friday." Plus: how dare Senator Cruz send the same quote to us and to the New York Times: "NO SHAME AWARD to N.Y. Times for putting on the front page -- with no indication it wasn't a novel revelation -- a carbon copy of a story that led POLITICO.com on Thursday evening… [Y[ou can't try to pass something off as new, when the people who care the most about the topic have read the same thing 24 hours earlier."

• Matt Browner Hamlin: Access doesn't count if it happens on Friday? OK, then. #PoliticoRules

And Dean Baker Gets One Completely Right: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post This Means You Weblogging

Dean Baker: Robert Samuelson's Psychological Problems:

Robert Samuelson is convinced that the U.S. economy is suffering from psychological problems. In a piece titled, "why job creation is so hard" he tells readers: "We have gone from being an expansive, risk-taking society to a skittish, risk-averse one." Point number one is the rise in the saving rate: "In the boom years, the personal saving rate (savings as a share of after-tax income) fell from 10.9 percent in 1982 to 1.5 percent in 2005. Now it’s edging up; from 2010 to 2012, it averaged 4.4 percent."

Is this really a matter of psychology? People have lost $8 trillion in housing wealth as a result of the collapse of the bubble. Homeless people generally don't spend much money, is this due to psychological issues?…. If anything, we should be surprised by how much people are spending.

In short, the story of the downturn remains depressingly simple. We have nothing to replace the huge amount of construction and consumption demand created by the $8 trillion housing bubble. Perhaps if the problem were more complicated policy types would have an easier time seeing it. 

Mark Thoma Sends Us to Jonathan Chait: Scarborough and Friends 'Bug-Eyed, Table-Pounding Terror'

Mark Thoma:

After two relatively wonky posts, let's turn to Jon Chait for a bit of (serious) fun:

Scarborough and Friends Trying to Make ‘Debt Deniers’ Happen, by Jonathan Chait: The deficit scold cause has suffered significant intellectual erosion…. In the short run, the interest rate spike they keep insisting will happen keeps not happening. In the long run, the health-care-cost inflation that is at the root of the long-term fiscal predicament is growing markedly less dire. The case for prudent fiscal adjustment remains strong, but the case for bug-eyed, table-pounding terror is growing increasingly ridiculous. But bug-eyed, table-pounding terror is the stock-in-trade of the fiscal scold movement. And so they are striking back by labeling anybody with a calmer view of the deficit as a “debt denier.” Joe Scarborough… has a new op-ed in Politico brandishing the epithet….

7 Tesla Model S Owners Set Out to Recreate New York Times Reporter John Broder's Road Trip to Groton

TeslaRoadTrip on Twitter:

7 Tesla Model S Owners Set out Saturday 2/16 to recreate the NY Times Reporter's uncommitted test drive from Maryland to Connecticut and prove it can be done.