The Pundit Mobius Strip

I wonder if really elite pundits like Joe Klein ever feel weird about writing that something might look bad even though it makes sense on the merits. After all, Klein has a substantial ability to affect how things are perceived. He notes that "Just because [liberals are] right about Iraq, and about this escalation, it doesn't mean they won't be blamed by the public if the result of an American withdrawal is lethal chaos in the region and $200 per barrel oil" which is true. On the other hand, if American withdraws and Joe Klein and other similarly situated people all focus their energy on placing the blame where it belongs -- on the war's architects -- then the odds are pretty good that liberals won't be blamed.

The Note's "Gang of 500" business is a joke, but only sort of. A rather small number of writers, producers, and editors for ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and the Associated Press substantially determine how things will be play in the press. If those people decide that doing something will "look weak" and then cover it as if it does "look weak" it then will, in fact, look weak. If they determine the reverse, the reverse will probably happen.

Comments

matthew, matthew: tsk, tsk. don't you know that pundits have nothing to do with how the broader public perceives the news? Just ask them - they'll insist that they are merely reflecting the public's views....

Posted by howard | January 9, 2007 2:41 PM

H*ll, an important part of their job is precisely to deflect blame from those to whom blame is due.

Posted by Barry | January 9, 2007 3:00 PM

And that's it in a nutshell. The US ship of state does not drift rudderless simply because half of us fail to vote.

When American elites become dissatisfied with the way things are going, things will change.

Posted by serial catowner | January 9, 2007 3:16 PM

Gee--How different is this from wingnut liberal-media-conspiracy-mongering? Most of the people I know have only the barest understanding of who Joe Klein *is.* Has the thought ever crossed your mind that people of Klein's age have this fear because they, like, *experienced* this problem once upon a time? Or is that the difference between being a boomer and being of your generation, Matt--that our memory goes back a bit further? That we were around to see the helicopters on the embassy rooftop? Believe me, most Americans want their country to be strong and effective--preferably at the same time, and will indeed blame whoever they view as responsible when weakness and fecklessness become evident. TBS, I think Klein's fears *may* be misplaced here, since most Americans agree with *us* as to who's responsible for this catastrophe--at least now. But let me assure you that whatever they finally decide, it won't have much to do with what the celebrity pundits decide in their back room. Or with what you tell them to think, for that matter.

Posted by David | January 9, 2007 3:26 PM

The Blame Game worked marginally regarding Vietnam because a lot of the public loathed the anti-war movement worse than they did Nixon and LBJ. There is no anti-war movement with Iraq. The public has arrived to the position of opposing Iraq all on its own. Hence Republican fetishistic attachment to Cindy Sheehan. "Here's the anti-war movement! Crazy Cindy!" That worked well.

Pundits too afraid to denounce Bush and Iraq are either stooges or dupes.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | January 9, 2007 3:32 PM

Contra David and in defense of Matt's point (from someone in the second half of his forties): 1975 was thirty years ago. To the best of my recollection, it was not received wisdom for the first ten, fifteen or so of those years that the Democrats were always and uniquely to blame for the Vietnam fiasco and indeed everything else. (Lot's of people thought Nixon was to blame for a good many things.) Ford lost the election to Carter. The biggest strike against Carter when the time for re-election came was not being a Democrat or memories of Vietnam, but the Iranian disaster. The Democrats continued to maintain majorities in both houses for a good long while after that. The pervasive right-wing clap-trap we now take for granted is not a part of the inevitable natural order. Klein and his ilk who think it is, who hold, if you will, that it's therefore wrong to be right and who spend all there time castigating liberals who don't acknowledge the inevitability of defeat are, as Matt argued, in part responsible for making it so.

Posted by J | January 9, 2007 3:49 PM

J, i agree. that a majority of the public didn't like the anti-vietnam movement (as part of the broader generational breakdown going on at the time) doesn't mean the public liked the vietnam war or admired lbj or nixon, who were two of the most despised presidents in history.

as j notes, carter's biggest problem was the iranian hostage rescue fiasco; his next biggest problem was stagflation. he did not have a problem with the notion that "dems" are "weak" on national security.

now, that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of right-wingers who would like us to believe that "liberals" were responsible for the fiasco in vietnam (and, broadly speaking, the liberal hawks of the day were responsible! it was lbj's escalation of the war, after all), but i dunno: is there any actual polling evidence to support that a majority of the american public believes this?

the fact that the national security gap between the parties has largely disappeared over the last couple of years (at least in the polling data) suggests that the public is capable of differentiating between whatever it thinks was true in 1975 and what is the case today.

there is always going to be a 40% or so baseline that despises most things liberal (just as, for that matter, there will always be a 40% baseline, less well represented in the punditocracy, that despises most things conservative); that they will blame "liberals" for whatever mess results whenever we leave iraq is neither here nor there.

Posted by howard | January 9, 2007 4:11 PM

Thanks Howard. I should clarify one point. Product of long-vanished era that I am, when I wrote 'Vietnam fiasco' I didn't mean losing or failing to triumph. Back then, as I recall, lots of people grasped that the war was unwinnable, or unwinnable without resorting to means so far out of proportion to its alleged purposes and even more criminal than those already used. What they blamed Nixon and, as Howard rightly observes, LBJ for was prosecuting the war too long. That wasn't the only view, of course, but it had at least as good a claim, I'd guess a somewhat better claim, to being CW as the alternatives. What we've seen over the last few years is less the inevitable consequence of what Democrats, and not a few brave Republicans, said and did in opposition to the war back then, but the re-writing of history by the ascendant right wing of today. The causes of their ascendancy have to be sought elsewhere.

Posted by J | January 9, 2007 6:00 PM

Which is why congress, after their 100 hours PR-fest is up, ought to do something about media concentration in the US. Are there any good reasons not to go back to the best aspects of media control over the past century; eg
- limited ownership of stations, newspapers etc
- equal time and right to refute time
- maybe mandated time for commercials

And, while we're at it, how about screwing these same huge companies that have cheer-leadered GWB over the last six years by doing the right thing and finally rolling back copyright?

Posted by Maynard Handley | January 9, 2007 9:08 PM

Here's Jobs rolling out the iPhone.

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d52oo/event/

Posted by ferd | January 10, 2007 1:03 AM

Maynard,

"Past century" is right. All this mandating and balancing is exactly what Big Media, Big Telco, and their lackeys in the FCC want. The internet will triumph, but it could be a long fight if this sort of thing keeps coming up.

I'm with you on copyright, though.

Posted by Jess Austin | January 10, 2007 1:14 AM