Being Right Is No Excuse For Being Right

Many have already said what needed to be said about Ryan Lizza's fawning profile of Rahm Emanuel, which I think was actually written by someone named "Rahm Emanuel," such is the uncritical glory. Glenn Greenwald offers the best and most thorough takedown of Lizza's article and the clear flattery-for-access exchange not unlike a People Magazine celebrity piece, although I would add Spencer Ackerman's personal Lizza experience as some context for the kind of person we're dealing with:

Remember that obnoxious intern in Shattered Glass who constantly pokes his nose into other people's business because he's desperate to be put on? That's based on Ryan. His specialty was always in schmoozing -- meeting powerful people, ingratiating himself to powerful people, trying to get something out of powerful people. He was the first person I ever met who showed off his BlackBerry. But I never had a problem with Ryan [...]

So one day I was commiserating with Ryan [...] In a moment of blowing off steam, I said to Ryan that maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if I got fired for TNR for being too left-wing. There were probably some editors who'd come to my aid if that happened, since people in The Game know what TNR is really like.

I thought nothing of it. Again, that kind of venting isn't unusual for TNR, and I heard other writers say much worse things about the place over the years. But a couple weeks later Frank asked me to have lunch with him. Great! I thought. Finally an audience with my friend-turned-editor, who seems not to have time for me anymore. We went to the sushi place on New York Avenue and 11th.

"Listen," Frank said, "I know you've been telling people that you welcome getting fired. I want to tell you how unprofessional and immature that is."

Stunning. Lizza had run to our boss and told him something I had said as a way of calming myself down. Now, here it was, ripped from context, and made into a problem between me and my editor. It was the first salvo of much fake outrage from Frank over the coming months. When I grumbled that I knew who snitched on me, Frank -- realizing he had fucked up -- urged me to let it go [...]

What I learned from this is something every journalist, every editor, every potential source and every reader should know: Ryan Lizza is not to be trusted. He will betray you, and betray you casually. Whatever helps Lizza get what he want, Lizza will do. It doesn't matter if you and he have a warm relationship. He only -- only -- cares about himself. So congratulations, Ryan! You got what you wanted. You're the New Yorker's Washington correspondent. I hope it's worth it to you to have that job, since the path that you took to get it was to become a sniveling, obsequious, deceitful coward. Or maybe that's what you've always been, and always will be.

This puts Lizza's upcoming book about the Obama Administration and the presumed softballing-for-access in its proper context.

But I want to actually focus on something inside the profile, when Emanuel attempts to rebut his critics on the left:

“They have never worked the legislative process,” Emanuel said of critics like the Times columnist Paul Krugman, who argued that Obama’s concessions to Senate Republicans—in particular, the tax cuts, which will do little to stimulate the economy—produced a package that wasn’t large enough to respond to the magnitude of the recession. “How many bills has he passed?” [...]

Now, my view is that Krugman as an economist is not wrong. But in the art of the possible, of the deal, he is wrong. He couldn’t get his legislation.”

The stimulus bill was essentially held hostage to the whims of Collins, Snowe, and Specter, but if Al Franken, the apparent winner of the disputed Minnesota Senate race, had been seated in Washington, and if Ted Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, had been regularly available to vote, the White House would have needed only one Republican to pass the measure. “No disrespect to Paul Krugman,” Emanuel went on, “but has he figured out how to seat the Minnesota senator?” (Franken’s victory is the subject of an ongoing court challenge by his opponent, Norm Coleman, which the national Republican Party has been happy to help finance.) “Write a fucking column on how to seat the son of a bitch. I would be fascinated with that column. O.K.?” Emanuel stood up theatrically and gestured toward his seat with open palms. “Anytime they want, they can have it,” he said of those who are critical of his legislative strategies. “I give them my chair.”

Given the limits of making the Senate filibuster and Republican obstructionism generally, Emanuel may be right on the Franken point (though there's obviously a rhetorical role the White House can play in highlighting the absurdity, one they aren't playing at all). But I can't tell you how many times I've heard this kind of criticism here in California from people within the Democratic Party, that us librul ranters don't know what it means to craft policy or how to execute the art of the deal. It's the default position for those in power, to trade of their experience - and actually, the secrecy of the process - to dismiss their critics.

But Emanuel gives up a powerful point in the middle of that. As I boldfaced, he actually admits that the stimulus package wasn't big enough. That's a pretty massive point, considering that the fate of economic recovery in no small part depends on fiscal spending that meets the task. While Emanuel claims that the Administration got 90% of what they wanted, they also didn't get a package that will fit the bill. That's what Paul Krugman is getting at in his response:

Eh. The question is why Obama didn't ask for what the economy needed, then bargain from there. My view is that Collins et al would have demanded $100 billion in cuts from whatever they started from; and that's not the case he answers.

Now, all of this is conjecture, and it's entirely possible that Collins and Nelson would have driven down the cost to essentially the $800 billion where it ended. But the pre-compromised position of the bill ENSURED that it would not be enough.

And this is not the first time that Emanuel has intimated that the stimulus was insufficient. Last week he said "We clearly thought that economic activity needed more, but it was more important to get it done than argue about just that."

Ultimately it may be positive that Emanuel knows what he has done isn't sufficient; maybe it will allow him to return for more if that comes to pass. But it's a pretty interesting move to admit inadequacy and then blame the very people who were saying all along that the bill was inadequate for "not being realistic." That's some up-is-downism right there. And if the ones who are so uninformed about the political process are also admittedly the ones who were RIGHT, would it kill those august dealmakers to, I don't know, learn something from that, and maybe not negotiate with themselves anymore?

The War On Wright

Well, the freakout over Rev. Wright today kind of caught me by surprise. Forgetting the fact that the Wright controversy did very little to Obama's chances in Pennsylvania, forgetting Obama's speech on race in America, forgetting that the revelation in Wright's weekend remarks was that the media misinterpreted practically everything he said, forgetting just about everything and taking the position that any appearance of the former Trinity Church pastor is simply incedniary regardless of content, the cable news was pretty much an uninterrupted parade of concern trolls warning that this independent individual's public appearances would be like death to Obama's presidential campaign. The Bill Moyers interview did not really have such an impact, but today's speech was at the National Press Club in Washington so it became real for the Village. He came to the center of THEIR universe, so of course the whole country was paying attention. Also, Wright went after the media, which offended them. So they were all too happy to give him hours of coverage today, and strictly on the terms of how any utterance of his would hurt Obama, not bothering to engage with the material in any way. The Clinton campaign is trying to move on because they don't have to do anything, as the media is carrying the ball for them, and also even they understand that propagating these stereotypes won't help any Democrats, including her, in the future.

Hardball was of particular note today. Tweety was breathing fire, jumping on these appearances, talking about how damaging they were without even really referring to them, asserting bluntly that Wright is now "the lead surrogate for the Obama campaign." He even brought on black minister Rev. Eugene Rivers, without of course mentioning that he's been working with George Bush for the past two terms and wants to be the new voice of the African-American community of faith (he got particularly incensed when Wright deemed the attack on him as "an attack on the black church" - that's of course his role to speak for all black people of faith).

After about 45 minutes of this, Ryan Lizza finally spoke up with a point that I've seen Ezra Klein make (can't find the link right now):

LIZZA: There should be a principle in these cases in this campaign. There is no guilt by association. This guy has one set of views, Obama has another set of views. If the views match up, then it's fair game. But the guy's been in politics since the mid-90s. He has a record in the State Senate in Illinois. He has a record in the US Senate. He's laid out an agenda as a presidential candidate. Where do his views match up with Jeremiah Wright's? And why as journalists are we confusing the two? It seems to me totally unfair that this guy is getting smeared with the views of someone just because he's his former pastor.

This whole time there's this shit-eating grin on Tweety's face, as if to say, "Oh, you dear boy." Tweety of course thinks Lizza is being naive, but he's making the very simple point that journalists shouldn't keep pretending Obama and Wright are somehow the same person given that they've charted vastly different visions and worldviews.

Then Tweety goes on to do just that, opening with one of his typically unintentionally hilarious moments:

MATTHEWS: Let me give you the proper way of putting it in literary terms. It's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde... who was the bad guy, Dr. Jekyll was the good guy, Mr. Hyde was the bad guy, right?

LIZZA: I'll trust you on that...

MATTHEWS: I think so.

Mr. Literary Allusion, Tweety is. Not that he knows anything ABOUT Jekyll and Hyde other than some snippet he saw on late-night cable after coming in from yet another cocktail party, but he's so urbane, no?

MATTHEWS: So every time you have a problem with Barack, because you don't really know him and he seems a little foreign to you, you think of him as both these guys. They're different faces of the same guy. Jeremiah Wright to a lot of people is Barack Obama. They've become the same Chicago character running for President. One is the good doctor, the other is the monster that shows up at night.

LIZZA: Look, I think there's a danger of that happening. But as journalists I think there's a responsibility to make it clear...

MATTHEWS: OK, carve it apart, separate the two. Try.

LIZZA: This guy went to a church. This guy is the pastor of that church. Now one of those guys is running for President and has laid out a vision that is radically different than anything his left-wing pastor had to say. Yes, it tells you something about who he is, it tells you something about the community where he came from. But it doesn't tell you anything, and nobody should confuse one with--

MATTHEWS: Do you think it might be hurting a good man like Mitt Romney and his family, and good members of the LDS Church, that they're being embarrassed by this breakaway group down in Texas in the last couple weeks? You don't think that story hurts Mitt Romney's chances of being on the ticket? Yes it does. So I'm saying, these associations, fair or unfair, birds of a feather, it's the way people think.

My favorite passage. "Fair or unfair." In other words, I know I'm talking bullshit, but this is my impression of what the unwashed masses think, so, you know, I'm going with it.

Jill Zuckman chimed in, calling Lizza "a little high-minded," Tweety went on to call "GOD DAMN AMERICA" one of the greatest quotes in history, and it went on from there. Lizza, of course, kept his Village standing by calling Wright a "doctrinaire left-winger." And then Matthews launched into his defense of his profession for continuing to harp on meaningless trivialities - it's apparently the Democrats' fault.

MATTHEWS: For years the Democratic politicians have been lambasting Republicans for hanging around with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. And now they're going after Pastor Hagee. This is the way politics is played, you get the guy's associates.

The difference, of course, is right inside Lizza's original comment - Falwell and Robertson's policy prescriptions did indeed "match up" with the conservative Republicans who associated with them, whereas in the case of Obama, he's charted his own policy course. There's also the fact that Falwell/Robertson associations never got more than a half-hour's worth of coverage on something like Hardball at all, and never without a spokesman rebutting anything negative (remember, Falwell guest-HOSTED Crossfire back in the day). Wright is some "character from Chicago" (there's an obvious racial component there) but Falwell and Robertson were media members in good standing.

AND, Lizza was of course talking about media responsibility, which is of course non-existent in this primary.

Matthews closed the discussion with this line:

Matthews: This is Hardball, we talk politics, Ryan.

Actually, I'd LIKE a show that talked politics. You talk nonsense and gossip about which people are mean to you and your friends. You decide who helps and hurts candidates and use that initial impression to color every future activity. You actually don't know a thing - or care - about politics. Or the people who would benefit from political discussion.

Rev. Wright is in an unwinnable situation, but I've noted throughout the year that anyone who gets that far under the skin of the traditional media is probably just fine.