Fuzzy Thinking

Joe Klein, after any number of people noted the discrepancy between his reported conversation with Jane Harman and her vote on the Iraq Supplemental bill, posted this from Harman:

I apologize for not calling to tell you that I changed my mind. Your account of our conversation was accurate and I stand by what I said to you. We were faced with two miserable choices. I had those kids on the C-130 [deploying to Iraq] in my mind, but I also had to consider the overwhelming opposition to this war in my district--and, in the end, my responsibility was to the people I represent.

So he did report the conversation accurately -- except that he doesn't comment on the fact that the original quote was cast as though the vote had already taken place. Since there's some ambiguity on that point, it would be helpful to have some clarification from someone who, we are led to believe, knows.

As far as I'm concerned, though, his conclusions are still full of beans.

I don't know if Digby read the comments to Klein's post today, most of which rake him over the coals for shoddy journalism. There are a few, however, that seem pro-Klein and equally divorced from reality. But Digby, I think, nails it.

Perhaps Harman's vote was a cynical capitulation to the brainless hippies, as Klein implies. But perhaps it's also true that the 65% who are people like her constituents deserve to have at least a tiny bit of representation in the congress too, even if the much wiser beltway wags think they should allow their betters to make the big decisions while they just send in their tax money and watch "American Idol" --- something which I'm sure people in Torrance would be happy to do except for the fact that members of their own families, schoolmates and friends are being killed.

This isn't one of those issues where you can tell your constituents that you "know better." The good citizens of Torrance California have proved, in the most painful way possible, that they have a stake in this thing and they deserve to be heard. And I would imagine that a good many of them feel as helpless, angry and defeated as Andrew Bacevich does today. The least their representatives can do is represent them. If they don't, those good citizens of Torrance (and good citizens all over the United States) are going to find people who will.

And Glenn Greenwald sees a problem that I missed:

Both of the premises which Alter sets forth here are correct: (a) de-funding does not even arguably constitute "endangerment or abandonment of the troops," but (b) "Americans have been convinced that it does." And therein one finds what is the most extraordinary and telling fact of our political landscape. Namely, our Iraq war policy was just determined, in large part if not principally, by a complete myth: that de-funding proposals constitute an abandonment or, more ludicrously still, "endangerment" of the troops.

The "why" is fairly easy to explain, I think -- Bushes uses the built-in trust factor of the president to lie his way through everything, and so-called "journalists" and opinion makers like Joe Klein (and David Broder, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Friedman, WSJ, NYT . . .) just reinforce the lies by not asking the questions they should be asking -- that is, they're not doing their job. A key element of the problem is that I can refer to these people as "opinoni makers" and no one raises an eyebrow, even though they've been wrong about everything.

I think, however, that our disaster of a free press is a symptom rather than a cause, although I will admit to an apparent synergistic effect. We are a society in which belief trumps fact. This is something that appears on the left as much as the right, it's just that the right is most blatant about it. Rigorous inquiry is something that's discouraged from a very early age, and complete anathema throughout most of a child's school years. The idea that there is a "right" answer and if you wait long enough someone will tell you what it is has probably done more damage to our public discourse than all the Joe Kleins of the world. (I'm only singling out Klein because he happens to be the origin of this post, and for the "precipitous withdrawal" mantra, which is on its face ridiculous. His readers challenged him on it, but do you think that's going to make a difference? Don't hold your breath. Helen Thomas he ain't.) The logical disconnects that Greenwald notes are part of the whole syndrome -- nobody's thinking very much, now are they?

(Sidebar: This sloppy thinking informs the full range of pubic debate on just about every issue I can think of. David Neiwert has made the same point about the debate on hate crimes.)

(Another sidebar: Extending this argument a bit, we see that it's not only a lot of public perceptions that suffer from the lack of critical thinking. There really is a synergistic feed here, in which the public swallows specious arguments, which get fed back to the pundit class, who broadcast them to begin with, reinforcing their misperceptions of where the country is, until the country wakes up and the punditocracy doesn't. Greg Sargent has a good analysis of one particular case of this:

But come on, let's face it: The Mommy Party generalization has become inane and simplistic, and frolicking around with it is just unbecoming for the "paper of record." At bottom it's cause for embarrassment, really. As Agne aptly put it to me:

"This whole silly idea of a Mommy Party and a Daddy Party is of course based in the notion that voters trust Republicans more when it comes to 'hard' issues like war, terrorism, and security and Democrats more when it comes to 'soft' issues such as health care, education, environment, etc...The absolute crash of public confidence in the Republican Party over the last year has rendered this idea completely irrelevant."

And there you have it. The Times is still beating last week's dead horse, making itself irrelevant.

Of course, it should be "the Mommy party and the Big Daddy party." But you knew that.)