Speechifyin' and pundit fallacy.
Last night I was looking over the relatively scanty and uninteresting media coverage of the big Kerry and Edwards Katrina-rebuttal speeches from Tuesday (not even C-SPAN has posted them). On paper, Kerry's address looks like a pretty standard partisan blast and was basically treated as such by the printed press. Edwards' speech deservedly got a little more attention, in the press and on the blogs. At the very least, Edwards' speech was remarkable for its happy reversal of the standard Democratic approach to politicking: wrapping fairly liberal policy ideas in mushy-middle rhetoric. Edwards did the stylistic-substantive opposite: he presented his wonkish, think-tank moderate ideas (the sort that are (a) attainable and (b) would actually make a significant but not radical difference in how we approach the issues surrounding American poverty and inequality) in the sort of expansively liberal language that makes us goo-goo partisans cheer. The Dems, at least the national ones, have long been a more liberal party than they sound as they drone about their exquisite moderation out there on the trail. If Edwards can turn that around, I'll give him serious consideration in 2008 (with my big, dangerous New Jersey primary vote!). His "We haven't built the levees high enough" refrain was also pretty inspired. Not surprisingly, little of this came across in the by-the-numbers reporting of the two speeches, usually one article to summarize both.
Unfortunately, while trolling Lexis Nexis, I stumbled on what appears to be the only TV pundit-show discussion (there are probably others that haven't been uploaded yet) of either speech -- this grisly exchange about Kerry between Douglas Brinkley and the host of The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: But Doug, it just looks to me like he's getting an early jump [on the 08 race]. And then, this is what he's going to do. He's not going to say he's running for president, but he's going to make as many appearances as possible, and basically remind people that they should have voted for him.
DOUG BRINKLEY: Absolutely. There's not any doubt that John Kerry's running for president. He's definitely going to run in `08.
The big factor, the name everybody puts in front of him is Hillary Clinton. She has the momentum. She has the ability to raise a lot of money.
But from a Kerry perspective, people toss around names like Vilsack or Biden for the Democratic nomination. It really is going to become, unless somebody just catapults to the top, a Hillary Clinton-John Kerry square-off. They're the two that could raise the money to do it. And Kerry wants to be seen as the alternative to Hillary.
He had to say something hard about Katrina. John Kerry was just -- you didn't hear from him through this whole month here. I think it would raise questions on the campaign trail. Instead, he went to the left of the Clintons slightly in the speech he gave at Brown. And he's positioning himself.
O'REILLY: Well, he has to run to the left of Hillary, does he not?
BRINKLEY: Yes, he does. And that's what this was really all about. Where Bill Clinton has been -- immediately was seen in the White House starting to fund raise for Katrina with former President Bush, Hillary came to the Astrodome and gave a kind of mild comments about Katrina.Kerry now came off as a bit of a firebrand, at least for Kerry's type of rhetoric firebrand. And it's the beginning really, you might want to call the Brown speech the opening salvo of `08 for him.
I don't want to trash Brinkley. I haven't read Tour of Duty but I thought his Carter bio, The Unfinished Presidency was a wonderfully subtle and observant book. But this performance was disgraceful. How does Brinkley know that Kerry is "definitely" running in 2008? It would have to be because Kerry told him or had it leaked to him. If that's the case, either he's in Kerry's confidence and shouldn't be passing off the confidence as his "opinion" on the talk shows; or it's knowledge he's intended to make public and so should tell us point-blank how he came about it. But the likeliest possibility is that Brinkley has simply no idea whether Kerry will run again, that he's engaging in wishful thinking. It's unlikely Kerry knows whether he's running at this point either. Surely it will depend on some combination of the polls, the party establishment's feelings and the prospective field over the next 16 months.
This is such a tired old saw. Remember back during the fall of 2002 when all sorts of pundits and various anonymous sources were "sure" that Al Gore was "definitely" running again? Same story: those people were clearly quite wrong. More to the point, they even, at the time, obviously had no idea what they were talking about because it was obvious that Gore hadn't told them. In political journalism, nobody ever gets called on the carpet for trying to pass off their uninformed opinions as truth. Rarely is anybody asked to back up their confident predictions with facts so we might know whether to take the prediction seriously. Pundits can pretty much assert anything, and quote sources asserting anything. It's a terrible, terrible practice.
Worse, as a Kerry partisan, Brinkley really ought to see the trap he's walking in to when he does these shows. By bringing him on with a Kerry-agoniste (Nina Easton), O'Reilly can quickly turn any discussion of Kerry away from what Kerry actually said in his speech (though, to be fair, in this instance he didn't really say much) to a speculative take on the 2008 horserace, in which it's certain to be pointed out how many people in Washington think Kerry Take II is an awful idea. The image O'Reilly wants us to take away is of Kerry, the scheming, calculating, vaguely hapless pol, running smack up against the Great Wall of Hillary in the 2008 primary. In this segment, the theme went unchallenged. Brinkley played his role in the drama just fine.
Unfortunately, while trolling Lexis Nexis, I stumbled on what appears to be the only TV pundit-show discussion (there are probably others that haven't been uploaded yet) of either speech -- this grisly exchange about Kerry between Douglas Brinkley and the host of The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: But Doug, it just looks to me like he's getting an early jump [on the 08 race]. And then, this is what he's going to do. He's not going to say he's running for president, but he's going to make as many appearances as possible, and basically remind people that they should have voted for him.
DOUG BRINKLEY: Absolutely. There's not any doubt that John Kerry's running for president. He's definitely going to run in `08.
The big factor, the name everybody puts in front of him is Hillary Clinton. She has the momentum. She has the ability to raise a lot of money.
But from a Kerry perspective, people toss around names like Vilsack or Biden for the Democratic nomination. It really is going to become, unless somebody just catapults to the top, a Hillary Clinton-John Kerry square-off. They're the two that could raise the money to do it. And Kerry wants to be seen as the alternative to Hillary.
He had to say something hard about Katrina. John Kerry was just -- you didn't hear from him through this whole month here. I think it would raise questions on the campaign trail. Instead, he went to the left of the Clintons slightly in the speech he gave at Brown. And he's positioning himself.
O'REILLY: Well, he has to run to the left of Hillary, does he not?
BRINKLEY: Yes, he does. And that's what this was really all about. Where Bill Clinton has been -- immediately was seen in the White House starting to fund raise for Katrina with former President Bush, Hillary came to the Astrodome and gave a kind of mild comments about Katrina.Kerry now came off as a bit of a firebrand, at least for Kerry's type of rhetoric firebrand. And it's the beginning really, you might want to call the Brown speech the opening salvo of `08 for him.
I don't want to trash Brinkley. I haven't read Tour of Duty but I thought his Carter bio, The Unfinished Presidency was a wonderfully subtle and observant book. But this performance was disgraceful. How does Brinkley know that Kerry is "definitely" running in 2008? It would have to be because Kerry told him or had it leaked to him. If that's the case, either he's in Kerry's confidence and shouldn't be passing off the confidence as his "opinion" on the talk shows; or it's knowledge he's intended to make public and so should tell us point-blank how he came about it. But the likeliest possibility is that Brinkley has simply no idea whether Kerry will run again, that he's engaging in wishful thinking. It's unlikely Kerry knows whether he's running at this point either. Surely it will depend on some combination of the polls, the party establishment's feelings and the prospective field over the next 16 months.
This is such a tired old saw. Remember back during the fall of 2002 when all sorts of pundits and various anonymous sources were "sure" that Al Gore was "definitely" running again? Same story: those people were clearly quite wrong. More to the point, they even, at the time, obviously had no idea what they were talking about because it was obvious that Gore hadn't told them. In political journalism, nobody ever gets called on the carpet for trying to pass off their uninformed opinions as truth. Rarely is anybody asked to back up their confident predictions with facts so we might know whether to take the prediction seriously. Pundits can pretty much assert anything, and quote sources asserting anything. It's a terrible, terrible practice.
Worse, as a Kerry partisan, Brinkley really ought to see the trap he's walking in to when he does these shows. By bringing him on with a Kerry-agoniste (Nina Easton), O'Reilly can quickly turn any discussion of Kerry away from what Kerry actually said in his speech (though, to be fair, in this instance he didn't really say much) to a speculative take on the 2008 horserace, in which it's certain to be pointed out how many people in Washington think Kerry Take II is an awful idea. The image O'Reilly wants us to take away is of Kerry, the scheming, calculating, vaguely hapless pol, running smack up against the Great Wall of Hillary in the 2008 primary. In this segment, the theme went unchallenged. Brinkley played his role in the drama just fine.
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