In defence of partisan punditry.
TIME's list of the 10 best and worst US senators is a good example of why non-horserace politically neutral analysis can be such a drag. First, TIME cites my favourite senator Carl Levin (D-MI) in its top ten:
[T]he Michigan Democrat has gained respect from both parties for his attention to detail and deep knowledge of policy, especially in his role as a vigilant monitor of businesses and federal agencies. In 2002, a subcommittee he led hauled in Enron's board of directors to question them about the company's shady accounting practices; in hearings a year later, he was one of the chief challengers of large accounting firms that had created illegal tax shelters. Congress passed laws in the wake of both scandals in an effort to prevent the abuses from happening again.
Levin, 71 and first elected in 1978, says he considers congressional hearings a critical part of his job, spending as much as 20 hours prepping for each one so an evasive witness won't outwit him...
But right next to Levin on the list is the odious Jon Kyl (R-AZ):
Last November, for example, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina proposed a controversial amendment barring U.S. courts from hearing cases brought by prisoners in the war on terrorism. It turned out that Kyl was behind it, having worked on the language for months and having assigned his staff to help write the final bill. But "it was a situation where it was best handled by Lindsey," Kyl says delicately, pointing out that Graham had the credibility of a military lawyer and a centrist. When urgent legislation to respond to Hurricane Katrina bumped Kyl's long-sought goal of a vote on abolishing the estate tax last fall, Kyl quietly worked to get it back on the Senate agenda by recruiting Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions in an unsuccessful attempt to find victims of the disaster who would be paying the tax.
Kyl's qualifications are that he's a wily hardass out to exploit a national tragedy in order to manipulate public opinion on the estate tax, thumb his nose at Bush from the right, and hide his agenda behind his "centrist" colleagues. What kind of value system admires both that and Levin's work embarrassing corporate villains and agitating against the dangers of war in Iraq, or Ted Kennedy's "serial battles on behalf of the working class"? (Similarly, why on earth can the harmless Daniel Akaka (D-HI) be on the same "Worst Senators" list as the wacky, unethical Jim Bunning (R-KY) other than to provide bipartisan balance?)
In order to fit both Kyl and Levin on the same list, TIME has to basically ignore ideological concerns completely. The blandness starts with the neat alphabetical order of the senators and goes from there. There's the typical praise for "mavericks" -- senators who, like Kent Conrad or Richard Lugar, can stand down wooing from the White House or marching orders from the party establishment -- and for senators who are wily, appealingly demonstrative, and/or back-room creative in getting their agenda passed, whatever that agenda might be or why it might have been adopted in the first place. The result is, predictably, pure mush: a style-parade lacking any coherent idea of what senators ought to be doing to advance the public interest, or any theory of good govenance beyond the usual, underlying theory that there is a vital centre somewhere out there, that hard work is a good thing, etc. etc. Maybe that worked 20 years ago, maybe not. But when liberals and conservatives today have entirely different ideas of what the public interest is, not taking sides requires saying pretty close to nothing at all. The TIME worldview, neatly symbolized by a list with both Kyl and Levin on it, is just excruciatingly toneless.
[T]he Michigan Democrat has gained respect from both parties for his attention to detail and deep knowledge of policy, especially in his role as a vigilant monitor of businesses and federal agencies. In 2002, a subcommittee he led hauled in Enron's board of directors to question them about the company's shady accounting practices; in hearings a year later, he was one of the chief challengers of large accounting firms that had created illegal tax shelters. Congress passed laws in the wake of both scandals in an effort to prevent the abuses from happening again.
Levin, 71 and first elected in 1978, says he considers congressional hearings a critical part of his job, spending as much as 20 hours prepping for each one so an evasive witness won't outwit him...
But right next to Levin on the list is the odious Jon Kyl (R-AZ):
Last November, for example, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina proposed a controversial amendment barring U.S. courts from hearing cases brought by prisoners in the war on terrorism. It turned out that Kyl was behind it, having worked on the language for months and having assigned his staff to help write the final bill. But "it was a situation where it was best handled by Lindsey," Kyl says delicately, pointing out that Graham had the credibility of a military lawyer and a centrist. When urgent legislation to respond to Hurricane Katrina bumped Kyl's long-sought goal of a vote on abolishing the estate tax last fall, Kyl quietly worked to get it back on the Senate agenda by recruiting Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions in an unsuccessful attempt to find victims of the disaster who would be paying the tax.
Kyl's qualifications are that he's a wily hardass out to exploit a national tragedy in order to manipulate public opinion on the estate tax, thumb his nose at Bush from the right, and hide his agenda behind his "centrist" colleagues. What kind of value system admires both that and Levin's work embarrassing corporate villains and agitating against the dangers of war in Iraq, or Ted Kennedy's "serial battles on behalf of the working class"? (Similarly, why on earth can the harmless Daniel Akaka (D-HI) be on the same "Worst Senators" list as the wacky, unethical Jim Bunning (R-KY) other than to provide bipartisan balance?)
In order to fit both Kyl and Levin on the same list, TIME has to basically ignore ideological concerns completely. The blandness starts with the neat alphabetical order of the senators and goes from there. There's the typical praise for "mavericks" -- senators who, like Kent Conrad or Richard Lugar, can stand down wooing from the White House or marching orders from the party establishment -- and for senators who are wily, appealingly demonstrative, and/or back-room creative in getting their agenda passed, whatever that agenda might be or why it might have been adopted in the first place. The result is, predictably, pure mush: a style-parade lacking any coherent idea of what senators ought to be doing to advance the public interest, or any theory of good govenance beyond the usual, underlying theory that there is a vital centre somewhere out there, that hard work is a good thing, etc. etc. Maybe that worked 20 years ago, maybe not. But when liberals and conservatives today have entirely different ideas of what the public interest is, not taking sides requires saying pretty close to nothing at all. The TIME worldview, neatly symbolized by a list with both Kyl and Levin on it, is just excruciatingly toneless.
2 Comments:
Have you found a site counter yet ?
Ezra posted a link on the 19th.
opit: not quite sure what you mean, but scroll down; all the standard stuff is at the bottom of the page. I saw the link; I read Ezra's blog everyday.
Thanks though.
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