BILL MOYERS: Journalists all over the country this week were talking about the ugly turn that this campaign, in their judgment, has taken, about the disgusting things they heard and seen, the crowds. It's getting ugly out there.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: It is getting ugly out there. And there should be a way for both campaigns to step up and very clearly say that these are the boundaries within which it is acceptable to work, and we will not work without them. There actually has been an ad on each side that's called the other candidate and campaign "dishonorable." That's a pretty strong charge. But let's keep it in context. Let's go back to 1964.
Once in a blue moon when "journalists all over the country" talk about something that means it's significant. More often it means it's just something that's easy to talk about. Or else it's simply BS. In this case, it has turned ugly out there, but unfortunately, even Bill Moyers seemed incapable of directly addressing what was going on. And Jamieson simply helped him evade the obvious: the age-old GOP hate machine finally starting to break down, faced with a grade just too steep to climb.
Going back to 1964, Jamieson was the opposite of helpful:
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: And not to the ad that everybody turns to, "The Daisy" ad. But let's instead turn to the ad in which a little girl is shown licking an ice cream cone.
[1964 Johnson Campaign Ad] FEMALE NARRATOR: Do you know what people used to do? They used to explode atomic bombs in the air, now children should have lots of Vitamin A and calcium, but they shouldn't have any strontium-90 or caesium-137. These things come from atomic bombs and their radioactive. They can make you die.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: That ad, like "The Daisy" ad, only aired once. But that ad, to me, is more problematic than the "The Daisy" ad because Goldwater and Johnson differed on the Test Ban Treaty. Johnson favored. Goldwater opposed. But what the ad suggests is that Goldwater favored putting strontium-90 in the ice cream cone of the little girl. Now, by comparison to that, what's happening now, dishonorable, sleazy, highly problematic. It falls within a range but that we've seen before historically.
Um, but, how shall I say this, Kathleen? Barry Goldwater actually did favor putting strontium-90 in the ice cream cone of the little girl. It wasn't like that was his master plan or anything. But he favored continuing atmospheric testing, and atmospheric testing put strontium-90 in the ice cream cones of little girls, as well as spreading other deadly isotopes, such as iodine-131. It's really just as simple as that.
In fact, Jamieson leaves the impression that this wasn't really a serious problem at all. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Wikipedia explains:
From 1951 - mid-1962, the Nevada Test Site (NTS) was a primary site used for both surface and above-ground nuclear testing, with eighty-six tests were conducted at or above ground level, and 14 other tests that were underground, all of which involved releases of significant amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
In the 1950s, people who lived in the vicinity of the NTS were encouraged to sit outside and watch the mushroom clouds that were created by nuclear bomb explosions. Many were given radiation badges to wear on their clothes, which were later collected by the Atomic Energy Commission to gather data about radiation levels.
In a report by the National Cancer Institute, released in 1997, it was determined that the nearly ninety atmospheric tests at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) left high levels of radioactive iodine-131 (5.5 exabecquerels) across a large area of the continental United States, especially in the years 1952, 1953, 1955, and 1957. The National Cancer Institute report estimates that doses received in these years are estimated to be large enough to produce 10,000 to 75,000 additional cases of thyroid cancer in the U.S.[7] Another report, published by the Scientific Research Society, estimates that about 22,000 additional radiation-related cancers and 2,000 additional deaths from radiation-related leukemia are expected to occur in the United States because of external and internal radiation from both NTS and global fallout. [5]
The threat of downwind exposure to radioactivity remaining at the Nevada Test Site from nuclear weapons tests was still an issue as late as 2007. The Pentagon planned to test a 700-ton ammonium nitrate-and-fuel oil "bunker buster" weapon. The planned "Divine Strake" test would have raised a large mushroom cloud of contaminated dust that could have blown toward population centers such as Las Vegas, Boise, Salt Lake City, and St. George, Utah. This project was cancelled in February of 2007, in large part due to political pressure inspired by the threat of downwind exposure to radioactivity.
So, not off to a very good start.
Now she want to attack Barack Obama for basically telling people the truth about Social Security, while McCain wallows in lies:
BILL MOYERS: When you watch politics as a scholar, did anything this week go beyond the boundary of your sense of propriety and offend your personally as a voter, as a citizen, as an American?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: What I respond to more so than the attacks and counterattacks about who knew whom where, and why, are those statements that are fundamentally deceptive about something that matters when you cast your vote.
BILL MOYERS: Such as?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: And that would affect governance. So, for example, when you have one side suggesting that the candidate on the other side wanted to privatize Social Security and that would have cut benefits in half for current seniors and it would have invested their money in the stock market so they'd be enmeshed in this crisis, probably losing their money. That's the implication of the ad.
BILL MOYERS: The Obama ad about McCain's position on Social Security and Medicare.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Yes. And that's a deeply deceptive ad.
[Obama Ad] FEMALE NARRATOR: John McCain voted three times in favor of privatizing social security. McCain says 'I campaigned in support of President Bush's proposal, cutting benefits in half, risking social security on the stock market.'
BILL MOYERS: What offends you about that?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: What offends me is that if you're a current senior citizen and you look at that ad and you take it at face value, you would believe something that is untrue. The Bush proposal wouldn't even have let you invest in these accounts. You weren't eligible. So, first, it wouldn't have affected you at all. Secondly, as a result, your benefits wouldn't have been cut in half. And that projection for when there might have been a reduction in benefits would have been into the far distant future under some scenarios.
So, generally speaking most voters don't think far into the future. If it won't effect them within the next few years, it's not real to them. And the entire system of political discourse is premised on that fact, and distracting them with utter trivialities, if not downright fantasies, such as having a beer with George W. Bush, a man they will never meet, who doesn't drink beer.
So here's an ad that is factually true but Jamieson is deeply worried that because it might affect people by misleading them into thinking the impact will happen now, it will lead to them to vote based on their sense of right and wrong, when they shouldn't really give a fig about that. So what if it's the grandkids that get screwed instead of me? They're too you to vote anyway, screw them!
Sorry, Kathleen, but no dice. You want to use the perfect to destroy the good, and I'm not buying.
But more importantly, in the implication that that ad and the current financial context is and you'd be invested in the parts of the market that are now crashing. The Bush proposal would have put you into a category of investments that are not experiencing the same kinds of decline that you're seeing right now.
This is even better! If you read the fine print (it took me nearly 1/2 hour of Googling to even find it somewhere), you can find a version that supports this claim. Here, for example:
Investments. Workers would be limited to a few basic and diversified investment choices. The default portfolio would likely consist of up of 50 percent stock index funds, 30 percent corporate bond index funds, and 20 percent government bonds. On average, this mixture would pay about 4.6 percent after inflation annually, even after subtracting administrative fees.
Lifespan fund. Workers would be able to invest in a lifespan fund. This is an investment program that automatically rebalances a workers account as he ages. Younger workers who are far from retirement would have most of their money invested in stock index funds. As they get older, their investments would gradually and automatically shift into bonds and other less volatile investments. This means that if the stock market went down just before their retirement, workers who invested in a lifespan fund would not see a significant change in their PRA, as they would have only a small amount invested in stocks at that time.
The only problem is that this version of Bush's plan is not the basis on which his plan was publicly promoted over the years, in which there were repeated references to the historic record of the stock market, which only represent 50% of the proposed fund.
Note: Even so, the plan didn't work, as was repeatedly pointed out by critics, and even sometimes by proponents, but that's not the least bit important to Kathleen Hall Jamieson. This chart, from EPI, shwos at a glance how bogus Bush's plan was:
Now, you can say, "I oppose the Bush proposal," and there are many reasons to do it. But you can't say legitimately that current seniors would have been affected by it at all. Now, that's a form of deception that is extremely problematic. And I call that dirty politics.
No, it's not Kathleen. It's the same using the perfect to attack the good routine all over again.
It's just a whole lot easier to tell a total lie than it is to tell a total truth. The total truth of how an airplane flies is very complicated. It could take a whole CD worth of plans. The total lie of how Superman flies just takes one panel in comic book. If you're going to force debates into one-panel comics then the truth is going to have to be represented in stylized form. You can't judge it like an engineering drawing, and just say it's false-and worse than that "dirty" because it's necessarily far too simple. Doing that is every bit as dishonest as you accuse the ad itself of being.
BILL MOYERS: What about the other side?
The "balance" to this is most illuminating:
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: On the other side, there's an ad that is still airing. And the implication of that ad is that Senator Obama is attacking the troops for killing civilians.
[McCain Campaign Ad] FEMALE NARRATOR: Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are...
BARACK OBAMA: Just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.
FEMALE NARRATOR: How dishonorable.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Let me read to you what Senator Obama actually said in the real context. "We've got to get the job done there. And that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there."
He was talking about military strategy. He was talking about a need to increase the number of troops to have a different kind of strategy. That wasn't an indictment of the troops. That was an indictment of the strategy. And this in a context in which the Defense Secretary, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has apologized for civilian casualties. That's a consequential ad, if you believe that, you might draw a bad inference.
So, the GOP is outright lying about what Obama is saying and doing, using the most overt type of deceptive editing, taking a few words out of context. And that's supposed to be the equivilent of Obama telling the truth about McCain on Social Security, but not also saying, "Now, just to be clear, this won't hurt you directly, it will only hurt your children and grandchildren. But don't you think you ought to care about them, because what if your parents had voted for someone like McCain, you'd be SOL right now."
There is a comparison to be drawn here. It's just not the one that Jamieson draws. For the past 70 years, Democrats have run on actually taking care of the American people via creating programs like Social Security, making sure they work, and protecting them from sneaky political attacks. And for the past 70 years, Republicans have run on painting Democrats as Jew-loving, n$gger-loving, commie-bastard traitors. And both these ads are reflective of the two different political traditions they come out of.
Jamieson is on much firmer ground a little later on, during this exchange:
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Yeah, I don't like the word "negative" at all. I'd really like to get rid of it in politics.
BILL MOYERS: And use what?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: I'd like to use the word "attack." And attack can be perfectly legitimate. In fact, it's the basis for making distinctions. There is a difference between Senator McCain and Senator Obama on Social Security. There's a difference on healthcare reform. There's a difference on tax policy. And all those differences can be pointed out in attack advertising that will help you make an informed judgment.
If it's accurate, if it's fair, if it's relevant to government, those are legitimate uses of attacking. I wouldn't call those negative. I don't like the word "negative" because it blurs the dirty with the clean attacks. If we take attack out of politics, you'll never be able to distinguish between the two candidates.
But this is where an intelligent discussion ought to start. Instead, for Jamieson, it's the high-water mark.
Of course, it wasn't just Kamieson. Moyers himself was just totally whacky at one point:
BILL MOYERS: There was an Obama film released this week that offended me as a journalist because they used the filmmaking process to suggest the credibility for the charge about McCain and the Keating Five that they wouldn't have had in a 30-second commercial. Take a look at this.
[OBAMA CAMPAIGN AD] MALE NARRATOR: If you think about what fraud is. Fraud is the creation of trust and then its betrayal.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Well, this - first, this is a web ad of some sorts. I mean, I don't know if you call something that long an ad. But it's a web ad. You see it on the web. It's not the documentary form that's problematic. It's the inference that's invited by juxtaposition.
And this has been a week of juxtaposition. We've got William Ayers, Barack Obama friends in one set of claims. You've got all the scandals of the current weeks on Wall Street allied to McCain.
And we put them together, draw the inference that it's causal, draw the inference that he really was responsible, not that there was a Keating Five, that he was the most responsible, and that somehow it's linked to all of these current scandals that we have right now. And so what we have in this past week is a text, you know, kind of textbook case of guilty by association and argument from juxtaposition.
But, of course, John McCain wasn't just associated with the Keating Five. He was one of them. And he was guilty by his own admission-although he never really admitted just how guilty he was. What's more, while he went through a ritualized process of contrition, he still continued to be very close to the special interests he was supposed to be watch-dogging, he has done eggregious favors, he has continued advocating for wreckless deregulation, which was a direct cause of the financial distress we're experiencing, and this year he even weaseled around the very signature campaign finance law that was the capstone of his rehabilitation process.
How is that in any way comparable to the inference that Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist, bent on turning over America to our enemies?
Well, of course, it's not. But the actual facts about John McCain are irrelevant to Jamieson, who is firmly embedded in her tire swing, with the Official Beltway Fantasy John McCain Action Figure, which even folks like Chris Matthews have tired of by now:
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: He has essentially said he's learned from it. Do we now draw the inference that because of it he's going to act as he did back then in whatever way was inappropriate back then, if he becomes president? Or do we believe that he learned from it and, as a result, he's far less likely to act in any way that would suggest that kind of a problem?
If you looked at his career since then, you'd say reasonably the inference is he learned a lesson and he will not go anywhere near that kind of problem in the future. That's what motivated McCain-Feingold. That's what motivated his attacks on earmarks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So the notion that something can be accurate but not relevant is one that we're missing as we assess these claims.
And don't forget how much it pains him to call Obama a traitor, Kathleen. He is a man of honor (TM), you know! |
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