Ezra Klein sets up the marks for Paul Ryan

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sun Aug 08, 2010 at 16:00


Brad DeLong sez:

Methinks Ezra Klein Gets Snookered...

Ezra Klein likes Paul Ryan. Methinks that this is the first time Ezra has run into a charming and personable Republican selling deficit-exploding plans as deficit reducing ones.

But some of us have seen this story many times before...

This is yet another--if somewhat milder--example of the sensible center critiquing the "sensible center".  As DeLong implies, there's nothing new here.  In fact, it's just another incarnation of Lucy with the football.  But the really annoying part is when Ezra gets all superior to those like DeLong (hey, I'm staying out of it as much as I possibly can, while not staying out of it all!) who've actually got a handle on what's going on:

And now let's get to the paragraph a lot of you will flay me for: I don't think Ryan is a charlatan or a flim-flam artist. More to the point, I think he's playing an important role, and one I'm happy to try and help him play: The worlds of liberals and conservatives are increasingly closed loops. Very few politicians from one side are willing to seriously engage with the other side, particularly on substance. Substance is scary. Substance is where you can be made to look bad. And substance has occasionally made Ryan look bad. But the willingness to engage has made him look good. It's given some people the information they need to decide him a charlatan, and others the information they need to decide him a bright spot. It's also given Ryan a much deeper understanding of liberal ideas than most conservative politicians have.

So do Ryan's arguments persuade me? Not as far as the Roadmap goes. But I'm glad to give him space to try to persuade all of you, so long as he's willing to let me try and poke holes in his arguments while he's doing it. That's an offer I've extended to every legislator interested in taking me up on it, and it still stands.

Ah, where to begin?  Ezra's smug superiority?  Or the part where Lucy pulls away the football, and Ezra lands flat on his ass?  Or the part where Ezra totally misses the point of everything?

Substance is scary. Substance is where you can be made to look bad. And substance has occasionally made Ryan look bad. But the willingness to engage has made him look good.

Memo To Ezra: Looking good is the only game that Ryan's playing.  By saying what you've just said, you've made yourself Ryan's bitch.  That's the beginning, middle and end of the story.  

And this:

It's given some people the information they need to decide him a charlatan, and others the information they need to decide him a bright spot. It's also given Ryan a much deeper understanding of liberal ideas than most conservative politicians have.

is the same sort of standard-less standard that's standard operating proceedure for making the Obama Administration such a staggering disappointment.  (Since most conservative politicians understand liberal ideas about as well as meerkats understand quantum physics, I'm not terribly impressed that Ryan understands them as well as orangutangs understand quantum physics.)

Bottom line: Ezra suffers from the age-old liberal disease of thinking that conservatives are just liberals with a different set of policy preferences.  They're not:  They come from an entirely different culture: a pre-modern culture of warriors and priests. Not surprisingly, their only interest in ideas is as weapons.

It's one thing for Ezra to be taken in by Ryan's con.  But he's actually doing much, much more: by legitimizing Ryan the way he does, he's actually participating in Ryan's con.

Despite--or perhaps because of--all his education and intelligence, Ezra really doesn't get that Ryan is offering excuses, rather than reasons, for doing things that any reasonably smart 13-year old can see are utterly catastrophic.

That is, any reasonably smart 13-year old that doesn't already want to be Paul Ryan or Ezra Klein when they grow up.

Paul Rosenberg :: Ezra Klein sets up the marks for Paul Ryan

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Ezra Klein sets up the marks for Paul Ryan | 36 comments
Ezra the Judas goat (4.00 / 6)
The anteroom gets more crowded every day. That's why we need Ezra to sell tickets, I guess. Laugh at the old hippies all you want to. They had their comical aspects, to be sure -- how could any adult denizen of an about-to-be-post-industrial state imagine himself to be Kit Carson, or Sitting Bull, or a wandering Zen monk -- and yet, and yet.....

There was a stunning bit of popular wisdom in the idea that what a coalition of the willing needed to do was to create a new society within the decaying ruins of the old, starting with ignoring pretty much anything its caretakers had to say, and politely declining any of the tasty dishes they set out as temptation to join their flock. What couldn't be pillaged from the old books could be re-invented, and in the meantime, if the temporal powers took us for deaf, dumb and blind, so much the better.

The only problem, as it turned out, was that the spring dried up, and none of us knew how to restart it. Clearly, dynamite wasn't the answer, but neither was working for all day in one of their slave mills, then changing our clothes and identities at night. Who listens to a madman, holy or not?

And so it goes....

Judas or Janus? (4.00 / 3)
Judas was at least an apostle, a member of the inner circle who turned (as I understand it). This might imply he was a part of our inner circle, or somebody's in any case.

Ezra strikes me more as one whose life goal is to join the inner circle and he is prepared to say and do anything to get there. That's not really who Janus was, but that is the sense in which his name is invoked today.

Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? And cold comfort for change?

[ Parent ]
No heathen he (4.00 / 1)
Judas only in the sense that he happily leads other lambs to the slaughter. He find it a regrettable necessity, perhaps, but a necessity nevertheless. And if I may say so, as a graduate of UCSB myself, expecting more of Gauchos is something of a forlorn hope. Bank-burning was before his time (although not before mine.)  
[ Parent ]
Ezra's not serious (4.00 / 4)
He's a regurgitator. His style - like Yglesias' - is couched in Ivy League phrasing, but the fact is these guys get snookered once or twice a week.

(See HCR debacle for most obvious example!)

Great takedown Paul. Someone from the (moderate) left side of the aisle needs to take down these wet-behind-the-ear fools. More of this pleeze.

Well he's "serious" enough (4.00 / 2)
for the Washpo and savvy enough not to get Froomkined. Can't you see Ezra's post as a Broder column...

He's been dubbed the 'brains" of the GOP caucus and there's no questioning his intelligence. I don't agree with all of his ideas, but his willingness to engage with Democrats bodes well for the future of this body...

[ Parent ]
Yglesias, etc. (4.00 / 3)
For the record, Yglesias is the only one of the two with an actual Ivy League education.  Ezra is from the University of California, UCSC and UCSB to be specific.  Also, Yglesias is on the 'Ryan is a charlatan' side of this debate.

Neither point is hugely important, but it can be a short walk from looking for similarities to stereotyping to dehumanizing.  Something to keep in mind.

Also keep in mind that these two represent exactly those people who need to be part of the solution.  You will never have a liberal majority without including people like this.  They represent the portion of elite opinion most easily brought into the fold.

Can populism completely work around folks like this, or do we need them?  I think we need them.

[ Parent ]
they are welcome (4.00 / 1)
and maybe we do need them, or some of them, but they have to want to push in the same general direction and episodes like this one and many from Yglesias at least gives one pause on that question.

It would not have surprised me to learn Ezra was an Ivy product, as so many, far from all, fit comfortably into the pattern under discussion.

I do expect more from a Gaucho and especially a Banana Slug.

Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? And cold comfort for change?

[ Parent ]
Banana Slug (4.00 / 1)
Ezra left UCSC to go to UCSB.  So clearly he has at least one screw loose.  The fact I'm a Banana Slug myself should in no way be considered a bias in this determination.

Actually, going to UCSC can hurt one's liberalism.  I know it influenced me.  You get to see the full depths of the underbelly there and realize everything can be pushed too far.  People are far from perfect, everywhere you go.

I have several experiences from college of liberalism run amok.  Those experiences at that age most definitely influence you.

[ Parent ]
It's all in how you use it (4.00 / 1)
I'm a proud Duck and Oregon is certainly right there on any list of "liberal" schools and on a quite of few lists of "liberal party" schools. Excesses of many types.

In the face of such things realities, the question I faced was: Which way to turn?

I turned left, not right.

Sociology can do that to a young mind. At my school, and many others I suppose, sociology is where they try to quarantine the lefties, to prevent the contagion from spreading.

Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? And cold comfort for change?

[ Parent ]
turns (4.00 / 1)
I was actually born in Portland, but moved away as a baby.  This is where grandparents always lived, though.  The original OMSI, back when it was next to the zoo, was my favorite place in the world.

My parents moved back when they retired, my sister followed and my family moved to Oregon eight (8? really??) years ago.  I don't get the whole Duck versus Beaver thing, though.  College sports suck.  :-)

I turned left, not right.

I never turned right, just put up a guard rail on the left.  I was a born again Christian at the time (scary, I know), and had been since Jr. High.  The left might have singed me a bit, but that was nothing compared to the full flame throwing coming from the right.

[ Parent ]
Ducks vs Beavers (0.00 / 0)
I happily went to Oregon my first two years and was amused in early November when the school paper published the scurrilous fight song that went something like this, "OSU our pants are off to you, ..." and downhill from there. Apologies ensued but it happened again the next fall, too. My take, having transferred to the University of Michigan and see the Ohio State rivalry, is that the Ducks vs Beavers was far more fun and amusing. Then again, if you're not into college football, it's all juvenile. And the Ohio State rivalry apparently stems from an actual "war" between the two states over Toledo in the early 1800s (?) which led to Michigan losing Toledo but gaining the UP. At worst, Oregon State kids were conservative while Oregon kids were more liberal and that difference helped feed any rivalry.
[ Parent ]
UP for Toledo (0.00 / 0)
Ohio was robbed, as I realize every time I visit from Detroit. The UP is gorgeous and the source of enormous mineral and timber wealth just waiting to be stolen from the Ojibwe.

As a Duck whose American family are all Ducks, I assure you only a tiny fraction of people on either side have actual distaste for those on the other. Those that do are definitely students newly arriving from out of state. Whole families do associate with one or the other side and there was political texture but it is now narrower as Ducks became more conservative and Beavers more liberal. Seriously, the political climate at UO changed dramatically with the infusion of Californians as the political liberals and leftists moved from the core to the fringes, supplanted by conservatives and even more by apathetic partiers.

Among Oregonians, I have never encountered anything remotely like the hostility I have seen, and have embraced, as a Wolverine, in the UoM-OSU rivalry. Childish, obviously, but what can you do when they are clearly so evil?

And Matson, to be a born again Christian at UO takes a very thick skin, I am sure, especially if it was anytime from 1968 to 1993 or so, before a majority of students came from out of state. California students are the UO's cash cow now. Out of state students and sweatshop money from Phil Knight.

But this man will always be ours and I got to see him run many times. Of course I was probably napping or nursing.



Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? And cold comfort for change?

[ Parent ]
Too funny! (0.00 / 0)
Among Oregonians, I have never encountered anything remotely like the hostility I have seen, and have embraced, as a Wolverine, in the UoM-OSU rivalry. Childish, obviously, but what can you do when they are clearly so evil?

[ Parent ]
great poster (0.00 / 0)
I actually have it on the wall in my office.

Go Ducks!

Want a progressive global warming novel, not a right wing rant? Go to www.edwardgtalbot.com for a free audio thriller.

[ Parent ]
I thought Ezra .. (4.00 / 1)
went to UCLA
[ Parent ]
Oops, you are correct (4.00 / 2)
He attended the University of California, Santa Cruz but later transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 2005 with a B.A. in political science.

For some reason I thought it was UCSB.  The UCSC part I was sure of, being my own alma mater.

[ Parent ]
He's not being snookered (4.00 / 4)
He knows that Ryan's a phony. He's just too cowardly, and too desperate to join the Village, to say it. Hey, it's worked for Obama, so why not him?

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton
[ Parent ]
Help Wanted (4.00 / 8)
Wanted: Political blogger covering the {progressive conservative} movement. Must be provocative and write with a strong point of view although not in a way that would reveal bias or offend any of your potential subjects. Social media a plus until it's not. Must be completely transparent, unless that proves embarrassing to the newspaper. Send sanitized résumé, innocuous clips and nonpartisan references to The Washington Post. - David Carr

See Also: Jay Rosen's Objectivity as a Form of Persuasion

Ezra increasingly reads like the View From Nowhere to me.

Persuasion Is The Essence of "Objectivity" (4.00 / 3)
Indeed, the partisan 19th-Century press was abandoned for the 20th-Century "ojbective" press precisely for the purposes of persuasion: the persuasion of advertisers, who's importance as a revenue source overcame that of subscribers at around this time.  Not only did the neutral stance mean that such papers could appeal to a larger audience, but their neutral tone was much more conducive to selling stuff.

What Rosen is writing about is the end result of decades of refinement of that basic logic.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Read Krugman on Ryan (4.00 / 5)
DeGroot had a QH on this earlier. It's all you need to know about that charlatan. As I noted, how can anyone, Ezra or anyone else, take seriously a guy who claims the CBO scored his plan as halving the deficit by 2020... by asking them to run the numbers only on his proposed spending cuts and not his proposed tax giveaways to millionaires?

Is there a clearer illustration of a charlatan?

That isn't 'substance showing up Ryan'. It is proof he is a complete and utter fraud of the highest order. If I was grading his paper it would receive and 'F' not for poor reasoning or argument but for cheating and lying and I would report him to Dean.

http://www.openleft.com/showQu...

Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? And cold comfort for change?

We've had two McLuhan moments just this week (0.00 / 0)
(Stockman and Greenspan) and yet Klein continues to claim that Ryan's a serious thinker and policymaker. Hasn't he ever seen Annie Hall?

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton
[ Parent ]
I'm Afraid Ezra HAS Seen Annie Hall (4.00 / 2)
It's mere inference on my part.  But evidence suggests he not only saw Annie Hall, but she dumped him.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
Perhaps he reminded her of her brother... (4.00 / 1)


"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton
[ Parent ]
Yeah, Ezra (4.00 / 12)
That's the problem with the country, Democrats aren't willing to engage with Republicans or take their "ideas" seriously...

Right now we have a failing presidency failing in large part because it engages too much with Republicans and takes their "ideas" far too seriously, to the point of adopting them (Catfood Commission, anyone?).

I look forward to Ezra engaging with Jim Inhofe on the climate change hoax.

Ezra as Broder (0.00 / 0)
Several years ago I thought the left needed its own David Broder.  Someone who could blaze the trail for "moderate" Washington opinion.  Broder could can come across as very moderate and understanding, but always comes down on the conservative side of the argument.  It has been my opinion that Broder has done more to legitimize movement conservatism than anyone.

But conservatives don't actually like Broder.  He is far too 'liberal' and proof that all non-Fox media is a liberal conspiracy.  It is only those of us on the left who can appreciate the harm Broder has caused.

Ever since Ezra Klein moved to the Washington Post it has been clear he was applying for this job.  I could very easily see Ezra growing up to be the modern, liberal Broder.  Ezra routinely makes both sides seem fair and reasonable as he points out that the liberals are actually correct, just as Broder does for conservatives.

So here is the question to contemplate.  Is this useful?  Do we want a liberal Broder setting the tone for Washington insider opinion?

Broder may be personally conservative (4.00 / 7)
or not. Mostly he is a weather vane. He reflects the dynamics of power within Washington, distilling elite opinion as truth or sometimes as public opinion. In this, he is just an extreme version of journalism more generally.  The media largely reflects existing distributions of power - those with power are treated as legitimate, those without it are treated as nuts.  

Ezra and Yglesias are increasingly serving the same role. They have two choices - do that, and be part of the club, or fail to and be kicked out as unserious.  (I agree, for the record, with your point about avoiding the stereotypes and dehumanization-  not that I always have.)

Point being, there will be no effective liberal Broder until liberals have more power.  

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

[ Parent ]
"They come from an entirely different culture: ..." (4.00 / 1)
"... a pre-modern culture of warriors and priests. Not surprisingly, their only interest in ideas is as weapons."

If Klein knows this, and he should, he surely can't admit it. If he did I think he'd lose his job.

Paul Ryan is a schmuck with economics. (0.00 / 0)
Let me be the first to say it...oops, another Paul ...Krugman... got there first. (Ezra's just playing rope-a-dope with Tucker & Politico.)

They only call it class war when we fight back.
[ Parent ]
Does Ezra know .. (0.00 / 0)
that Paul Ryan admires Ayn Rand almost as much as one of Ayn Rand's actual lovers(yeah .. Greenspan)
[ Parent ]
This point (4.00 / 2)
which you made before, reminds me of both Jamie Galbraith, and perhaps more importantly, the too often forgotten Veblen.

They come from an entirely different culture: a pre-modern culture of warriors and priests. Not surprisingly, their only interest in ideas is as weapons.

It reminds me I've been meaning to re-read The Theory of the Leisure Class.

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

I'm not sure that I entirely agree (4.00 / 4)
that Klein thinks that "conservatives are just liberals with a different set of policy preferences". Klein might tell himself this, but I suspect that what's really going on here is just another establishment (as opposed to progressive) liberal being overly clever in trying to understand and react to conservatives in a way that avoids being too confrontational and dismissive, because, well, that naturally leads to ideological and political warfare, which establishment liberals like Klein desperately want to avoid, because one, it makes them look like those far-left DFH loons that they desperately want to not look like lest they be rejected and ridiculed by their centrist pundit BFFs and not be invited to appear on all the establishment political shows, and two, because they don't like conflict, of any kind, because, well, it's messy and draining and you sometimes get all bloodied.

I.e. Klein is just another dishonest careerist establishment liberal pundit who is more interested in being seen as "serious" than in achieving actual liberal outcomes, which anyone with a shred of honesty and courage on either side of the aisle knows calls for conflict and struggle. "No pain, no gain" is SOOOOO 60's.

Thus claiming that Ryan is a serious policymaker and thinker, when he's clearly just yet another good-looking and smooth-talking Reaganesque con artist posing as a serious policymaker and thinker, who's exploiting the reality that the Kleins of the punditocracy are desperate for there to be people like him whom they can claim represent "serious" conservatives, lest they be dismissed as having too much liberal bias. Klein is a liar and a coward, and deep down he knows it.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

Krugman's reply to Ezra was also priceless (4.00 / 11)
Here:


Ezra Klein says he agrees with me on my policy critique of Paul Ryan, but denies that he's a flimflammer.

He's wrong.

Long ago - basically when I started writing for the Times - I decided that I would judge the character of politicians by what they say about policy, not how they come across in person. This led me to conclude that George W. Bush was dishonest and dangerous back when everyone was talking about how charming and reasonable he was. It led me to conclude that Colin Powell couldn't be trusted, back when everyone said his UN speech clinched the case for war. It led me to conclude that John McCain was unprincipled and self-centered, back when everyone said he was a deeply principled maverick. And yes, it led me to conclude that Barack Obama was a good man, but far less progressive than his enthusiastic supporters imagined.

And so I don't care how Paul Ryan comes across. I look at how he has gone about selling his ideas, and I see an unscrupulous flimflammer.

He goes on to reiterate the CBO one-sided scoring trick which makes Ezra's position look ricidulous for the obvious mendacity of what Ryan was up to.  But damn what a schooling for Ezra by a much wiser man.  I particularly enjoyed Krugman's litany of malfeasant characters he was right about.  Ezra has no such record to point to which makes this a stinging rebuke without ever saying anything in particular about Erza other than that he's wrong.

Judging Public Figures By Their Public Actions (4.00 / 4)
What a concept!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
Yeah, it's revolutionary! (0.00 / 0)
And that's why the establishment is all against it.
[ Parent ]
So he says :P (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
This could be interpreted differently (4.00 / 2)
When we live in a world where we have people like Karen Angle ducking questions at her own press conference, it's good to have conservatives who will actually put forward substantive policy proposals.

It's a shame if conservatives have to be coddled in order to bring their ideas to light, but perhaps that is a necessary function of the press.  (Of course, the great flaw is that, if you present this sort of information under the guise of an honest, neutral news arbiter, expecting that the obviously ridiculous will be ridiculed, the common folk won't necessarily rise up against stupidity.)  It may not be what Ezra Klein is trying to do (and there is a chance he is being completely disingenuous when he says he believes that Paul Ryan is not a charlatan), but I think there might be a need for some journalists on the left whose job is to use a faux-sympathetic ear to get conservatives on the record and allow for people like Paul Krugman to knock them down.

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both

Ezra Klein sets up the marks for Paul Ryan | 36 comments
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