Winthrop Quigley’s "Money & Medicine" column in today’s Albuquerque Journal is superior journalism.
He sets out to debunk an "astonishing collection of canards, half-truths, hokum and nonsense" uttered in this election year and does it neatly
If it’s not a perfect job that's because Quigley sometimes falls victim to the temptation of "balance." For example, having knocked down the idea that John Kerry is proposing a government takeover of health care, he rips into the charge that George Bush is "…proposing that only millionaires have quality health care."
Sounds fair, but here’s the problem – while the Bush forces have run TV commercials pushing that lie about Kerry’s plan, I have neither seen nor heard any Democratic charge that Bush favors health care only for millionaires.
Democrats have, it is true, complained that there are more uninsured on Bush’s watch. And they have campaigned against the Bush Administration’s tender loving care for insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Quigley’s piece has another weakness, revealed when he notes that the Medicare prescription drug legislation was neither "dreadful" nor "brilliant. True enough, but not very helpful. Space is always a constraint, but we would have benefited from analysis of that complex legislation or a clear narrative of how the Administration got it passed.
Still, Quigley knows his subject so well he can confidently clobber half-truths and then outline underlying philosophical differences.
His accomplishment looks even better when you compare it to most daily reporting on the same issues. Or even with most Op-Ed pieces from partisan or ideologically committed sources.