Here is my monthly column for the Albuquerque Tribune. It ran yesterday, April 28, 2005.
Twisting Meanings
former Gov. Cargo wouldn't call Bush White House conservative, maybe neo-conservative
By Arthur Alpert
"Unique" was an excellent word - one of a kind - conjured up for me by a white unicorn on a French tapestry I saw at the Cloisters, Manhattan’s medieval monastery. After years of misuse, though, it’s come to mean "unusual."
Oh well, as Sinatra sang, that’s life. Language evolves. No more mourning "unique."
I will stand and fight, though, for "conservative," a word politicians twist to corrupt our civic dialogue.
Conservative means favoring what is, distrusting change. Politicos translate that into policy, but when they call black "white," it’s time to blow the whistle.
Today’s radicals lie when they call their policies conservative. And many reporters and commentators aid and abet, as if conservative is content-less, just a point on a horizontal line. Following this logic, Genghis Khan was conservative. Also, the BushWhite House.
I think not. For reassurance, though, I consulted with former New Mexico Governor David Cargo, a self-described progressive Republican and formidable historian.
AA: Would Bob Taft, Mr. Conservative, fit today’s GOP?
Cargo: Oh, they’d read him out of the party. He was a fairly moderate guy by present standards.
AA: He favored balanced budgets.
Gov. Cargo: At dinner once when I was a college young Republican, Taft said, "You know all the mentally unbalanced people believe in unbalanced budgets."
AA: I’m so old I remember when Pete Domenici thought unbalanced budget work of the Devil
Cargo: He’s now a born-again deficit spender. I get after him all the time. When the heck are you going to balance the budget? And he says it’s not as important an issue as it was. It was Reagan who turned it around on this deficit business. The theory is that if you starve the budget enough by giving tax breaks to the wealthy, then the way to balance the budget is to shrink every single domestic program and spend more on the armed forces and away you go.
AA: Today’s GOP also hates progressive taxation.
Cargo: The progressive income tax was a Republican idea. William Howard Taft was a big supporter.
AA: Michigan Sen. Arthur Vandenberg made the GOP internationalist.
Cargo: Vandenberg would have had a fit on a go-it-alone policy. His view was that international cooperation is the keystone .
AA: This White House is Wilsonian.
Cargo: And that’s why we’re in trouble. When Wilson went along with the Versailles Treaty he laid the groundwork for WWII.
And I don’t understand (President Bush) bragging about adopting the Wilsonian approach. Wilson’s foreign policy was really a disaster
AA: Conservatives favor small government.
Cargo: They’ve become big government conservatives. Instead of taking off hands off people’s private lives, they’re interfering with them. That’s not conservative. I think they’re small government people when it’s convenient.
AA: Bob Taft backed states’ rights.
Cargo: The only one concerned about the states and their boundaries today is Rand-McNally.
AA: Did Republicans invent environmentalism?
Cargo: Environmentalism was started by General Ulysses S Grant, who set up Yellowstone Park. Conservation is a conservative proposition.
AA: So this Administration isn’t conservative?
Cargo: A lot of people call them neo-conservative. And probably the neo-cons have had an undue influence. I’m not a doctrinaire conservative, but there are virtues to thoughtful conservatism.
Governor Cargo added, unsolicited, "Beware of people who never read newspapers or books."
Agreed, but I figure we who do read ought to be wary, too, of nefarious politicians twisting words and thoughtless journalists echoing them.
Alpert is a semi-retired newsman in Albuquerque. Email him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column appears in Insight and Opinion the fourth Thursday of the month.
o Pope Benedict XVI told journalists, says AP, "he hoped to continue his predecessor’s tradition of openness with the media." The Story went on to other topics.
What openness? Pope John Paul II was a dynamic guy whose adventures reaped an extraordinary amount of attention from the print press, radio and television. But if the Pontiff’s opened church deliberations on theological or political issues to reporters, I missed the coverage.
Coverage of the new Pope reminds me thus far that the press I know is, remains, soft on authority.
o "Ultimate Power Player Takes a Mighty Tumble" was the headline on an
AP story about Jack Abramoff, a corrupt lobbyist. (No, that is not redundant.)
Its last sentence read:
"Much of the ammunition being slung at Abramoff comes from a trove of his own email."
A reminder that editors sometimes abbreviate stories for lack of space.
o Sometimes the press offers gems, precious stones. Here's an example:
"High Gas Prices Force Focus on Energy Policy," an AP story by Tom Raum, concludes with comments from one Jerry Taylor, identified as a CATO Institute energy analyst.
The idea that "jawboning OPEC or arranging nice relations with OPEC will somehow get us more oil is utter illusion," hew said.
"The Saudis," he continued, "will produce as much oil as they think necessary to maximize revenue. Period."
I love that no-nonsense tone, don't you? That hard-headed approach, intended to scare off idealists, romantics and other non-practical folks. Too Mr. Taylor is wrong, magnificently wrong.
In fact, the Saudis have adjusted production for political reasons more than once. Sometimes for natural security. Sometimes to enhance the long term rather than make a quick killing. Whatever the reason, they have often chosen to not maximize revenue.
But Taylor’s comment reveals more than his ignorance of history. It bares the fundamental narrowness that is the Libertarian view of the world. Taylor is saying that economics determines all. As Marx and Lenin did. As many modern capitalists do, too.
Thinkers over the centuries have suggested other explanations of the world. Some believe ideas move men. Some, fear. Some optimists espouse love. The Roman Catholic Church and other religious institutions argue that faith in a redeeming Deity moves the world. Scientists have still other hypotheses.
What's clear is that, yes, there are alternatives to the CATO-Marxist-Capitalist view.
Mr. Taylor must be unaware of them or he rejects them. Good for him. Blinding yourself to alternatives or complexity makes life simpler. And as long as you work with fellow Libertarians, your stupidity will cause no finger pointing.
I have been reading a lot of the coverage of Social Security in the print press. Here are a few observations of the reporting, leaving opinion (editorials, regular columns and Op Ed pieces) for another day.
The reporting itself may be divided, perhaps arbitrarily, in two – the issue and the politics of the issue.
First, the issue itself: what’s the state of Social Security and what does the President propose.
I have seen a lot of long explanatory stories on how Social Security works That, despite the fact that the complexities of Social Security are the journalistic equivalent of a root canal. So I give the papers a thumbs up.
(A lawyer and Social Security expert I bumped into at UNM the other day would not agree; he faults the press for failing to deal with the history of the program.)
As for how the President’s plan might work – that’s tricky because the President, as he said in one of his phony town meetings recently, hasn’t presented a plan. No matter that the White House often refers to his plan. Still, the newspapers have dealt at length with the private or personal accounts part of his plan. (Or non-plan.)
But when we get to the politics of the issue, I am not happy with many of the stories I’ve read.
First reason - they rarely go beyond "he said, she said."
It’s amazing that, in this day and age, reporters still play by the rules of objectivity, which does not exist in this universe. One rule tells news people to tell "both sides of the story," relaying what both sides say. Problem A – reality doesn’t have two sides, it has 29 or 102 or 3,001. Morality has two sides and the "give both sides" approach is the reporter imposing a moral framework on the story. Since most readers share that framework, reporters get away with it. But remember Rashomon - every witness to an event, every observer of a situation sees it his or her way. Give me the number of witnesses and I will give you the number of "sides" to that story.
Problem B is lots more serious. Having given both sides or all five sides, many reporters stop right there. Where’s the truth? Surely, that is the first job, to get as close to the reality of the situation as possible. Surely, therefore, the reporter should try to identify the contradictions, dig past the rhetoric for new bits of information, sift that info and make connections between bits of it in order to discover what’s happening. Or what may be happening.
Sometimes reporters do that. After President Bush said he would reform Social Security by diverting Social Security taxes to individual accounts, it didn’t take long for reporters – some of whom can add and subtract – to take that apart. They showed that whatever the virtues of individual accounts, they will not save the current system.
And the White House has conceded that saving Social Security and private accounts aren’t the same subject.
(Note: At this point, you would think the press would give up calling the Bush proposals social Security "reform," but it hasn’t.)
The standard operating procedure of the news business makes it awfully hard to discover truth no less convey it. Friday, the ABQ Tribune ran a story by David Espo of the Associated Press on the politics of Social Security. It ran on top of the business page. Headline: "GOP ponders new Social Security plan."
This story said Senate Republican leaders are "considering whether to seek Democratic support for Social Security legislation without the private accounts sought by President Bush, aiming to restore them later, officials have said."
The second graph said that might anger the White House. However, the story continued, a White House spokesman told the reporter the President welcomes any move toward solvency for SS, as well as personal accounts, Also, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid wouldn’t comment.
Good story, so far. I learned something new. As you probably know, reporters write in "pyramid" style, with the new material up top and background filled in below. Unfortunately, this reporter’s background material included Administration assertions on the virtues of private accounts and the depletion of Social Security funds in 2041 as if they were facts - no counter-arguments, no questions.
How come? I’m not alleging bias. Lack of space might account for it.
Or ignorance. Many reporters grew up on visual images, not letters and words on the page. Pictures convey a different order of information, not including, for example, history. And I fear many print reporters care less about words than their linear predecessors did.
But these stories on the politics of Social Security "reform" have more problems.
Last week, NPR – supposedly a liberal news medium - reported that the President at one of his phony town meetings – and they didn’t say "phony" – warned that politicians who ignored Social Security’s problems might be punished for that at the polls.
That was the story, NPR then went on to other stories.
Whoa! Where was the other side? In this case, I am not demanding truth or even several sides. I am reduced to asking for "both sides." Because I don’t know any Democrats who deny that SS has problems. (They deny it's a crisis.)
Further, in the interest of moving the story forward, why not ask, "Does George W. Bush really believe what he said." Or was he employing a political tactic aimed at scaring Democrats? Better yet - was he using this tactic to send a message to fellow Republicans that if they don’t support his so-called reform, he’ll abandon them at election time?
I don’t know. But something happened this week that gave me an idea.
I got a recorded phone message from that renowned political thinker, Tommy Lasorda. Tommy explained that President Bush doesn’t want to fiddle with my Social Security, He’s just trying to do a favor for young people. Then the sponsor of Tommy’s call, "Progress for America," – whoever that is - asked me to call Rep. Heather Wilson, the New Mexico Republican, and tell her to get behind the Prez. In case you didn’t know, Heather has been ducking the issue.
So maybe that Bush warning at the phony Town Hall was aimed at Republicans who don’t back him on this issue. Maybe. I wish the press would help me out on this one.
So much for errors of commission. I have a beef, too, about what’s missing.
You remember what Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein, "Follow the money." They trailed the cash right into Richard Nixon’s Oval Office. So how come I have read so little about the money pushing the Bush plan. Who’s funding the phony town meetings, for example? (I suspect it’s me and you, the taxpayers.)
Who else is funding the Bush plan? Because I read the wisdom of the CATO Institute regularly, I know that CATO and other think tanks –Libertarian, conservative and mixed - have promoted the death of Social Security for 20-odd years. I know also that these think tanks live off individual rich guys and generous corporate benefactors. Separately, I know that the diversion of Social Security taxes to private accounts will benefit corporate America, starting with brokers and bankers.
This would be hard work, no doubt, tracking down sums of money spent over 20 years to undermine the Social Security system. Seems worth doing, though. After all, the press has been looking at where the money is coming for defense of the current system; most recently, the Albuquerque Journal ran a good Washington Post story this past Sunday on AARP’s expenditures. But I have seen five references to AARP for every mention of CATO. And I cannot remember a single story telling us where CATO gets its big dollars.
Note – I am not saying reporters consciously favor Wall Street or the Republicans. Just that the press seems to lack fire in the belly, isn’t uncovering a lot of stories and doesn’t handle them brilliantly when whistle-blowers or the alternative press dig them out.
(This reminds me of Iraq. To understand our policy there, you had to buy books. Or at least, monthly magazines. OK, Jon Stewart, too.)
I have confined myself to Social Security and the print press, with one reference to radio.
I haven’t mentioned television news. Broadcasting influences the political dialogue, of course. It’s powerfully biased in favor of simple-mindedness. But that’s a long, very complex story, and I doubt it would throw much light on Social Security.
PS BBC reported yesterday on Chile's experience with "Social Security reform," which CATO loves. BBC said it's done lots for the economy, but ripped off many workers who abandoned their guaranteed benefits for the big payoff in the skies...er, markets.
PPS I presented this analysis to a class in Public Administration at UNM the other day and the interchange moved quickly from news criticism to the Social Security issue itself. That sharp lawyer I cited above spoke at length on the weaknesses of the current Social Security system. I agree with his emphasis on, and dislike for the regressive nature of Social Security taxes.
In the real world, however, libertarian free marketers are out to destroy Social Security as constituted so that Americans can live in a perfect laissez-faire world.
Their assault is so strong that we will be lucky to repulse it; I suspect the Democrats will "compromise" late in the game, thereby proving they have no reason for being. As for the sharp lawyers’ solution, which involves progressive taxation, I don’t know if it would provoke laughter or anger at the White House and CATO. They are destroying progressive taxation, too, after all.
The front page of today's Albuquerque Journal includes a story on consumer bankruptcy by Winthrop Quigley and one on a new generation of nuclear weapns by John Fleck.
Quigley came to business reporting from business. Fleck has science training. No wonder their stories make complex subjects accessible. (At least I understood both and I am famously backward where it comes to science and financial matters.)
Print journalism would benefit from even more reporters with education, training and work experience in the fields they cover.
Network TV news operations usually employ a specialist or two; science, law and health are the most common In local TV news, so-called, specialists are very rare. (No, someobdy who has reported the police blotter for years is not a crime specialist.)
This is basic stuff but it's worth touching on from time to time. Reporters with background can do a better job than generalists. It's also true that well-educated generalists are preferable to news people who have studied "how to" in journalism schools. But that's another topic.
A few weeks ago Terri Schiavo was the rage.
Then the Pope died and Terri was forgotten. Broacasting, in particular, offered
"all Pope John Paul II all the time." And newspapers devoted pages and pages to the Pope's story.
But more fascinating than the trendiness of news mediums is their selectivity.
This Pope was a major political and reglious figure. He influenced not just the church but the world. And he was not shy about criticizing those aspects of life in the 20th and 21st centuries that displeased him.
So how come, in all the coverage of the Pope's life and influence and death, I have seen only one or two references.to his trenchant criticism of modern capitalism. (I remember, in particular, a statement in which he put some responsibility for the rise of communism on capitalism.)
I have read several references to John Paul II's opposition to the death penalty. And his oppostion to the US war on Iraq. But only one or two to his critique of capitalism.
You would think the liberally biased media would focus on that, wouldn't you?
According to today’s newspapers:
o Preschoolers who watch a lot of TV are more likely to become bullies later, says a new study from the University of Washington’s School of Public Health.
o While President Bush propounds the theory that Social Security is in crisis and suggests moving contributions over to Wall Street – though, the White House concedes, that won’t solve the crisis – David Broder notes today that the health care system is, in fact, in crisis, spinning out of control.
(Also, in a recorded message on my phone answering machine today, retired Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda explains that Bush Social Security plan would not affect retired folks but would help younger Americans. Oh, and Progress for America, for whom Tommy shilled, would be delighted were I to call Rep. Heather Wilson, telling her that I’m with George W.)
o Having lost manufacturing jobs a while back, we are now losing service jobs to other countries, writes business columnist Dale Dauten. But we're still good consumers. "So, how long will it take us to spend the economic nheritance of the Greatest Generation?" he asks.
o Florida Republican Senator Mel Martinez knew nothing about it, of course, but that memo explaining how the GOP could profit from the Teri Schiavo case came from his office. You remember the memo portrayed the case as a "great political issue" with which to excite the party’s pro-life base.
Why am I telling you all this? Because there was another noteworthy story in today’s newspaper that puts all these into context.
The new chairman of the FCC, Republican Kevin J. Martin, told cable TV operators to do less violent kids’ shows. NOT!
No, I made that up. In fact, Martin warned the cablel guys to clamp down on indecent programming themselves or the Congress will get after them.
Connecting these stories permits us to really understand this White House’s strategy. It is to campaign against indecency (sexual stuff, of course, and abortion) as a cloak for its class war against the not-rich.
Permit me to spell it out. The White House agenda includes freeing big business of all restraints, even if that means exporting jobs. Also, destroying Social Security. How? By diverting billions of dollars from it to Wall Street's banks and brokerages. Killing two birds with one stone.
How better to hide that agenda, anti-middle-class and anti-poor, than by waving the banner of morality? The American flag, too, of course. Hey, if you cannot use God and Country to divert attention from your own corruption, what good are they?
The New York Times reports this mroning that Bob Schieffer, interim anchor of CBS News, is interviewing at least one correspondent live on camera nightly.
"Mr. Schieffer says that he does not share the questions in advance, so
as to give such conversations a more impromptu feel."
Back in the early 70s, I think it was, I proposed to a local TV station in New York City that they create a news program in which I, playing city editor, would converse with, debrief, reporters on a story they had covered. My rationale - we'd save big dollars on salaries by using little or no videotape, get better journalism - because words convey reality better than pictures - and get ratings as viewers connected to tthe reporters' personalities.
The Times story continued: "In searching for a metaphor to describe his relationship with the correspondents, Mr. Schieffer likened them to a baseball team and himself to their interim manager."
He went on to say some correspondents would move ahead of others in the process.
Yeah, plus ça change.....
I recently posted an Albuquerque Tribune column on the decline and fall of TV news. In it, I noted that Edward R. Murrow's glory days ended when CBS realized that while Murrow's show made money an entertainment program at that hour would harvest many more dollars. The difference is called "opportunity cost."
Today, in its story on Ted Koppel's upcming departure from ABC, the New York Times notes that ABC has been leaving money on the table by carrying Koppel's "Nightline".
Yesterday I cast aspersions on the latest report on pre-Iraq War intelligence, noting that it plays into the hands of the Bush White House. In that connection, I recommend you read the Times' story and also the Times' editorial today on the report. They echo and/or complement my comments.
I don't know whether to enjoy or regret these validations. Do they mean I know what I am talking about? Or that I'm part of the Eastablishment rather than a dissenting voice.
Your call.