How's Bush?

[iaafan]

Friday, October 14, 2005
Questions of Character By PAUL KRUGMAN

October 14, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
Questions of Character
By PAUL KRUGMAN

George W. Bush, I once wrote, "values loyalty above expertise" and may have "a preference for advisers whose personal fortunes are almost entirely bound up with his own." And he likes to surround himself with "obsequious courtiers."

Lots of people are saying things like that these days. But those quotes are from a column published on Nov. 19, 2000.

I don't believe that I'm any better than the average person at judging other people's character. I got it right because I said those things in the context of a discussion of Mr. Bush's choice of economic advisers, a subject in which I do have some expertise.

But many people in the news media do claim, at least implicitly, to be experts at discerning character - and their judgments play a large, sometimes decisive role in our political life. The 2000 election would have ended in a chad-proof victory for Al Gore if many reporters hadn't taken a dislike to Mr. Gore, while portraying Mr. Bush as an honest, likable guy. The 2004 election was largely decided by the image of Mr. Bush as a strong, effective leader.

So it's important to ask why those judgments are often so wrong.

Right now, with the Bush administration in meltdown on multiple issues, we're hearing a lot about President Bush's personal failings. But what happened to the commanding figure of yore, the heroic leader in the war on terror? The answer, of course, is that the commanding figure never existed: Mr. Bush is the same man he always was. All the character flaws that are now fodder for late-night humor were fully visible, for those willing to see them, during the 2000 campaign.

And President Bush the great leader is far from the only fictional character, bearing no resemblance to the real man, created by media images.

Read the speeches Howard Dean gave before the Iraq war, and compare them with Colin Powell's pro-war presentation to the U.N. Knowing what we know now, it's clear that one man was judicious and realistic, while the other was spinning crazy conspiracy theories. But somehow their labels got switched in the way they were presented to the public by the news media.

Why does this happen? A large part of the answer is that the news business places great weight on "up close and personal" interviews with important people, largely because they're hard to get but also because they play well with the public. But such interviews are rarely revealing. The fact is that most people - myself included - are pretty bad at using personal impressions to judge character. Psychologists find, for example, that most people do little better than chance in distinguishing liars from truth-tellers.

More broadly, the big problem with political reporting based on character portraits is that there are no rules, no way for a reporter to be proved wrong. If a reporter tells you about the steely resolve of a politician who turns out to be ineffectual and unwilling to make hard choices, you've been misled, but not in a way that requires a formal correction.

And that makes it all too easy for coverage to be shaped by what reporters feel they can safely say, rather than what they actually think or know. Now that Mr. Bush's approval ratings are in the 30's, we're hearing about his coldness and bad temper, about how aides are afraid to tell him bad news. Does anyone think that journalists have only just discovered these personal characteristics?

Let's be frank: the Bush administration has made brilliant use of journalistic careerism. Those who wrote puff pieces about Mr. Bush and those around him have been rewarded with career-boosting access. Those who raised questions about his character found themselves under personal attack from the administration's proxies. (Yes, I'm speaking in part from experience.) Only now, with Mr. Bush in desperate trouble, has the structure of rewards shifted.

So what's the answer? Journalists who are better at judging character? Unfortunately, that's not a practical plan. After all, who judges their judgment?

What we really need is political journalism based less on perceptions of personalities and more on actual facts. Schadenfreude aside, we should not be happy that stories about Mr. Bush's boldness have given way to stories analyzing his facial tics. Think, instead, about how different the world would be today if, during the 2000 campaign, reporting had focused on the candidates' fiscal policies instead of their wardrobes.

posted by jenny | 8:02 AM

2 Comments:
Anonymous said...
Thank you so much for putting it so much better than I ever could have. I agree with every word you wrote. I pray that good journalists will see the truth in what you said. I have sent letters to editors many times and they have never been published because as far back as 2000 [b]I could also see that Bush was a fake and said so very bluntly. My very own colleagues who voted for Bush thought that I was nuts and went out of their way to rub in. I have noticed that their demeanor towards me has changed dramatically lately.[/b] They wonder how I knew so far in advance what was coming. My answer always is: “you have not been paying attention”

I would like to propose that we need a great deal of training in Journalism Ethics across the board. I still don’t know how and why the media have allowed themselves to be led by their noses. However, the consequences are now all too clear for everyone to see. The situation will continue till the Media can break away and start reporting the facts regardless of consequences.

Recently we hear that we need to pass a law that would protect journalists form ever having to disclose their sources. That would be a great mistake and a tragedy. When a journalist becomes part of the cover up and a mere mouthpiece for the President’s propaganda machine, I believe that the journalist has broken all boundaries of ethical behavior and deserves no protection of any sort.

['93HonoluluCat]

Friday, October 14, 2005
Questions of Character By PAUL KRUGMAN

October 14, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
Questions of Character
By PAUL KRUGMAN

< S N I P >

Nice.

Did you get that off the Democratic Underground board?

[hokeyfine]

I think shawn hannity mentioned it in his brown nose interview of rush limbaugh on fox last night, anyone else see it? for a minute i thought they were going to hug and kiss each other. i've never seen an interviewer gush over a guest like that.

[Hell's Bells]

I think shawn hannity mentioned it in his brown nose interview of rush limbaugh on fox last night, anyone else see it? for a minute i thought they were going to hug and kiss each other. i've never seen an interviewer gush over a guest like that.

i saw it...reminded me of when anyone interviewed sen. clinton...talk about gushing...made me sick no hard questions whatsoever

[SonomaCat]

I think HB has become the king of the non-sequiter "liberal"-bashing political posts.

[hokeyfine]

hells bells: my point was it was a typical conservative program of gushing over icons(limbaugh) and slaming anything to do with the center or left. do the left shows do that? of course. that's why it amazes me that people actually believe without question, religiously, what they are saying. we've become a lazy society that wants to be spoon fed everything without having to think.

[Hell's Bells]

I think HB has become the king of the non-sequiter "liberal"-bashing political posts.

and all i was saying was how it made me sick also - im a big fan of rush but why no hard questions??

also i was using the sen clinton reference as an example

btw i belive it was rush that helped hannity make it big time - i remember listening to hannity when he was rush's guest host back when he was only known as the republican on the hannity and colmbs show

['93HonoluluCat]

...it amazes me that people actually believe without question, religiously, what they are saying. we've become a lazy society that wants to be spoon fed everything without having to think.

Exactly the point I've tried to make several times here on the Nation.