In defense of “Question Time”

This post was originally published — by me — at The Same Rowdy Crowd.

My dear friends at Reason Magazine’s Hit & Run blog — specifically Web editor Tim Cavanaugh — recently struck a tone a bit too cynical for my liking.

A small army of political pundits, Web geeks and others from the left, right, center, top, bottom and other corners of the political universe joined forces to demand “question time.” They want for the United States a public, televised and Web-streamed version of the U.K.’s Prime Minister’s Questions. They want more of what we recently saw in Baltimore.

Cavanaugh writes:

Demand Question Timers, I am with you in spirit, but not in reality. Question Time, or more precisely, “Prime Minister’s Questions,” is a habit of a parliamentary system based on majoritarian consensus, in which the head of state is a monarch. The U.S. government is a republic built on divided branches, in which the head of state is a temporary official. There’s nothing wrong with conflating the two in an informal way, but why should anybody believe this will improve Washington, D.C.’s cycle of making and enforcing laws? While it’s true that the exchange was “substantive, civil and candid,” government is not about candor, civility or substance. No minds were changed in this debate, nor should they have been, because the president and the Congress are, by order of the Constitution, natural opponents.

Nobody came away from the q&a with any new information or insight into the Health Care Reform debate, or the stimulus, or any other topic other than the loveliness of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s family. That all these talented and persuasive people did a vigorous job of defending their positions is not surprising, but were we somehow lacking in vigorous defenses of their positions before?

Obama and the Republicans over the last year have not lacked means, motive and opportunity to get their respective messages out. Getting these messages out is the dedicated task of vast media and public relations machines that continue to grow, sucking dry the marrow of our nation. [emphasis mine]

No, Tim, Obama and his political opponents do not lack the opportunity to “get their messages out.” That’s not the point of a regular, public “question time,” though — and if anyone suggests it is, he’s short-sighted. The point, at least in part, is to give the voting public an opportunity — a regular, highly visible opportunity — to hear those messages in a longer form. In a form more substantive, more meaningful and more genuine than those conveyed by the typical direct mail campaign, television advertisement or PAC Web site.

I can’t wait to write more about this book in the future, but for now, I’ll leave you with this: In “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America,” James Davison Hunter closes with a set of “practical steps” for easing the rhetorical and social tensions between opposing groups he describes as “progressive” and “orthodox.” The first and perhaps most obvious is “changing the environment of public discourse.”

The reason is plain. Genuine debate, whether public or private, is always dialectic; always a direct and immediate exchange. Positions taken and accusations made can be challenged directly by rebuttal, counterpropositions, cross-examination, and, inevitably, the presentation of evidence. […] Needless to say, extremist rhetoric is extremely difficult to maintain in this discursive environment. The very context of genuine debate predisposes actors to rhetorical moderation and forbearance. But it is impossible to generate these dynamics in television commercials, in political print advertisements and proclamations, and issue-oriented direct mail.

Written nearly 20 years ago, this book is perhaps more meaningful today than it was when Hunter’s pen met paper. Did Obama’s appearance in Baltimore significantly change the level of discourse in the United States? Probably not. But happenings like that have the potential to, so let’s not write them off too quickly.

(By the way, that link about to the “Culture Wars” book is an Amazon Affiliates link. If you buy something, I might make a few pennies off the purchase. You’ve been warned.)

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Things I Like Are Cool – Things I Hate Suck

Beavis and Butthead had a very simple rule for cool:

“Things I like are cool.  Things I hate suck.”

Never mind the circular reasoning, nor the a priori consequences. For most of us, we live with the inconsistency anyway.

However, when it comes to policy and governance, we expect a little better. Particularly when the argument at hand is squarely on the shoulders of defining the Objective from the Subjective.

Which brings us to this fascinating article from the New York Times, about the growing war between the White House and the part of Fox News that does news instead of opinion.

In recent weeks, Fox has been snubbed by the administration. The story details a frank and secret meeting between David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, that appeared to have cooled things a bit – until flaring up again.

Telling, is this admission about the squabbling:

“We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the deputy White House communications director.

There are two issues loaded into this simple declaration.

First is the use of the phrase “aided and abetted.” True, competitors like Jake Tapper questioned the administration about how Fox was being singled out. But “aiding and abetting” sounds like criminal language, and was not used by accident. It’s a clear hint that opposing this administration is akin to being rogue, if not downright illegal.

But let’s get beyond the connotations of the phrase, and instead focus on the circular reasoning it represents. The nature of the argument is thus:

• Fox News is not objective, but brings a subjective slant.
• ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and CBS are all objective.
• ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and CBS all agree that Fox News is a news organization.

Now, if several news outlets are in agreement on a set of facts, you would think they are objectively telling you the truth.

Yet, in this case, while accusing Fox of carrying a subjective agenda, the Obama White House also accuses the rest of the media for perpetuating that fiction.

Who is being Objective and who is being Subjective here?

Exacerbating this sentiment was the admission by many of those mainstream outlets, including the Times, that it was not sufficiently in touch with what was being reported on Fox:

Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration’s chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn.

The real complaint, then, is that Fox news has an agenda that the “mainstream (non-partisan) media” then adopted as worthy of interest.

I guess that must be the enabling aiding-and-abeting behavior.

It’s getting ugly again

Don’t take my word for it.

The Moderate Voice (and if there were ever a time for them this is it) runs down a laundry list of reactions to President Obama’s address to schoolchildren.

The polarization is just plain silly, and downright dangerous. Quoting the post:

The present frenzy suggests that the seeds are now being sowed for a mega-polarized America that could be almost ungovernable in the 21st century if this trend continues unabated.

If Republicans and conservatives make the very legitimacy of Obama his patriotism — even the safety of allowing little kids listen to him tell them to stay in school and think about helping their community — the issue, and link his name to Hitler and/or Nazism, precisely how do they think Democrats and the left will respond next time a GOPer is in power? How will the next Republican President be treated in terms of legitimacy and doing what he/she feels is in the best interest of the country? The bar on discourse is being lowered and lower and right now it’s touching the soil.

The only problem I have with the above is the blame for conservatives and Republicans for “lowering the bar.”

The seeds were planted with eight years of complaining about “President Select” and “stolen Florida” and Lord knows how many other attacks on the process. The Left never treated Bush-the-younger with any degree of legitimacy, borne out in the way they portrayed him.

How many Bush=Hitler references can you find?

Do you think the Left – in any manner – gets a pass?

We’ve been going down this road for a long time, and we might actually get to see the flip side of John Edwards’ “Two Americas” vision. Only this time we’ll get two radically polarized factions that can look at the same set of objective facts and see two wildly different realities. They will, of course, be mutually exclusive – yet both completely consistent with the worldview and premises of the factions.

Now — my response to the people who are pulling their kids out of school today?

Why don’t you teach your kids how to think for themselves? There’s a far greater chance that your youngster will be introduced to spurious views, partisan ideology or religious rhetoric coming from the mouths of teachers and administrators. Don’t get spun up by the idea that the President will somehow hold more sway than the people who know your kid on a first-name basis.

Inoculate them with the ability and desire to think for themselves, and to ask questions about the implications of ideas. For instance, if the idea is that “no one should do without X,” then teach your kids to ask how much X-for-all would cost, and who would pay for all that X, and what kind of world we’d live in with free-X.

Quit whining — put on your big boy pants — and take responsibility for your kids.

Earmarks aren’t bad, and pork is more than a disagreement

Jeff Rosenberg at the Twin Cities Daily Liberal has an outstanding post illustrating how meaningful discussions of earmarked funds and pork-barrel spending have been all but eliminated from current political discourse. Due to bandwagon bashing of not only truly wasteful expenditures but any spending someone simply isn’t a fan of, we’ve allowed discussion of this serious issue to be neutered.

Rosenberg writes:

Think about this for a moment: If our members of Congress aren’t inserting spending into spending bills, who’s supposed to be doing it? The reason all spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives is that the representatives understand their districts and their needs. As long as spending bills stay within established budget guidelines, doesn’t it make sense to let our representatives direct the spending where it’s needed most?

That’s not to say that earmarks aren’t abused to create real pork-barrel spending. But just because a Congressman inserts an earmark into a bill for a local spending project doesn’t make it “pork.” Pork-barrel spending occurs when that earmark is used for spending that doesn’t really meet any need other than shoveling money to the Representative’s district.

Read the original: “Pork: The most meaningless word in politics.” And thanks for writing it, Jeff.

Photo courtesy of kuow on Flickr

The logic of Bush’s legacy

I have no intent to argue the ups and downs of Bush’s presidency or the legacy thereof. If you want to argue about President Bush, please look elsewhere.

The Libertarian Party has been publishing a series of “Monday Messages,” both in e-mails it sends to folks who’ve signed up for such info and on its own Web site. The message from this past Monday contained a bit of a logical confusion I wanted to share here.

The Monday Message picked apart, roughly point by point, an article written by Fred Barnes about the “ten things the president got right.” I became too distracted by an illogical argument and had to stop reading after this (plain text is from the LP’s message; bold text is the LP quoting Barnes):

The following are a handful of assertions made by Barnes as achievements of the Bush administration in the last eight years, and my responses to these statements:

Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. How many thousands of lives? We’ll never know.

The idea that Bush has saved lives in the so-called “War on Terror” isn’t exactly logical, and it isn’t exactly true. Data compiled by the RAND Corporation actually shows dramatic increases in deaths caused by global terrorism following the election of George Bush to office.

There’s a lot to argue with in the LP’s message and in Barnes’ original article, but I’m hung up on one item that seems to be a glaring violation of logic.

“Data compiled by the RAND Corporation actually shows dramatic increases in deaths caused by global terrorism following the election of George Bush to office.”

That does not mean George Bush did not prevent thousands of deaths, nor, of course, does it mean George Bush caused any deaths. George Bush was president when this typhoon struck and killed hundreds of thousands — not to mention, Tony Blair was at the helm in England, as well. Are they to blame for the typhoon?

Remember: Correlation does not equal causation.