The left-wing lurch of the New York Times increasingly means that the Washington Post is the paper of record for simple news coverage. This is a terrible shame. We need the Times’ high standards to be protected. But recall how the Times spun its political/Enron poll on Sunday. Now look how the Post reports very similar findings today. Night and day. Of course the big news is George W. Bush’s historically unprecedented ratings. If this was Bush 41, the numbers would have started cascading downward by now. They haven’t. What’s more, W has a 61 percent score on the critical question of understanding the problems of most people. That’s big news for compassionate conservatism. But more interesting is the way in which Republicans generally have picked up support. Republicans now have a 7 point advantage in Congressional races, compared with a 7 point deficit coming up to the last elections. They have their highest rating since 1981. That need not convert into electoral victory, but it’s clearly good news. Bush has creamed the Democrats on the budget and taxes and deficits. Tom Daschle has far lower positives than his party. The president isn’t likely to become complacent. He knows – perhaps better than his advisers – that his re-elect number still hasn’t cracked 50 percent. But the public is smart about Enron. They smell something highly unpleasant, but they aren’t hyper-ventilating and want simple, full disclosure. Cheney, in my opinion, should get off his high horse and get on with disclosing names and dates (without details of the content of discussion). As to the broader question of bias, it happens that I know Dana Milbank of the Post and Rick Berke of the Times. Rick is more liberal than Dana but Dana is no conservative. Still, Milbank kept his bias under control. He saw a good story in the data and reported it. Why can’t the Times?
THOSE ENRON ANALOGIES: We have a new game here. How can pundits link Bush to Enron without any actual evidence of wrong-doing? Here’s Richard Cohen’s effort (cribbed from Enron-funded pundit Paul Krugman): “It should not be surprising that Enronian Economics has taken over Washington. Both the Texas-based firm and the Texas-based president have so much in common.” Keep an eye on these strained analogies, would you? If you find any, let me know.
WHY MARRIAGE WON’T BE NATIONALIZED: One of the unfounded scare tactics of the anti-gay right has been the notion that civil marriage rights for gays in any one state will automatically mean their exportation across the country. Constitutional scholars know this is extremely unlikely. But here’s one of the first test cases that shows it. A Georgia court has denied a lesbian couple full visitation rights to the children of one of the mothers. If their civil union were a marriage, they would have such rights. They don’t. They should, in my opinion. But that’s for the voters and courts of Georgia to decide.
COLIN POWELL, LOYAL BUSHIE: This is a line I’ve been pushing for some time. The secretary of state, far from being some lone liberal dissenter, is a full administration participant in the war on terrorism. Michael Ledeen, who knows his Machiavelli, gets this exactly right in National Review Online. Eventually, the administration’s critics, instead of producing tortured interpretations of bad polls, will actually realize that this president is far sharper than most people think and begin to mount a credible opposition. Until then, Colin Powell will keep playing the part, absorbing criticism, deflecting animosity, and – oh so subtly – winning the game.
THE SWAMP OF BIGOTRY: You thought I was tough on Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s anti-Catholic screed in the New Republic. Check out Michael Novak’s moving outrage on National Review Online. Here’s a sample: “‘The anti-Semitism of the intellectuals,’ Peter Vierek once shrewdly remarked, ‘is anti-Catholicism.’ In its January 21 issue, The New Republic has sunk into the swamp of bigotry as low as it could go. It gave 25 pages to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen so that he could offer Catholics a theological interpretation of what their faith entails, and hint broadly that the Church deserves destruction as an ally of the anti-Christ and enemy of humankind.” I’m not as forgiving of my own Church as Novak seems to be, but his points are telling nonetheless. He crystallizes part of my own sadness at the article – its mocking, disingenuous tone toward the very essence of the Catholic faith, i.e. the belief in Jesus as the Son of God. The idea that this is an inherently anti-Semitic idea is so extreme, so intolerant, so poisonous of any fruitful Catholic-Jewish dialogue that it is really hard to see how the essay could have been written out of anything but spite.
KUDLOW VERSUS KRUGMAN: One Enron pundit takes on another.
KLEIN ON THE NEW YORK TIMES: “The Times’ domestic policy “reporting”-on issues like health insurance, welfare reform, race, and religion-has long languished in a niche between the New Republic and The Nation; I don’t suspect that will change.” That’s from Joe Klein, a liberal Democrat with some centrist edges, certainly no member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. And people wonder why “Bias” is at Number 1.
The Dish 