Oct. 17, 2005 - 17:48 MDT

POT & KETTLE

The man has a point, I think.

Sometimes I have the opinion that Paul Krugman of The New York Times is a bit skewed in his opinions, but this column that was in the Rocky Mountain News today has, I think, valid reasoning. In full:

SCRIBES MUST TURN FROM PERSONALITIES TO THE FACTS

"Many people in the news media 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 Gore, while portraying Bush as an honest, likable guy. The 2004 election was largely decided by the image of Bush as a strong, effective leader."

"So it's important to ask why those judgements 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: 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 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 United Nations. 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 acutally think or know. Now that Bush's approval ratings are in the 30s, we're hearing about his coldness and bad temper, about how aides are afraid to tell him bad news. Does anyone think that that journalists have only just discovered these personal characteristics ?"

"So whats the answer ? 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 Bush's boldness have given way to stories anaylzing his facial tics. Think, instead, about how different the world would be today if, during 2000 campaign, reporting had focused on the candidates fiscal policies instead of their wardrobes."

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I think the man speaks truth, but am cynical enough to doubt that the improvements will ever become fact. But wouldn't it be nice though, if it could and did happen ? I wonder how many of us would stay with the news long enough to truly understand fiscal policy ? How much of a difference would it really make ?

Bush has a track record as governor of Texas, just ask Molly Ivins who used to work for the Fort Worth Star Telegram and didn't like his actions as a governor then.

It also would be nice if money didn't govern a campaign's success or lack of it.

Personalities aside, substituting exes and wyes for names - - Mr. Krugman makes sense to me. But it will be, as usual I suppose, a contest between POT & KETTLE . . . . . . . . .

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