Last night a fellow International Studies Association 9isa0 attendee sent me the following request: 

Hey, aren't you supposed to be providing pithy commentary on events of the last week for the rest of us ISA survivors? Get on that! 

Sigh... it's back to the blogging salt mines.  [Welcome back.... now get to work!!!--ed.]

Let's start off with an easy meta-point.  So far, 2011 has been one of those  years when it seems like a lot has been going on in international affairs -- but is that reality or just perception? 

Hey, turns out it's reality:

Propelled by revolution in the Middle East and radiation in Japan, television news coverage of foreign events this year is at the highest level since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks 10 years ago, news executives in the United States say....

The busy season for foreign news started in January in Tunisia and quickly spread to Egypt, where networks and newspapers deployed hundreds of journalists. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which conducts a weekly accounting of news coverage by national outlets, foreign news added up to 45 percent of all coverage from mid-January through mid-March. In the four years that the accounting has been done, foreign news has averaged about 20 percent of coverage....

But despite extensive coverage of Libya and Japan, the television networks have had major blind spots. Last week, none of the broadcast networks had correspondents in Bahrain, where the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet is based, when security forces crushed the protest movement there, nor in Yemen when forces there killed dozens of protesters. The dearth of coverage of Yemen is largely because of its government’s refusal to grant visas to journalists....

So, cui bono?  Here we get to a veeeerry interesting detail:

If there is any media beneficiary, it is CNN, a unit of Time Warner, which has the most robust international staff levels of any network based in the United States. CNN has paired its domestic and international channels for hours on end, and last week it scored several rare — though probably fleeting — ratings victories against Fox News.

“This is the time when the judicious investments we’ve made in a proper international infrastructure are paying off,” Mr. Maddox said. 

Say, isn't it convenient that CNN had all these assets in place and now gets to use them?  Can anyone out there prove that network hasn't played an instigating role in some of these crises? 

I didn't think so.  I'm gonna start paying very close attention to Anderson Cooper for the rest of 2011.  [Yeah, that doesn't sound weird at all!--ed.]

Over at Shadow Government, Mary Habeck argues that al Qaeda's capabilities are on the rise, as evidenced by the recent effort to launch a trans-European Mumbai-style bombing. This is akin to a CNN headline I just saw: "Europe plot reveals al Qaeda adapting."

I would have assumed that these analyses  argue that recent events demonstrate al Qaeda's abilities to find ways to overcome current counter-terrorism tactics. 

But then I read the actual CNN story:

With al Qaeda struggling to replicate attacks on the scale of the devastation witnessed on September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington, security experts believe the Mumbai attack, which gained worldwide publicity, may provide the template for its future operations.

"This new plot is perhaps an indication that al Qaeda is trying to change its strategy," said CNN's Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson. "The high-profile attacks that it has always liked using explosives are clearly getting harder and harder to perpetrate.

"The cells are being spotted and it's harder to keep undercover when you're making bombs. Even buying the material to make bombs is getting harder, so many analysts believe al Qaeda would be unable to mount a 9/11-style attack in the current climate.

"Therefore Mumbai would have been viewed as successful by the al Qaeda leadership as it killed a large number of people. This type of attack is just as deadly but harder to stop."

In the last year, a number of plots targeting the West have been foiled, including the failed Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner; the failed car bomb attempt in New York City's Times Square and an alleged plan to attack shopping malls in Manchester, England over one holiday weekend in 2009.

This strikes me as defining adaptation down. Technically, events suggest that al Qaeda is adapting, which is a bad thing from the perspective of everyone preferring, you know, civilization. But the nut of this analysis is that al Qaeda's preferred tactics are being thwarted, and that they therefore have no choice but to switch tactics. This switch might lead to a greater likelihood of actual attacks, but their lethality seems lower. [But the CNN story suggests that this kind of attack is "just as deadly" as a 9/11-type attack?!- -ed. Yeah, that's wrong. The Mumbai attacks led to 173 deaths and 308 wounded.  These are appalling numbers, but they are not as appalling as the loss of life on 9/11]. 

 My dear Mr. Schweizer,

Thanks for your response to my note.  You write:

Of course it’s legitimate to ask questions about supporting evidence for stories we post on Big Peace.  But to call Big Peace ”unadulterated horses***t”?   Is that your habit when you believe an opponent lacks evidence?  Why not simply ask some questions?.... 

I do find it curious that you argue since Soros is “at best ambivalent and at worst disappointed” with Obama that means he doesn’t have much influence.   Surely you are politically sophisticated enough to know that there is a difference between the two.  You may be too young to recall (I’m not saying this as a slight) but conservatives were disappointed with Reagan early on in his first term because they felt he didn’t go far enough.  Does that mean conservatives lacked influence on Reagan?   Ditto for the administration of George W. Bush.    Read Kissinger’s memoirs and you will find plenty of examples of his disappointment with Richard Nixon.

You might not be persuaded–that’s fine.  But why condemn an entire website?....

I can’t help but peek at your letter to Mr. Moriarty and note your suggestion that you would welcome a whole new set of critical readers to your blog.  Do you actually mean it?  Or is this wordplay?

To answer your queries: 

1) To be honest, if someone writes a post long on accusations and conspiracies but short on supporting evidence, yeah, I'm pretty much gonna call it unadulterated horses**t.  In neither Moriarty's initial post, nor in his follow-up letter does he provide a scintilla of evidence to back up his factual claims.  If you go by Harry Frankfurt's definition of bulls**t, Moriarty's post appears to fit the bill.  According to Frankfurt, if someone simply doesn't care whether what they are saying is true or false, then they're generating bulls**t.  Based on Moriarty's output to date, it qualifies as bulls**t.  I could debate the fine distinctions between horses**t and bulls**t fr hours, but for these purposes, the two terms are one and the same. 

2)  Am I condemning the entire Big Peace website?  No. if you re-read my original post, I said the entire site would deserve this appellation if Moriarty's writings were characteristic of the rest of Big Peace's output.  Consider this a warning shot across the bow - if your job is to edit Big Peace's output, then I think you erred in not using a firmer editorial hand towards Mr. Moriarty.  

3)  With regard to influence, perhaps we have a problem with terminology.  I think you're confusing "influence" with the Svengali-like properties that Moriarty seems to ascribe to Soros.  He repeatedly used the Kissinger/Nixon parallel, and that simply doesn't hold up.  Kissinger had daily access to Nixon - I hope you'll agree that Soros has had nowhere near that much communication with Obama.  Has Soros influenced Obama?  Probably, but one could argue that conservatives have influenced policy outcomes more.  Without implacable  GOP opposition, for example, I'm quite confident that the February 2009 stimulus package would have topped $1 trillion.  The difference is that Moriarty characterized Soros as Obama's political sherpa - and, again, to repeat, there is zero evidence that this is the case. 

4)  On whether I "would welcome a whole new set of critical readers" -- please, scan through my comments on a garden-variety post.  I have plenty of readers who disagree with me -- in fact, I take great pride in having the most contrarian group of readers in the foreign policy blogosphere.  So yes, criticism is always welcomed. 

I'll be sure to check Big Peace on the site from time to time to see if something link-worthy comes up.  Until then, welcome to the foreign policy blogosphere:

Sincerely,

Daniel W. Drezner 

Earlier this month media mogul Andrew Breitbart (yes, that Andrew Breitbart) launched Big Peace as his latest website.  Big Peace's editor, Peter Schweizer, explained the founding principles of the enterprise in his introductory post: 

The word “peace” has been hijacked by those who don’t believe in peace, but rather believe in appeasement.  We intend to take it back.  Peace comes from strength.  Peace comes from freedom.  More people were killed in the 20th century by their own governments than due to any war.  Peace is a word devoid of meaning unless it includes liberty....

We firmly believe in interactive journalism.  National security issues are too important to kept to the “professional” journalists. (Notice the quotes.)

The commitment of the Big Peace Team is to give you the unvarnished truth (emphasis added)

Excellent, I thought.  More interest in international relations, regardless of partisanship, promotes a more vigorous marketplace of ideas.  With a commitment to the unvarnished truth, I was hopeful that Big Peace would shine a light on some unexplored areas of the foreign policy establishment. 

After reading Michael Moriarty's (yes, that Michael Moriarty) explication of the real power behind the Obama administration, however, I have some doubts as to whether Schweizer and I think that "the unvarnished truth" mean the same thing.   Here are some snippets of Moriarty's essay, "The Soros/Obama Puppet Show": 

From Dr. Henry Kissinger of Harvard to the honorary degree which President Barack Obama, also of Harvard, received from, of all things, a Catholic university, Notre Dame, the fruit off of the tree of such enlightened despotism, the harvest from their lofty efforts has one common denominator: thuggery.

The Kissinger/Nixon Presidency bullied its way to eventual defeat in the eyes of the American people.

Soros/Obama is repeating the same formula but from another, much Redder and very Islamic corner of the very Bipartisan, Kissingerized and Progressive New World Order....

The Soros’ obvious and undeniable objective, after having “broken the Bank of England,” is to teach Barack Obama how to destroy the United States of America as we have known it. He’s off to a very good start with his disciple and philosophic doppelganger.

There is, of course, a bizarre psychological syndrome in a Jewish Godfather and his blatant exploitation of a decidedly pro-Islamic politician with the name of Barack Hussein Obama.

Karl Marx and his Communist philosophy explains it all. Marx was Jewish as well … and perversely anti-Semitic....

To short or bet against the prosperity of your fellow man is precisely the mentality of all three major madmen of the 20^th Century: Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

Life is not a horse race … but you can’t tell George Soros that.

Because Hitler was destroyed in World War II but both Stalin and Mao thrived, George Soros and, unfortunately, the likes of Henry Kissinger and many in the conservative corner of America, see a Marxist New World Order as “scientifically inevitable”.

“There is nothing Man can do to stop it!” “We will bury you!” as the Soviet Nikita Khrushchev prophesied.

Apparently Soros and Obama are here to throw the last few shovels filled with dirt into the graves envisioned by Khrushchev that will hold American bodies....

Why don’t all the citizens of America have blood shooting out of their eyes in rage?!

We are actually 1930’s Europe....

Now the new Kissinger is George Soros.

Soros puppeteers Obama in the same way “Dr. K” ultimately led Nixon to his utter humiliation.

Let’s hope to see the same outcome for the Soros/Obama Puppet Show that befell Kissinger/Nixon.

There's stuff I cut out about Marx and an odd Brazilian side note, but you get the gist.  Or maybe you don't, because I'm not completely sure I understand what the man is saying.  As near as I can figure, Moriarty is asserting the following:

1.  George Soros is Obama's Henry Kissinger;

2.  George Soros is a Jewish, Marxist, radical lefty who, because he shorts assets, wants to bring down the United States.

If Moriarty could make those charges stick, well, pass me the popcorn, because that would be some interesting news.  However, Moriarty provides zero, repeat, zero facts to back up these claims.  Seriously, I see no evidence of Soros' alleged influence over Obama, nor do I see any evidence of Soros' desire to bring down the United States.  In the end, this is an incoherent screed by a former famous person in which a lot of false comparisons are made and no truth is provided. 

Perhaps Moriarty's essay is uncharacteristic of the output on Big Peace.  If not, I must come to the conclusion that Big Peace has gone Vizzini on the phrase "unvarnished truth."  I think of that term to mean "the speaking of unpleasant, inconvenient, but nevertheless iron-clad truths."  Big Peace appears to interpret that term to mean "unadulterated innuendo and horses**t." 

My latest bloggingheads diavlog is with The Atlantic's newly-betrothed Megan McArdle.  The topics covered include Weigelgate, the Rolling Stone story on McChrystal, the Russian spy ring story, whether austerity or deficit spending is the thing to do right now, and the geekiest things we brought on our honeymoons. 

 

 

Enjoy!!

Last month, both on this blog and on my Twitter feed, I defended the notion that political scientists would be uber-interested in John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's Game Change:  Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.  I was generally sympathetic to Jack Shafer's defense of their sourcing methods in Slate.  And, in that spirit, I ordered Game Change, ready to dig deep into campaign gossip and the flawed nature of politicians. 

Well, I've finished the book -- as well as the 20-minute shower I needed to take after reading the book.  And I hereby retract any and all enthusiasm for Game Change-- because I don't know which parts of it are true and which parts are not. 

[Um... does anyone care anymore?--ed.  This is the #10 #15 book on Amazon's bestseller list, so I'm going to say yes.]

My problem is not, exactly, with the sourcing -- it's with the gullibility of Heilemann and Halperin when dealing with their sources.  So, just to be clear, the political scientist in me doesn't loathe this book because of the narrative structure -- it's because I don't trust Heilemann and Halperin's BS detector. 

It was on page 89 that I began to wonder just how much Game Change's authors double-checked their sources.  This section of the book recounts entertainment mogul David Geffen's "break" with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign -- most publicly, in this Maureen Dowd column. 

And so, we get to this paragraph in Game Change:

The reaction to the column stunned Geffen.  Beseiged by interview requests, he put out a statement saying Dowd had quoted him accurately.  Some of Geffen's friends in Hollywood expressed disbelief.  Warren Beatty told him, She's going to be president of the United States--you must be nuts to have done this.  But many more congratulated Geffen for having the courage to say what everyone else was thinking but was too afraid to put on the record.  They said he'd made them feel safer openly supporting or donating to Obama.  Soon after, when Geffen visited New York, people in cars on Madison Avenue beeped their horns and gave him the thumbs-up as he walked down the street (emphasis added). 

I'm calling bulls**t on the bolded sentence.  David Geffen is a powerful mogul, but he's not a photogenic celebrity in his own right.  I'm pretty confident in asserting that no one driving down Madison Avenue would recognize Geffen walking down the street.  I have complete confidence that no more than one person did this. 

Furthermore, even if there was a small chance that someone did recognize Geffen on the street, how would a honking horn indicate sympathy with Geffen's political inclinations as opposed to, say, a sentiment more like, "Yo, David, will you listen to my demo?!" 

So, who is the "deep background" source of this little anecdote for Game Change?  It has to be Geffen -- he is, after all, so vain.  And so we arrive at the first key question:  what does it say about the veracity of Game Change that Geffen related a completely implausible, ego-boosting story about himself to Heilemann and Halperin and it gets printed in the book? 

This leads to the second key question:  what other "telling anecdotes" of dubious provenance got put into this book?  The Geffen anecdote is has zero impact on the juicy stories told in the rest of the book -- but how can I be certain that Heilemann and Halperin vetted those sources with greater scrutiny? 

I don't doubt that most of Game Change is accurate -- and I couldn't put the book down as I was reading it.  I just don't trust what I read.   

The New York Times' Robert Worth and Nazila Fathli take a bold step for inference in their story on Iran's demonstrations: 

Unlike the other protesters reported killed on Sunday, Ali Moussavi appears to have been assassinated in a political gesture aimed at his uncle, according to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an opposition figure based in Paris with close ties to the Moussavi family.

Mr. Moussavi was first run over by a sport utility vehicle outside his home, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote on his Web site. Five men then emerged from the car, and one of them shot him. Government officials took the body late Sunday and warned the family not to hold a funeral, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote.

Whoa there, big fella.  Talk about jumping to conclusions!  Sure, this looks suspicious, but I can think of several other plausible reasons for why this could have happened:

1. He was behind on his payments to bookies.... that'll teach him to bet on the New York Giants.   
2. He was in the market for an SUV that could run over people and the haggling over price got out of hand.
3. The Basij are playing one of those college assaassination games across all of Tehran, and they forgot to use their dart guns rather than real guns.
4. It was a hit and run accident, and the men in the car decided to put him out of his misery after seeing how badly wounded he was. 
5. Moussavi was really an agent for the Mossad.  The men in the SUV were really agents of the Mossad.  In  fact, 95% of the protestors in the streets of Tehran are actually agents of the Mossad, MI6, or the CIA. 

See, these are all plausible alternative storylines, and should be investigated thoroughly before calling this a "political assassination."   

Events in Iran have led to a lot of talk about how this is a Twitter revolution, and that Twitter has been the go-to source on real-time developments in Iran.  Stepping onto FP's Evgeny Morozov's turf, however, I have to wonder we're exaggerating its effect juuuuust a wee bit here. 

Twitter is serving two different purposes in Iran right now.  Its first role is as a coordination device for Iranian supporters of Mousavi -- much like events in Moldova from a couple of months ago.  On this dimension, to be sure, it would seem that Twitter has facilitated coordination. 

Well, except for one thing -- the absence of Twitter does the same thing.  According to the press accounts I read, Mousavi wanted to cancel yesterday (Monday's) demonstration because the Iranian authorities had refused to grant permission and warned of bloodshed.  The thing is, since Twitter and other methods of quick communication were down, there was no way to communicate the cancellation messaage to supporters.  In other words, had Iranian authorities not interruped mobile services and the like when they had, Monday's demonstration might have fizzled out.  One wonders if the same dynamic will play out today. 

Twitter's second role is as a source of information for outside observers -- indeed, if Dan Nexon's post is correct, that seems to be the more important function.  It's not the only or even the primary source, however. Kevin Drum gets at this point: 

I followed the events of the weekend via three basic sources.  The first was cable news, and as everyone in the world has pointed out, it sucked.  Most TV news outlets have no foreign bureaus anymore; they didn't know what was going on; and they were too busy producing their usual weekend inanity to care.  Grade: F.

The second was Twitter, mostly as aggregated by various blogs.  This had the opposite problem: there was just too much of it; it was nearly impossible to know who to trust; and the overwhelming surge of intensely local and intensely personal views made it far too easy to get caught up in events and see things happening that just weren't there.  It was better than cable news, but not exactly the future of news gathering.  Grade: B-.

The third was the small number of traditional news outlets that do still have foreign bureaus and real expertise.  The New York Times.  The BBC.  Al Jazeera.  A few others.  The twitterers were a part of the story that they reported, but they also added real background, real reporting, and real context to everything.  Grade: B+.  Given the extremely difficult reporting circumstances, maybe more like an A-.

This matches my assessment as well. 

Which, again, is not to diss Twitter.  It's merely to suggest that life is a bit more complex than simple memes of "this new information technology is supplanting all prior forms of information technology!" 

UPDATE:  Over at The Monkey Cage, John Sides and Henry Farrell offer further ruminations on Twitter. 

Since I'm apparently picking on the New York Times op-ed page today, it's worth linking and quoting from George Packer's one-paragraph evisceration of how the Times' columnists have weathered the financial crisis: 

These days, it’s striking that the Times’s columnists seem unable to contend with the earthquake rolling under our feet. With the whole world undergoing a once-in-a-lifetime upheaval, the stars of the Op-Ed page have almost without exception fallen back on the comfort of well-worn stances and personality tics, which are the habitual danger of publishing one’s thoughts every week for years. Friedman, who knows a lot about economics but has too much faith in elites, calls for a summit of “the country’s 20 leading bankers, 20 leading industrialists, 20 top market economists and the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate,” as if these very individuals are not the main agents of the catastrophe. Dowd publishes a column of inadvertent self-parody whose subject is Michelle Obama’s arms, and whose sum total of reporting is a conversation in a Washington taxi with her fellow columnist David Brooks. Kristof continues to call necessary attention to chronic, less-noticed disasters, but he does it more and more by making himself the hero of a moral drama and, in a recent series of columns from Darfur, insulting his readers with the suggestion that they’re too shallow to read on unless he bribes them with celebrity gossip. Rich never challenges his own side, and the result is a weekly display of rhetorical bravura and cheap shots. Bob Herbert has one tone of voice, and as often as outrage is called for, it’s also tiresome. Only Brooks and Krugman seem to be registering the earthquake in a meaningful way, asking themselves difficult questions on a regular basis and struggling out in the open with the answers, which is why the page is at its best on Friday.

Indeed. 

Shorter Paul Krugman:  "We're headed for deflation and depression, we need a really big stimulus, and if Barack Obama keeps trying to placate Republicans in the name of post-partisanship, we're all gonna be living in grass huts."

Shorter David Brooks: "There's a new coalition of moderates asking sensible questions about waste in the stimulus package, and if Barack Obama keeps trying to placate liberal interest groups and Congressman, we're all gonna continue to live in the era of extreme partisanship." 

Intriguingly enough, there is one point on which both Brooks and Krugman agree -- Barack Obama has been surprisingly passive during the drafting of the stimulus bills.   

I think there's a way to thread the needle.  If all the moderates want is to trim the package a little, then Obama could likely get yes votes from GOP moderates.  That would (just) be enough for him to claim bipartisan support, and then a package is passed.  I don't think it would be large enough for Krugman's tastes, but on the other hand I'm hard-pressed to believe that ust another $100 billion in stimulus is the difference between recovery and grass huts.

This, by the way, is the most pernicious effect of the entire financial meltdown on fiscal policy.  When $100 billion no longer seems like a significant sum of money, it's time for a good stiff drink. 

Christopher Beam has an entertaining story in Slate about the various backroom machinations TV bookers must undergo in order to get the right set of talking heads.  

There are some guests who simply refuse to go on the air with other particular people or with anyone at all. Likewise, there are some people who no one else wants to appear with. It's rarely discussed, because the bookers who mediate these ego wars are bound by contract—and their own interests—to keep quiet. And hosts rarely mention the snubs on-air, since they want guests to come back. But snubbing happens all the time, and conversations with bookers, producers, and guests reveal that some divas are especially notorious.

This part stood out for me: 

The biggest offenders are usually the ones whose egos are too big to accommodate any company: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alexander Haig, and others who figure they have better uses for their time than debating some flack on the air. "They would only go on if they could do the show alone," says a former producer for Crossfire. "Brzezinski won't debase his cable currency by being a two-box," explained a current booker, referring to the practice of displaying guests on a split screen. Another booker cited Brzezinski's refusal to go on with Pat Buchanan—"probably because he thinks he's an anti-Semite." (An assistant to Brzezinski says: "It isn't true that he will only appear alone. He has appeared many, many times with other guests." Maybe so. But bookers say he doesn't do so willingly.)

Here's a piece of advice to TV bookers -- surprise these mooseheads with another guest just before they're going to go on.  Why?  Because, in my experience, when mooseheads at the Kissinger-Brzezinski level are alllowed to pontificate at will, they are unbelievably boring and rote.  On the other hand, they are at their best precisely when they are challenged by someone.  Maybe they get riled up at having their authority questioned, or maybe they want to smack down the young whippersnapper tring to unseat the Pundit King.  All I know is, when they are poked and prodded, the analytical sharpness that got them to their exalted position comes out, and then the fun starts.  I've seen this in person -- but Josh Marshall David Kurtz captures an example of this on video.  Zbigniew Brzezinski doesn't like it when he's challenged on the Middle East -- watch what happens: 

 

Oh, and it makes for good TV -- though in this case it has the added frisson of Mika Brzezinski's uncomfortable body language. 

At some point this week the meme about the incoming Obama administration switched from a discussion of the pitfalls of a "Team of Rivals" to a discussion of the pitfalls of "The Best and the Brightest."  Here's the Washington Post's Alec MacGillis: 

Barack Obama's chief economic adviser was one of the youngest people to be tenured at Harvard and later became its president. His budget director went to Princeton and the London School of Economics, his choice for ambassador to the United Nations was a Rhodes scholar, and his White House counsel hit the trifecta: Harvard, Cambridge and Yale Law.... [S]keptics say Obama's predilection for big thinkers with dazzling résumés carries risks, noting, for one, that several of President John F. Kennedy's "best and brightest" led the country into the Vietnam War. Obama is to be credited, skeptics say, for bringing with him so few political acquaintances from Illinois. But, they say, his team reflects its own brand of insularity, drawing on the world that Obama entered as an undergraduate at Columbia and in which he later rose to eminence as president of the Harvard Law Review and as a law professor at the University of Chicago.... The Ivy-laced network taking hold in Washington is drawing scorn from many conservatives, who have in recent decades decried the leftward drift of academia and cast themselves as defenders of regular Americans against highbrow snobbery. Joseph Epstein wrote in the latest Weekly Standard -- before noting that former president Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College -- that "some of the worst people in the United States have gone to the Harvard or Yale Law Schools . . . since these institutions serve as the grandest receptacles in the land for our good students: those clever, sometimes brilliant, but rarely deep young men and women who, joining furious drive to burning if ultimately empty ambition, will do anything to get ahead." The libertarian University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, who is not related to Joseph Epstein, worries that the team's exceptionalism could lead to overly complex policies. "They are really smart people, but they will never take an obvious solution if they can think of an ingenious one. They're all too clever by half," he said. "These degrees confer knowledge but not judgment. Their heads are on grander themes . . . and they'll trip on obstacles on the ground." All agree that the picks reveal something about Obama, suggesting he will make decisions much as he did in the U.S. Senate -- by bringing as many smart people into the room as possible and hearing them out.... [Nicholas] Lemann said Obama's penchant for expertise seems tempered with a respect for people who had, like Obama, left the path to academic jobs or big law firms to run for public office.  

And then there's the New York Times' Frank Rich: 

The stewards of the Vietnam fiasco had pedigrees uncannily reminiscent of some major Obama appointees. McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, was, as Halberstam put it, “a legend in his time at Groton, the brightest boy at Yale, dean of Harvard College at a precocious age.” His deputy, Walt Rostow, “had always been a prodigy, always the youngest to do something,” whether at Yale, M.I.T. or as a Rhodes scholar. Robert McNamara, the defense secretary, was the youngest and highest paid Harvard Business School assistant professor of his era before making a mark as a World War II Army analyst, and, at age 44, becoming the first non-Ford to lead the Ford Motor Company. The rest is history that would destroy the presidency of Lyndon Johnson and inflict grave national wounds that only now are healing. In the Obama transition, our Clinton-fixated political culture has been hyperventilating mainly over the national security team, but that’s not what gives me pause. Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates were both wrong about the Iraq invasion, but neither of them were architects of that folly and both are far better known in recent years for consensus-building caution (at times to a fault in Clinton’s case) than arrogance. Those who fear an outbreak of Clintonian drama in the administration keep warning that Obama has hired a secretary of state he can’t fire. But why not take him at his word when he says “the buck will stop with me”? If Truman could cashier Gen. Douglas MacArthur, then surely Obama could fire a brand-name cabinet member in the (unlikely) event she goes rogue. No, it’s the economic team that evokes trace memories of our dark best-and-brightest past. Lawrence Summers, the new top economic adviser, was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard’s history and is famous for never letting anyone forget his brilliance. It was his highhanded disregard for his own colleagues, not his impolitic remarks about gender and science, that forced him out of Harvard’s presidency in four years. Timothy Geithner, the nominee for Treasury secretary, is the boy wonder president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He comes with none of Summers’s personal baggage, but his sparkling résumé is missing one crucial asset: experience outside academe and government, in the real world of business and finance. Postgraduate finishing school at Kissinger & Associates doesn’t count.

There are a few other examples of stories like this, but I think you get the drift.  These stories are just as overblown as the "team of rivals" meme.  Halberstam's "best and brightest" were known primarily as brilliant scholars before they joined the Kennedy administration.  While many Obama's major appointments are smart, none of them besides Larry Summers have any extensive experience working at an Ivy League institution.  Indeed, as Lemann observed in the Post above, Obama likes people who have stepped away from the academy. The other irony is that the undercurrent of these stories contradicts the overt theme.  The undercurrent is progressive dissatisfaction with Summers, Geithner, and others who worked for Robert Rubin.  The critics' suggestion for how to correct for this bias?  Apparently, they should hire more academics.  Rich writes, "In our current financial quagmire, there have also been those who had the wisdom to sound alarms before Rubin, Summers or Geithner did. Among them were not just economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Nouriel Roubini."  See Michael Hirsch and Josh Marshall as well.  So, really, this "best and brightest" critique is kind of an unholy alliance between conservatives grasping at straws to criticize the Obama transition and progressives who feel screwed over by the economic appointments.  [But aren't the progressives right?  Wouldn't Stiglitz be a smart pick for an administration position?--ed.  Um... no, because this overlooks the fact that, based on his DC experiences in the nineties, Joe Stiglitz's managerial, bureaucratic, and political skills are all really, really bad.  Furthermore, his writings since that time suggest that the DC experience has curdled rather than improved on these skills.] 

Pew has a report out on the media coverage of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and discovers that John McCain has received the most negative coverage of the lot.  Liberal media bias?  More like bandwagoning behavior, according to Pew: 

One question likely to be posed is whether these findings provide evidence that the news media are pro-Obama. Is there some element in these numbers that reflects a rooting by journalists for Obama and against McCain, unconscious or otherwise? The data do not provide conclusive answers. They do offer a strong suggestion that winning in politics begets winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls and internal tactical maneuvering to alter those positions. Obama's coverage was negative in tone when he was dropping in the polls, and became positive when he began to rise, and it was just so for McCain as well. Nor are these numbers different than those we have seen before. Obama's numbers are similar to what we saw for John Kerry four years ago as he began rising in the polls, and McCain's numbers are almost identical to those recorded eight years ago for Democrat Al Gore.

What the findings also reveal is the reinforcing -- rather than press-generated -- effects of media. We see a repeating pattern here in which the press first offers a stenographic account of candidate rhetoric and behavior, while also on the watch for misstatements and gaffes. Then, in a secondary reaction, it measures the political impact of what it has reported. This is magnified in particular during presidential races by the prevalence of polling and especially daily tracking polls. While this echo effect exists in all press coverage, it is far more intense in presidential elections, with the explosion of daily tracking polls, state polls, poll aggregation websites and the 24-hour cable debate over their implications. Even coverage of the candidate's policy positions and rhetoric, our reading of these stories suggests, took on the cast of horse race coverage.

The country is in the middle of a very serious financial crisis.  The Grey Lady is probably receiving an onslaught of op-ed submissions to publish in order to make sense of the current situaion. It is quite curious, then, that the New York Times decided to run with two pieces of dreck.  James Grant's op-ed is about a good topic -- the role of the dollar as a reserve currency -- but it's way long on assertion and way short on evidence. 

In the best of times, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve pretended as if the dollar were America’s currency alone. Now, in some of the worst of times, Washington is treating its vital overseas dollar constituency as if it weren’t even there. Which failing financial institution will the administration pluck from the flames of crisis? Which will it let roast? Which market, or investment technique, will the regulators bless? Which — in a capricious change of the rules — will it condemn or outlaw? Just how shall the Treasury secretary spend the $700 billion he’s begging for? Viewed from Wall Street, the administration’s recent actions appear erratic enough. Seen from the perch of a foreign investor, they must look very much like “political risk,” a phrase we Americans usually associate with so-called emerging markets, not with our own very developed one.

To which I say, "huh?"  It's pretty clear that foreign investors played a significant role in the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout.  It's pretty clear that foreign banks are going to be in on the "toxic debt" bailout.  Despite the exercise of democratic debate dickering, it's pretty clear that there is going to be a bailout.  And it's pretty clear that U.S. debt remains the safe haven.  Grant raises an interesting possibility -- but provides zero evidence (beyond yesterday's decline in the dollar) to back it up.  Today's other op-ed is from Barbara Ehrenreich, who thinks Americans are too damn cheery:

Positive thinking is endemic to American culture — from weight loss programs to cancer support groups — and in the last two decades it has put down deep roots in the corporate world as well. Everyone knows that you won’t get a job paying more than $15 an hour unless you’re a “positive person,” and no one becomes a chief executive by issuing warnings of possible disaster.... Americans did not start out as deluded optimists. The original ethos, at least of white Protestant settlers and their descendants, was a grim Calvinism that offered wealth only through hard work and savings, and even then made no promises at all. You might work hard and still fail; you certainly wouldn’t get anywhere by adjusting your attitude or dreamily “visualizing” success. Calvinists thought “negatively,” as we would say today, carrying a weight of guilt and foreboding that sometimes broke their spirits. It was in response to this harsh attitude that positive thinking arose — among mystics, lay healers and transcendentalists — in the 19th century, with its crowd-pleasing message that God, or the universe, is really on your side, that you can actually have whatever you want, if the wanting is focused enough. When it comes to how we think, “negative” is not the only alternative to “positive.” As the case histories of depressives show, consistent pessimism can be just as baseless and deluded as its opposite. The alternative to both is realism — seeing the risks, having the courage to bear bad news and being prepared for famine as well as plenty. We ought to give it a try.

I'd buy this "realism rather than negativism" argument more if it wasn't for the fact that Ehrenreich's daughter once told me how Ehrenreich thought about the U.S. economy: 

 Soooo.... better op-eds, please, so I don't have to blog about this crap.