In a futile determined effort to expand his public intellectual brand, your humble blogger was on the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC for about an hour this AM.  It was a veeeeery interesting experience.  Now, I know that some readers of this blog aspire to poison me and take my place on the FP masthead punditry themselves.  So, as a public service, this is what happens when you go on a Sunday morning talk show:  imagine the Law & Order chunk-CHUNK! going after each paragraph:

WEDNESDAY:  I receive a polite email from one of Melissa's segment/booking producers, who we'll call "M", asking if I want to be on the show this Sunday.  Having never done this kind of punditry before, and having my previous obligation for the weekend cancelled, I accept. 

Immediately after accepting, I experience two contradictory emotions.  First, the fear builds that they will email back the same day and say, "uh, we just re-checked our Rolodex, and.. [laughs] we have no idea who thought you merited being on television."  At the same time, I realize I'm going to have to watch the rest of the prime-time Republican National Convention speeches.  At which point I let loose a strong of profanities [What if had been the DNC instead?--ed.  The same number of profanities would have been released.]

THURSDAY:  I talk with M again, who runs down the planned topics with me -- the RNC, the DNC, the state of the election, and gun violence.  Immediately I have a slight quandry -- my expertise is in international relations, not electoral politics.  Do I dare to think I can play in the sandbox for a Sunday morning talk show?  At which point my inner media whore screams, Gollum-like, "YES!!  WE WANTS TO BE ON THE TV!!!  IT'S OUR PRECIOUS!!" 

This is, as near as I can determine, the First Commandment of Televsion Punditry -- you have to be secure enough in your abilities to chat with authority about issues outside your intellectual wheelhouse. 

FRIDAY:  To make my inner media whore proud, I start reading up on gun violence statistics.  I also read as much commentary as I can about the Republican National Convention.  Whatever intelligence I gain from the former I lose by reading the latter.   

SATURDAY:  Full disclosure:  Melissa and I were political science colleagues at the University of Chicago back in the day, so I'm familiar with her style and her politics.  That said, I haven't been a regular watcher of her MSNBC show, so I tune for the first half-hour in to get a sense of the roundtable.  Clearly MHP leans juuuuust a little to the left.  This raises an identity issue -- am I supposed to be  wearing the hat of "defender of conservatism"?  It's not a role I've been comfortable with as of late.  Or am I gonna wear the "dispassionate, snarky observer of the political scene"?  I feel much more comfortable with that hat on.  In all likelihood, it's going to be a little from column A and a little from column B.

LATER ON SATURDAY:  If you're going to be on roundtable for radio/television, there's a 98% chance you will need to do a "pre-interview" with a producer so they have a sense of what you're going to say during the conversation.  So I have that conversation with M, during which I learn that the topics have been jiggled around a bit and all those minutes hours of sketchy detailed online research into gun violence stats won't be worth much.  Instead, we'll be talking gay marriage.  Which is fine, I will rally with yet more Wikipedia-surfing intense study of primary texts.  And, of course, that segment will be moved as well.  So, the Second Commandment of Television Punditry is that the schedule will always change.

EVEN LATER ON SATURDAY:  The MHP show is classy -- they took care of all the flight/hotel/car service logistics.  So by Saturday night I found myself in a comfortable midtown hotel with a lovely view of Central Park.  Surfing the web furiously to research for Sunday AM, I see that some fireworks broke out on MHP's Saturday show after I switched off to pack.  Melissa was responding to the panel's most conservative participant making a point.  Ruh-roh. 

To prep, I take notes on each of the "blocks" or segments that I'm supposed to weigh in on.  I'm a professor and an academic, and therefore alwasys feel better with notes. 

SUNDAY MORNING PRE-SHOW:  I get to 30 Rock on time, which means I'm the first panelist there.... or so I think.  In actuality, the two female panelists -- NYU's Cristina Beltran and the Center for American Progress' Aisha Moodie-Mills -- are in makeup.  As they enter the green rom, I quickly comprehend that I am in deep trouble, because I am not nearly as pretty.  As the clock ticks towards 10 AM, and no one comes to get me, I am petrified that I have been typecast as the splotchy-faced redneck surrounded by urbane alluring panelists.  Before this scenario can play out in even weirder directions inside my head, however, M sends me to makeup.  They apply as enough powder to my face to fuel at least two Dunkin' Donuts franchies -- but it works .  My family later informs me that I looked good, so many, many thanks to those professionals at MSNBC. 

SUNDAY MORNING, 10 AM-11 AM:  OK, having done my first hour of Sunday morning chat -- which you can watch here, here, here and here -- I have learned the following effects on one's senses when three cameras and numerous klieg lights are pointed in your general direction:

A)  Time speeds up.  Seriously, that hour flew by.  Every time I was feeling like we were getting to a good part of the conversation, we hit a commercial break. 

B)  Almost all prep work is useless.  I knew exactly what I wanted to say in response to the first question asked, and I did that competently.  After that, whatever good punchy things were in my notes might as well have been left back at home for all the use they were to me.  Part of the issue is visual -- you don't want to be looking down at your notes.  Another part of the issue, which I've blogged about before, is the academic weakness of trying to directly answer the question. 

C)  Really, cameras can make you stupid.  If you mangle your words during an ordinary conversation, or even when giving a speech, you can take a moment and regroup.  If you mangle your words during a panel show, you become acutely aware that you're screwing up, which compounds the problem.  Another panelist will be happy to enter the breach.  On at least two occasioons, I had written down a better answer than the one that came out of my mouth during the program. 

SUNDAY MORNING, 11 AM:  I  need to get to the airport to come home, but I find two pieces of critical feedback from the experience worthwhile.  The first was the thumbs-up that Moodie-Mills and her partner give me as I exit the green room.  The second is an anonymous  email I soon find in my inbox: 

Drezner........Why are you such an idiot? Your appearance on MSLSD was laughable and embarrassing. It's really sad and embarrassing how you liberal bedwetters continue to be brainwashed by your worthless president. Why can't you clowns form a coherent thought on your own? Exactly, because you buffoons are mindless robots programmed by your worthless president. Barnum and Bailey have nothing on you clowns. What do you call a basement full of liberals? A whine cellar. Keep up the good work loser................

Why, it's... it's a troll!!  I've made it!!  I'M A REAL PUNDIT NOW!!!!!

In Sayf-Al-Islam's rambling speech last night on Libyan State television, he blamed the current unpleasantness in his country on, as near as I can determine, crazed African LSD addicts. 

This isn't going down as well as Sayf had intended, and Libya seems less stable than 24 hours earlier.  Indeed, Sayf's off-the-cuff remarks managed to make Hosni Mubarak's three speeches seem like a model of professionalism, which I would not have thought was possible a week ago.  

Indeed, it is striking how utterly incompetent leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have been at managing their media message.  Speeches are announced, then never delivered on time, and then delivered with production values that woulds embarrass a public access channel in the U.S.  It's like political leaders in the region have discovered blogs just as the young people has moved on to Twitter or something.  [Er, no, that's the United States--ed.]  Oh, right. 

Having just finished a week of intense media whoring, methinks that one problem is that most of these leaders have simply fallen out of practice (if they were ever in practice) at personally using the media to assuage discontent.  I've been on enough shows on enough different media platforms to appreciate that there is an art, or at least a tradecraft, to presenting a convincing message in the mediasphere.  Authoritarian leaders in the Middle East are quite adept at playing internal factions off one another.  That's a different skill set than trying to craft a coherent and compelling media message to calm street protestors no longer intimidated by internal security forces. 

Indeed, as I argued in Theories of International Politics and Zombies, bureaucratic first responses to novel situations are almost uniformly bad.  Sayf pretty much admitted this last night, as he acknowledged that the Libyan armed forces were not trained to deal with street protestors.  I suspect the same is true with the state media outlets -- they excel at producing tame, regime-friendly pablum during quiescent periods, but now they're operating in unknown territory. 

I also argued that bureaucracies should be able to adapt their organizational routines over time, if a regime's domestic support does not evaporate.  Readers are encouraged to predict which regimes under threat in the Middle East are the most likely to be able to adapt.  My money is on Iran -- not because that regime is more popular, but simply because Iran's leaders have had eighteen months to adapt and they are therefore further down the learning curve. 

Developing....

Over at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about why he largely abstains from cable news appearances and why this is in and of itself a problem:

The outlines of the problem are becoming clear--I'm a snob. More seriously, it's my impression that much of cable news is rigged. Complicated questions are forced into small spaces of time, and guests frequently dissemble in order to score debate points and avoid being intellectually honest. Finally, many of the guests don't seem to be actual experts in the field of which they're addressing, so much as they're "strategists" or "analysts." I strongly suspect that part of the reason this is the case is talking on TV is, itself, a craft and one that requires a skill-set very different than what is required of academics. I'm sure many academics themselves share the disdain for the format that I've outlined. Finally, the handful of scholars who regularly appear on the talk shows, generally aren't of the sort that hold my interests.

With that said, it's very difficult to inveigh against these shows when you refuse to participate. The discomfiting fact is that cable news reaches a ton of people, many of whom--presuming they're interested--could use the information (emphasis added).

As an academic who is occasionally asked to be on TV/radio after the producer has gone through their top ten options, I have similarly mixed feelings about the skill mismatch. Speaking from my own experience, I find that my biggest weakness in these venues is that I genuinely want to answer the question asked of me.

You'd think this would be a good thing, but it's not, because it means that you're a hostage to the interviewer's ability to ask good questions. Usually if you're asked to be on a program, you know what the news hook is, and you should (obviously) know your overarching take on the issue. The problem, for me at least, is that no interviewer asks, "So what do you think?" Instead, they'll ask a more specific question -- which I then try to answer specifically. I've rarely been able to integrate a specific answer with the larger theme I want to stress in the appearance.

I suppose I could just admit my failings and abstain from these kinds of media appearances. One of my 2011 resolutions, however, is to try and get better at doing this sort of thing.

I'll have my list of proposed resolutions for the rest of the foreign-policy community tomorrow.

Earlier this week Politico's Ben Smith posted about the ways in which speaking fees had altered incentives for politicians and pundits: 

Most of the people you see talking on television or quoted in stories -- who aren't in elected office -- make substantial parts of their livings giving speeches to private groups. Paid speaking, cleaner than lobbying, easier than the practice of law, cleaner than hitting up pension funds, well, safer than graft, has become the primary source of income for a broad range of political figures, beginning with Bill Clinton, who reported $7.5 million from paid speech in 2009.

The high fees for speakers like Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Stanley McChrystal occasionally draw attention, but beneath them are tiers and tiers more, with Harold Ford and Michael Steele, for instance, charging $40,000 for a package deal. 

In that middle tier are commentators like Coulter and high-profile television personalities.  Well down the ladder are journalists, lower-profile politicians, and consultants.

I've been wondering -- and am interested in readers' takes, particularly those in the industry -- how this private economy affects the public politics. For one thing, it provides an incentive for consultants and out-of-work politicians to volunteer themselves to cable television and to make themselves interested and controversial enough to stay on it. (It's a kind of subsidy to cable.) Cable hits are a kind of loss leader on the speaking circuit -- they don't themselves play, but they make a paid speaker more saleable.

In a follow-up post, Smith relayed a media exec's thoughts on the matter:

[I]t's never discussed with any real scrutiny by the mainstream media or Fox because it's bi-partisan. Everyone does it! James Carville. Bill Maher. Hannity. Oliver North. Eugene Robinson. Al Sharpton. Jack Welch. Trent Lott.

Note that academics are so far down the ladder that Smith doesn't even bother to mention them. This does not mean, however, that academics and other members of the foreign-policy community don't get speaking fees. I've seen Fareed Zakaria's quote, and, well, let's just say I've been coping with my own inadequacies at the lectern ever since. 

What does the foreign policy equivalent of Smith's speaker ecosystem -- and how does it affect our analysis?

Well, the foreign policy speaker ecosystem is pretty straightforward and pretty hierarchical:

1) Top tier: former policy principals and mainstream elite pundits. Examples: Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Tom Friedman, Fareed Zakaria, Robert Kagan, etc. These are the people that large associations, private colleges, and consultants with deep pockets will invite to give talks. Payment ranges from high-five figures to low-six figures. 

2) Second tier: Senior think-tankers, former policymakers with views "outside the mainstream", and experts in the topic du jour: Examples: Richard Haass, Carlos Pascual, James Woolsey, and, say, Barnett Rubin if Afghanistan was on everyone's mind. College groups, professional associations, lobbies, and single-issue groups will have these people talk. Payment ranges from high-four figures to middle-five figures. 

3) Third tier: Top tier IR academics, former deputy policymakers, consultants who fancy themselves as deep global strategists, one-shot book-publishing wonders, etc. Examples: Charles Kupchan, Strobe Talbott, Parag Khanna. Foundations, think tanks, some campus groups, and university institutes will invite these speakers. Fees are generally low four figures. 

4) Fourth tier: Assorted crackpots, garden-variety think-tankers, A-list bloggers, and me. Travel, hotel, and something less than $1,000. 

Does this hierarchy affect how foreign-policy analysts write and think? I'm honestly not sure. Cracking the top tier is very difficult, and someone gearing their entire intellectual output towards that goal is more likely to be disappointed than not. Forthermore, the best way to crack that tier is to achieve a related goal, which is a top-tier appointment in an administration. One could argue that this puts constraints on how far outside "mainstream" analysis one can go. 

On the other hand… once one realizes that those A-list appontments ain't going to happen, the incentve structure shifts. After a certain point, becoming an intellectual bomb-thrower can be the quickest route to achieving pecuniary rewards. That said, even in this case one has to have done good work in the past in order to be taken seriously. So, in the foreign-policy ecosystem at least, I'm not sure speaking fees distort policy analysis all that much. 

I'm eager to hear from commenters on this question, however: do you think the growth of outside speaking fees distort incentives within the foreign-policy community? 

For all two of you who were curious what the cover of Theories of International Politics and Zombies will look like, well, your curiosity is about to be sated: 

I can also promise some awesome illustrations in the text. 

As I'm transitioning from vacation mode to catching-up mode, Two brief  notes.  First, you might notice a blogroll and twitter feed on the right-hand side of the page.  Classy, huh? 

Second, blogger "fame" can bring some odd moments.  For example, Henry Farrell posted that John Holbo "is profiled along with other academic bloggers (DeLong, Drezner, Shalizi) in Berkeley’s alumni magazine."

The piece is primarily about DeLong and Holbo -- here's the section on yours truly:

Other well-known academic bloggers admit they began in an effort to be heard beyond the tight circle of academe to which they had access as untenured professors. Tufts University Professor Dan Drezner, a right-leaning political blogger who often skirmishes online with DeLong, began blogging after 9/11 because he had expertise in the Middle East, and major newspapers refused to publish his op-eds. Within a year, he was a regular contributor to The New York Times. At the time he and DeLong jumped in, says Drezner, blogging was “the quickest way to become a public intellectual."

Now, I don't know if there are so many inaccuracies in this essay because I got my Ph.D. from a rival institution, but let's clear up a few things:

1)  I have never claimed area expertise about the Middle East.  I'll claim some expertise about the study of international relations, some of which applies to the Middle East.  That's a different kettle of fish than what's stated about me in the above paragraph. 

2)  I've never been a regular contributor to the New York Times, unless four book reviews and one op-ed in seven years counts as "regular." 

I suspect that Cathleen McCarthy, who wrote the essay, mistakenly conflated myself and FP's Marc Lynch, from this Williams Alumni Review story she wrote three years ago.   But it's good to have a blog to set the facts straight. 

Enough navel-gazing.  Substantive blogging will resume tomorrow.