NPR's Subtle Bias

National Public Radio is biased.  There doesn't seem to be much question on that score.  Oh, by the way, it's biased to the left.  It would like to be America's news source of choice, but its obvious slant and that of its left-of-center colleagues the networks, CNN, MS-NBC, and the major metropolitan daily newspapers (and their websites) has sent folks flocking to Fox News and the Drudge Report.

Sometimes the bias is overt.  Sometimes, it's a little harder to see. 

I used to listen to it frequently, but hardly at all anymore.  I happened to be in my car early this morning and with nothing on KTCK SportsRadio 1310 AM The Ticket here in the DFW area, I punched over to 90.1 FM KERA to catch some news and maybe a fun story or two.

What I heard was a report on yesterday's Republican primaries.   Kansas and Wyoming, mainly, and Guam and the Northern Marianas and other South Pacific entities. 

If you get your news from NPR, you would think that Rick Santorum was the big winner yesterday with his 51% Kansas victory.  NRP led with that angle and played it up big.   Near the end of the report, it was mentioned that Romney won Wyoming and those others, but it came across as an incidental news item second thought and was very noticeably brushed off.  And it was followed with a report that Romney is in big trouble in the South because he's a Mormon.

But Rick Santorum was not the big winner yesterday.  Romney won the delegate battle yesterday, increasing his lead.  Not a lot, just a handful of convention votes, since not a lot of delegates were at stake in the aggregate, but he increased his lead with his victories everywhere except Kansas.  And, as one observer did manage to note in the overall negative piece about Romney in the South -- if he's the candidate, he'll sweep it in the general election because of the large distaste the region has developed for President Obama.

Why would NPR pitch its reporting this way, and why do I say that it is biased since we're only talking about feuding Republicans here?

Because Romney is electable, Santorum is not, NPR knows it, and a Romney candidacy has them terrified that Obama will be booted come November.  So it is in NPR's (and all the others') ideological best interest to take the nutty Rick Santorum seriously, and you end up with skewed reporting such as I heard this morning, just before I switched back to bad syndicated sports talk.

Super Tuesday's Eve

I suppose I should know what the polls are saying about what's going to happen tomorrow, but my mind has been elsewhere recently.  I've been shaking my head over the Republican contest. 

I'm a right-of-center guy.  (Surprise!)  Not a Tea Party enthusiast.  But I would say that Rick Santorum and I would agree on a lot of things.  Never mind on which things we disagree, but suffice it to say that I got no major beef with his positions on a number of things. 

But  .  .  .  .

Let's assume that I'm a Republican primary voter.

Let's assume that I really, really think that Barack Obama has been a poor President and must be defeated for the good of the Republic.

Let's further assume that I'm a mainstream conservative voter, right of people one might generally think of as politically "moderate."

And let's say that I've decided, based on the laceratingly astute analysis I read in The Cool Hot Center ("Advice for Republicans: Scratch that Itch, and Then Move On"), that Newt is not the guy. 

But hey, there's Rick Santorum.

Assume that I trust Rick Santorum to advocate forcefully for mainstream conservative principles based on (most of) his record and his utterances during the campaign.

But maybe I view Mitt Romney, on the other hand, as a straight-down-the-middle moderate.  Forget about whether he is correctly so characterized, just assume that I believe that he's to the left of Santorum.  And maybe I don't trust him to be as conservative as he claims.  and in general I don't like moderates because some of their views are immoderately to the left of center.

But now let's say that absolutely no one in his right mind thinks that Rick Santorum can defeat Barack Obama, but that many of those same people think that Mitt Romney might.  It will be tough, that POTUS is a smooth and crafty deceiver, but Mitt would at least have a colorable chance.  And I've heard these opinions, and seen these polls, and I more or less think it's true.

So why in God's name would I vote for Rick Santorum if, assuming my position were shared by enough like-minded people, it would guarantee the re-election of Barack Obama?  What possible satisfaction could there be in gloating in 2015 over my vote in 2012 while my health care deteriorates, my retirement funds erode in value, the only vehicles allowed in the HOV lanes are EPA-approved GM electric vehicles praying they get where they're going before their batteries die or asplode, my house is entirely lit by miserable curly light bulbs that I hope don't break and poison the dog, I can't buy replacement parts for my Colt Python, and I watch John Roberts swear in new Justice Alec Baldwin?  I exaggerrate, a little.

Let's review:

Obama v. Santorum = Obama, for a dead-bang certainty and even fewer constraints on his statist agenda through 2016.

Obama v. Romney =  Maybe Romney, who may be at worst moderate, which at worst is better than Obama at Obama's best, and probably a whole lot better because Romney will know who got him elected.

I'm sorry.  I'm really sorry, friends of mine on the Right. 

It's just got to be Romney.

===============

Returning very briefly to the non-hypothetical world of the Cool Hot Center: 

I think Rick Santorum shows a lot of signs of kookiness (forcing the teaching of intelligent design -- don't get me started), and he's the Leonardo di Caprio of this campaign.  Directors are always trying to cast Leo in old-man roles (Howard Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover) and romancing beautiful women of prime age (Sharon Stone, in "The Quick and the Dead"), but it never works because he still looks and sounds like he's 14.   Santorum is unimpressive, he's way too far from the mainstream, he's devoted to social positions that the Right has already lost and are not going to be reversed, and he's peevish.  He got absolutely killed in his 2006 Senate re-election bid, 41%-59%, and part of the reason (only part) was that he was perceived as something of an arrogant jerk. 

Mitt Romney looks and sounds good (perhaps a little less pomade), he's flip-flopped in the direction of conservatism, he'll more than hold his own with Obama, and he'll have a first-rate campaign organization.  His Mormonism is a nothingburger.  It means less to voters than John Kennedy's Catholicism did in 1960, and less than Obama's race and affiliation with Jeremiah Wright did in 2008.  I would be far less concerned about religion influencing his governance than I would Santorum's, who's no friend of church-state separation.  He looks like a President and I'll bet he'll find a hard copy of his birth certificate somewhere.

And he's got a sense of humor.

He's welcome to the slogan I have composed for him:

"Mitt is It."

I urge all seven of you who will read this before your state votes tomorrow to keep this in mind as you reach out towards that touch-screen at your local polling emporium.

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Email Your Cool Hot Center:  CoolHotCenter@gmail.com

Advice for Republicans: Scratch that Itch, Then Move On

Let us assume, hypothetically, that a voter believes that a partial list of persons who would be a better president than Barack Obama -- maybe not that voter's first choice, but just a better choice -- would include Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Howie Mandel (all right, he's Canadian, but POTUS doesn't think one's birthplace is important, why should we?), Khloe Kardashian, David Lee Roth, and the constitutionally qualified population of Flasher, North Dakota.  And that the short list of persons who would be worse would include Michael Moore, Pauly Shore, and Joe Biden.

All right, that's hyperbolic.  But the point is that our hypothetical voter thinks that Barack Obama has been a haahhhrrible president.  Whose defeat later this year is imperative to prevent further damage to the Republic and to begin to reverse the damage already done.

And let's say that our hypothetical voter is a Republican preparing to vote in a primary.  And it's even possible, not necessary, but possible, that our voter voted for the President and is not only disappointed, but feels a little  .  .  .  misled.  Misled by the candidate Obama, misled by the mainstream press.

And our voter is mad and getting madder with each new baffling decision and utterance of the President, apparently composed in the brief intervals between rounds of golf, vacations, smoke-and-cocktail breaks, and parties.  Our voter is reminded of her dissatisfaction daily because the Republicans are lining up to try to take his job, pounding away at him.

Michelle  .  .  .  isn't helping.

But our voter knows our President is a smart guy, a very smart guy, a very smooth guy, a good talker, wears clothes beautifully, handsome, a charismatic presence.  Bad as he's been, he could fool enough people again.  Could win, could well win. 

This is very upsetting to our hypothetical voter.  It makes her mad.

And she starts to think a thought that makes her smile, that gives her something to look forward to. 
She thinks: Newt Gingrich would absolutely dismantle Barack Obama in a debate.  He's brainier, he's a better speaker, he's a master of facts -- and he's nasty.  He would penetrate the President's smugness, his condescension, his scolding pedagogy.  All right in front of him, with the whole nation watching.

Newt?  Newt??  Newt!!

Ahhh.  That feels good.  She taps the touch-screen next to his name, smiles again, and sends her vote to the primary election computer.

It is at this point that your decidedly nonhypothetical Cool Hot Center steps into the frame.

Newt Gingrich and I agree on many things.  You will note that he was on my list of improvements over POTUS.   One thing we disagree on is his suitability as the Republican nominee.    One other thing is the likelihood that come November, more voters will agree with me on this point than with him, and his candidacy will have ensured four more years of the terrifying Obama.

It may feel good to throw in with Newt’s soaring rhetoric and liberal-elite-bashing now, but the man cannot be elected.  He is angry.  Like Tea Party angry.  But the Tea Party is not going to elect the next President, just like mainstream conservatives did not elect John McCain.  Or Bob Dole.  Or even George H.W.  Bush against Clinton. 

I agree with our hypothetical voter that Newt might well demolish POTUS in debate for all the reasons she imagines.  But Newt is a man who is not in control of either his thoughts or his mouth.  Did you listen to his victory speech in South Carolina?  He cannot help calling the President stupid,  which few sincerely believe irrespective of their disapproval of the man.   In expressing incredulity at the President’s decision on the Keystone pipeline, he offered this witless appraisal:  “It’s one thing to say the White House can’t play chess, it’s another to say it can’t play checkers,” he said.  “But tic-tac-toe?”   The crowd was notably silent after this gratuitous shot.   And that wasn’t the only one in those rather dyspeptic remarks.

And he will not be able to control his anger over the course of a difficult national campaign.   He is a guy whose grandiosity is, if anything, more virulent than Obama’s.  Give him a prominent forum, and he switches off the prudent politician’s filter; the controversies start to erupt.  Look what happened when he was in the House of Representatives:    He developed the “Contract with America” and was largely credited with the huge Republican gains in the 1994 congressional elections, ending four decades of Democratic rule.   Good Newt.  Welfare reform – good Newt.  Capital gains tax cut – good Newt.  But things started to fall apart.   There was the government shutdown – ideologically pure, maybe, but hugely unpopular.  Then the ethics charges.  But his main sin was high-handedness born of his megalomania.  He was very nearly removed as Speaker by his own party.  Then came the Clinton impeachment which he relentlessly promoted – another one of those ideologically-driven but ill-handled initiatives that came to disgust a lot of the voting public.  1998 mid-terms – the Republicans lost seats, and his status as the face of the Party was assigned a large share of the blame.  A few days later, he not only resigned as Speaker, but left Congress, having alienated the entire Republican caucus. 

Bad Newt.

People who get most of their information from Fox News and featured links on The Drudge Report may find themselves puzzled as to how President Obama’s approval ratings, dismal though they may be, are as high as they are.  We will put aside the makeup of the 45% (as of this writing) who tell Rasmussen that they “somewhat approve” of his performance.  The point is that this is going to be a difficult campaign for the Republicans.  Newt will run a campaign of resentment and anger; Obama will repeat his vague message of hope and change and comforting paternalism.

There is plenty of cause for resentment and anger over the President’s performance.  But voters are going to weary of being harangued, and they’re going to quail at Newt’s streak of meanness, which they will correctly interpret as a lack of judgment and presidential temperament. 

No, folks, for better or worse, Mitt Romney is the choice if the Republicans hope to bring in the moderate voters who installed President Obama.  Of course he has his problems.  He has flip-flopped (although his most recent flip is in the right direction).  He has mishandled the tax-return issue.  But his campaign is cheerful and optimistic.  He is not burdened by Newt’s seamy personal history.  He may be more moderate than Newt and the Tea Party on some issues but ya know something?  So are lots and lots of voters, and Romney is reliably conservative on the big issues.  He has said one of the most important things a candidate can say to conservatives, and that is that he will repeal Obamacare.   He is well-spoken; he can easily be pictured in the Oval Office, dealing diplomatically with world leaders. 

And he'll do just fine in the debates.

Mitt Romney can beat Obama. (Recent statements by George Stephanopolous and Nancy Pelosi that Romney would be the weakest candidate are dead-solid proof that the Democrats are terrified of a Romney candidacy.)   Newt cannot.  I don’t care what the polls say now – by the time the nation has had months of all-Newt, all the time, enough moderates will recoil and either stay home or vote to give our charming President – he is charming, you know – another chance.

So all you Republican primary voters out there:  Do what you have to do to get the fiery Newton Leroy Gingrich out of your system.  Enjoy it.  Send a message, share your anger.  I would say with the South Carolina rebuke of media elites that reversed his fortunes, Gingrich has been as effective as he is likely ever to be on the national stage.  The itch has been scratched.  Time to put some soothing Romney lotion on it, and get on with the important work of getting America back to greatness.

Beware the Brilliant Fool

In prior articles, I have wrestled with how we regard the everyday concept of “intelligence” when a person who apparently has a lot of it makes terrible decisions. I have speculated that because a very prominent person – our President – fits this description, it might cause people to think about “intelligence” in a new way.   (See here and here.)
In one way it is a futile inquiry, because intelligence has many definitions. Can’t beat the first sentence of the Wikipedia entry on the topic: “Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving.”

Well, there’s one answer right there. A person may have vast capacity for abstract thought, but poor understanding. One can still fall within the definition because a crackerjack abstract thinker, but still be defective in understanding; that is, intelligent, but wrong.

I know this isn’t any brilliant insight. Think of any issue that divides large numbers of people – for example, whether there was a conspiracy to murder John Kennedy. There will be people on both sides that we would think of as highly “intelligent,” as we mean that word in daily use. But some of those very intelligent people have got to be wrong.

In the November 2011 issue of New English Review, British writer and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple published an essay about a prominent biographer, Isaac Deutscher, who was a Marxist. I was struck by this passage (emphases are mine):

"His language was clear, but his thought was not. He was what might be called a dialectical equivocator, made dishonest by his early religious vows to Marxism. This made him unable to see or judge things in a common-sense way. His unwavering attachment to his primordial philosophical standpoint, his irrational rationalism, turned him into that most curious (and sometimes dangerous, because intellectually charismatic) figure, the brilliant fool. He was the opposite of Dr Watson who saw but did not observe: he observed, but did not see. He was the archetype of the man, so common among intellectuals, who knows much but understands little."

I’m guessing that if any one of us spent an afternoon in the private company of Newt Gingrich, or Barack Obama, or Mitt Romney, or Nancy Pelosi, or Rush Limbaugh, or Al Franken, just shooting the breeze on topics unrelated to their public policy positions, we would come away thinking that we’d been in the company of a pretty smart person. Perhaps even brilliant.

The brilliant Junior Samples

So what? So . . . people can be brilliant but very wrong. Some of them have stupendous knowledge and experience but no judgment; some are subtle analysts but select incorrect or thin information; some, as Dalrymple suggests, are in the grip of ideology – they apply their brains to deceive others, but mainly themselves, in the service of what they regard as a higher truth.

Most of us, most of the time, can spot the unreliable smart person. The high-IQ person who you would not trust to advise you on your day to day choices, or to be a leader of any polity to which you belong. We generally get the leaders we deserve, although not enough people saw through the brilliant fool who’s running the show now. We can debate the reasons for that another time. (Hint: the usual culprits – media bias, liberal racial guilt, a deceptive campaign, class resentment, weak opposition, disgust with the incumbent, and, truth to tell, a magnetic persona and charming manner.)

And there’s the lesson: We encounter gifted minds throughout our lives. The first time many of us are overwhelmed with the brilliance of a particular individual is college, when our professors present an image of learnedness that is absolutely genuine. And yet, faculties are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats and worse.  Strongly redistributionist, politically correct, and believers in enforced equality of result. Theories that have never worked in the history of mankind, at least not in any free society (and the unfree societies that have enshrined them have declined and even failed, some very recently and very dramatically).

Most adults understand that many of these academics are brilliant fools, but the unformed barely-post-adolescent mind daily exposed to brilliantly foolish instruction does not, and so we end up with things like The Sixties, the McGovern candidacy, and MoveOn.org.

Some of us shake it off when we start working, raising families, and paying taxes.

Some of us don’t.

Some of us think we have done so, but can still be wowed by the singular, eloquent, attractive intellect without regard to whether he or she is selling something that simple observation of the world would tell us is quite unlikely to be correct. 

And brilliant fools are everywhere, wanting our votes, our investments, our time, and our hearts and minds.

Beware.

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Tomorrow's Conventional Wisdom -- Today!! (CONCLUSION)

More freshly-minted thoughts – actually, getting a little musty since the election was awhile ago.

[PS:  I've made a strong resolution to post much more frequently in 2011 -- a larger number of shorter observations, interspersed with the longer essays.  I'll be grateful if you'll check in from time to time, even if you don't receive a notification that there's anything new up.  Many thanks.   -- Steve.]

It’s Not the Economy, Other than Secondarily.

I have seen polls where voters said that the economy was their main concern.

I partly believe this. When the pundits talk about the economy, they focus on jobs.

Jobs are important. Real important. If you don’t have one, then jobs are the most important thing.

But most people have jobs. And most people are not extremely fearful that they will lose their jobs. More people than usual, these days, but still a long way from most. I don’t mean to be snotty about this. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose one’s job because of economic conditions. (Heaven forbid one is also incompetent.)

I think that when most people say they are concerned about the economy, I think they mean they are concerned about what our political leaders on the federal, state, and local levels have done and are doing to it, and that it will be extremely difficult to undo. That is, they’re not worried about the current dip – they’ve seen dips followed by booms – they’re worried about the rest of their lives, worried that after years of spending and required future spending by both Republican and Democratic administrations (with the current administration the champeen), the damage will be long-lasting and hard to undo. Deficit spending, spending on nothing, spending on (certain) public employee unions for poor service, corrupt spending, spending to create and enforce niggly regulations, pork spending, earmark spending – and only a little of it actually classifiable as economically productive. So, so much of it is paying bureaucrats to do nothing more than move it around, something markets do so much better and cheaper and with less injury to freedom.

Not my intention to mount a defense of markets versus a command economy, as if they needed one. My point here is that this election was about more than short-term joblessness, to the extent it was about the economy at all. In spite of everything, the public is optimistic. The government has screwed up the economy, by commission (spending) and omission (failure to curb financial sector wrongdoing). They can tell the government to fix it. They just took the first step.

The Peckerwood Factor.

It wasn’t a Republican sweep. There’s not much accounting for California, which continues its descent into economic lunacy. And parts of the Eastern seaboard, they can’t be helped either.

But there were some other losers. Joe Miller in Alaska. Christine O’Donnell in Delaware.

Thereby hangs the danger of the Tea Party. When the population rises, there are lots and lots of slots to fill. Some of the candidates to whom the population turns are going to be peckerwoods, just like some to whom they turned in 2008 were, to put the matter kindly, more liberal than voters cared to see as they swept out the Republicans in that wave of revulsion.

(When I use the term “peckerwood,” I mean a style of conservatism that is reactionary, extremely ideological, and almost aggressively ignorant. Your peckerwoods may vote sensibly, but their manner and rhetoric is, after awhile, offputting and offensive and guaranteed to lose the center that the Republicans need. I do not use it in the 19th and early 20th century sense of poor southern whites.)

And, like the hard libs who slipped through in 2008, some peckerwoods slipped through in 2010.

The Republicans need to keep charge of these types. I don’t have any prescriptions on how that can be accomplished. Not all – I’d say probably only a few – Tea Party-supported candidates are peckerwoods. But they tend to be loud and to draw attention to themselves and paint responsible Republicans with their broad brush.

Beware the peckerwood.

Who Will Lead?

In November many of us got a lot of what we wanted.

Now what?

The Republicans considerably increased the size of their tent in 2010. Who will emerge to lead the party to 2012? Who will step forward to avoid screwing this up?

At this writing, there are no breakaway front runners. An off-the-cuff survey:

Sarah Palin: No. I’m sure I’ll be writing more as time goes by, but let me say it straight out – she is not smart enough. And there’s the odd family life, Bristol making Billy Carter look respectable.  I’m not entirely sure Palin wasn’t born in Kenya. I’m tired of flaky exotics in the White House or near it.

John Boehner: Prematurely orange. I don’t know what to think about his lachrymose tendencies. I know the guy has come up from a hard life, and that’s terrific. But I’ve never heard a public utterance of his that stayed with me. He seemed to think the first two years of the Obama presidency were about lack of transparency. Not impressive.

Michael Steele: Every team needs some really, really good black guys. I’m not sure any team can win these days without excellent black guys. Well, I gotta tell you, the Democrats’ black guy is totally kicking the Republicans’ black guy’s ass. What a mediocrity – I can’t believe the party hasn’t shown him the door. You never see him as a spokesman anymore, and he’s compromised by his profligacy in office. I think the country has really grown up – we’re confident enough in our judgment, independent of race, to kick black guys out of leadership positions in both parties. (I hope.)

Newt Gingrich:  Really smart, really good debater, real knowledgeable, extremely sound on the issues, but hopelessly compromised by his seamy mistreatment of his (former) wife and his condescending manner (former professor, like we need another one of those). He should have Michael Steele’s job. He could be a party leader, just not a national leader.

John McCain: No. His maverick act was always a sham and was exposed in the campaign. And let’s face it, he’s old and seems older than he is.

Bobby Jindal: Not this time. Needs some seasoning before the cameras and some serious sartorial advice. Otherwise, really like the guy.

Tim Pawlenty: The guy gets a lot of attention, but so far I’ve found him pretty Lamar-Alexanderish. Smart but in love with his press clippings.

Rudy Giuliani: A guy who runs as bad a campaign as he ran (or allowed to be run for him) in 2008 has not exhibited a model for national leadership. Having said that, I still like the guy and believe there’s a role for him. But he has to hook up with some professional campaign management that won’t tell him to hide out in Florida for two months while every other candidate is on the news every day.

Mitt Romney: Strong, but he’s going to have to deal with the crisis of Romneycare in Massachusetts.  He should say something like:  "I can't believe how incredibly stupid I was, and I've like absolutely totally learned my lesson, and don't you want a president who learns from his mistakes?"   I don’t think the Mormon thing is a big electoral problem. Is it? Don’t have a feel for it. He needs to get out front on some current issues, though. He’s not going to look good riding Boehner’s coattails. Maybe he’s trying not to peak.

Chris Christie: Look out. A term or two under his impressive belt and he could be a guy. A mountain of common sense.

Michele Bachmann: Never seen her look bad. Like Christie, she could be a great national leader. Need to see more.

Mike Huckabee: A lot to like here. Personable, smart, not crazy-right. I’ve seen it written that his parole decisions could be a problem, but I don’t see it. Right now, my personal favorite. Not without reservations. But he seems like a reasonable man who could more than hold his own with the President in debate, and who could attract . . .

. . . the Cool Hot Center.