The Gingrich Universe
A great column from E.J. Dionne on the media clout of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and the extent to which the discourse remains wired for conservatism:
While the right wing’s rants get wall-to-wall airtime, you almost never hear from the sort of progressive members of Congress who were on an America’s Future panel on Tuesday. Reps. Jared Polis of Colorado, Donna Edwards of Maryland and Raul Grijalva of Arizona all said warm things about the president — they are Democrats, after all — but also took issue with some of his policies. [...] Her point has broader application. For all the talk of a media love affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media’s discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives.
A great example of this, that Dionne doesn’t use in his column, was the incredibly skewed coverage of the debate over the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. To the best of my knowledge, the vast majority of economists who accepted the basic outlines of the case for fiscal stimulus felt that the politically determined $800 billion cap on stimulus outlays meant that the thing was too small. I wouldn’t say that the press should have covered this issue to the exclusion of noting the objections of members of congress who deemed it too big, or of the minority of economists who reject the idea of stimulus out of hand, but the whole concept that there could be a position to the left of Obama’s was nowhere to be seen.
And you see this time and again. Yet, everyone could always tell from Obama’s voting record in the Senate, from his statements as a candidate, and from basic common sense that Obama is not, in fact, the most left-wing politician in the United States of America. On issues from climate change to health care to Afghanistan to stimulus to banking regulation there is a critique-from-the-left that doesn’t get heard at all. And even on the issues where I don’t, personally, buy the critique-from-the-left I think it’s regrettable that it’s become so obscured. You win political arguments by capturing “the middle ground.” That means that if your position is defined by default as “the left” anchor point, you’re destined to lose.
37 Responses to “The Gingrich Universe”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
June 4th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
If you won the argument by ’seizing the middle’ GWB would have won the SS debate.
you’ve been in Washington too long. You should have known better, it’s always been clear that you lack the will to overcome peer pressure. If you accept your flaws, you can work past them. If you ignore them, they will own you.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Oh please, the press merely quotes Rush and Newt to mock and use derision. They never actually discuss their ideas as a legitimate option.
It’s funny, we always see these articles claiming right-wing bias when the overwhelming evidence of the opposite is over-whelming.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I think this assumes that regular voters actually have the vaguest idea of where the “poles” of left and right are on every issue, which is of course out-dated, baby boomer, 20th Century nonsense. Obama is staking out a position, and generally not compromising that much at all if you pay close attention. In fact, by allowing the GOP to attack his consistency as extremism, he’s further entrenching his opinions in the mainstream.
This is most clearly illustrated by the polling data that suggests that, the more the GOP calls Obama “socialist,” the more people favor socialism. Obama is shifting the middle without actually compromising. Pretty brilliant, if you ask me.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
It bugs me that E.J. excuses this far-right media bias as being “largely unconscious.” As if many, many of these media types aren’t savvy enough to notice this red-shift tactic which forces compromise between middle and far-right.
Long ago, Matt posted a sentiment from a journalist friend who said something like, ‘If you’re looking for an explanation for why journalists seem clueless, it’s not that they don’t know the score. Look elsewhere for an explanation.’
Something like that sounds about right to me.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
you almost never hear from the sort of progressive members of Congress who were on an America’s Future panel on Tuesday. Reps. Jared Polis of Colorado, Donna Edwards of Maryland and Raul Grijalva of Arizona
What, you almost never hear pablum from random junior members of Congress the same way you do from a former Speaker of the House (and leader of the Republican Revolution) and the most powerful voice on radio? Unbelieveable! Boy is this country is “wired for conservatism”!
Next up, EJ Dionne and Matthew complain that, for some unexplicable reason, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant get more endorsement deals than Zadrunas Ilgauskas and Sasha Vujacic. Unbelieveable! Boy is this country wired for black people.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Why don’t they do the same thing to Noam Chomsky?
June 4th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Newt the disgraced, philandering former speaker, Bunker Boy Cheeney the cowardly lyin, and Limpy the thriced divorced, convicted pillpopper with the bouncies. Why shouldn’t they get all the air time? Clearly they have all the serious ideas.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
a former Speaker of the House (and leader of the Republican Revolution)
This would, of course, be the former Speaker of the House who not only resigned his leadership position in the face of an internal revolt but resigned his House seat altogether in disgrace after becoming the most unpopular politician in the country and squandering the 1994 gains. The same man, of course, who has not held any elected position whatsoever for more than ten years now.
Yes, it is in fact quite odd that he, along with a radio host who has never held an elected position, are so often the subject of punditry, while the views of any actual elected official to the left of Obama are essentially irrelevant.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I wouldn’t say that the press should have covered this issue to the exclusion of noting the objections of members of congress who deemed it too big, or of the minority of economists who reject the idea of stimulus out of hand, but the whole concept that there could be a position to the left of Obama’s was nowhere to be seen.
This seems wrong to me. I specifically remember Obama being asked at a press conference to react to people who claimed the stimulus was too small. Generally, I think people like Krugman and Stiglitz were in fact a prominent part of the public debate.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Why don’t they do the same thing to Noam Chomsky?
Probably, because they mostly agree with him and would find him hard to mock, the mainstream press that is.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I specifically remember Obama being asked at a press conference to react to people who claimed the stimulus was too small.
I don’t think Matt was talking about a press conference, but rather the multitudes of talking head shows on which there was almost always a Republican talking about how the stimulus was unnecessary, should be all tax cuts, or contained pork for marsh mouses against a Democrat tasked with defending the bill. One of the more depressing aspects of modern political TV coverage (and the reason I can rarely stand to watch it) is that it’s treated like a football game, with exactly two sides who battle over everything. And one of the sides is completely insane currently, so you rarely get anything useful out of such discussions.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Judd:
If you’re starting from the assumption that the press is, in fact, far left and part of a giant liberal media bias, I’m not sure how you proceed from that to explain the fact made in the post: that the views of anyone left of the left-center Obama are very rarely reported on. Are you going to seriously say that this left-wing media is only interested in mocking the more insane elements of the right, and not in presenting a far-left viewpoint that could serve as a counterpart to Obama’s centrism? That seems to me highly doubtful. Even if the media agrees wholeheartedly with what Donna Edwards thinks about health care, for example, it would seem highly likely if they are biased that they’d want to have her and people like her on as much as possible to counteract the Baucuses and Nelsons of the party.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Adam,
They still have to attract readers and viewers. We luckily have a real world example of arguing left vs far left, it is MSNBC primetime, and look at the ratings. Obama is plenty left for the majority of the mainstream press, he is far from centrist, as you contend.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Ok, I would like to disagree with Matt’s analysis. And not only i disagree, but in essence I find it self serving for the people on the left of Obama who want to pull him towards their prefered policies.
But the truth of the matter is twofold.
First, as Matt himself has written a year ago, it’s not Gingrich et al who are out of the mainstream; conservatives as a whole are far to the right than most independents and democrats who share more moderate not leftist policies. Gingrich et al are extremist in my view but they also are fully representative of what is in effect the second biggest magnetic pole within American public opinion.
Second, I am almost positive that Obama likes it this way. Not only because he’s more popular, but because the vocal opposition right wingers provide allow him to present himself as the voice of pragmatic sensibility; a political positioning which is a long-term winner for him.
There’s another note. The media tend to operate under a narrative. The narrative American media like to operate under is the one describing conflict between right and left. In many of the European democracies I am aware of (and which Matt seem to be fond of)the media do as Dionne and Matt and Marshall advocate: they present the dissenting points of view of minorities within the governing party. But these narratives are narratives of crisis and discord, precisely because the European parliamentary system on the surface demands fierce loyalty across party lines.
So for example, when John Major tried to deal with the issue of Europe, the English media did cover the dissenting voices within his party, the Euroskeptics, but under a prevalent narrative of crisis not of constructive disagreement. This in turn did I think a great deal to corrode the image of the Conservative party.
Now, if the American media were to focus on the dissenters of the left, they wouldn’t do it the same way as in Europe – after all the american party system doesn’t ask for as fierce party discipline and disagreements are expected. But I do think that the controversial aspect of the story is something that will remain. And instead of Obama being the calm sensible voice against the right wing loonies, it might be the image of the feckless Obama dealing with left wing loonies who hold him histage etc etc.
So I think the point of all of this is to be careful what you wish for.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
It’s true that you almost never hear the political views of Democrats to the left of Obama in the media. But, as I argue here, it’s even rarer to hear any political views to the left of the Democrats as a whole, including on liberal blogs. This is despite the fact that on many issues the US population is to the left of the Democrats–the public opposed the Iraq war earlier and more strongly than the Dems, it opposed the bank bailout as a giveaway to banks while the Democrats pushed it through, and so on–there just aren’t any organized political institutions to represent these viewpoints, which is why we need to rebuild the left in this country.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I agree with Nick, and he said it better than I could. For the last 4 months what has been the biggest story about Republicans? The battle between conservatives and moderates, and the civil war in the party. Which contends that the party is in disarray, which it partly is.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I don’t think Matt was talking about a press conference, but rather the multitudes of talking head shows on which there was almost always a Republican talking about how the stimulus was unnecessary, should be all tax cuts, or contained pork for marsh mouses against a Democrat tasked with defending the bill.
I’d be fine if Matt wanted to argue that the stimulus-should-be-bigger crowd was underrepresented in mass media, but he actually claimed this view “was nowhere to be seen.” And even if you charitably restrict that concept just to talk shows, I recall Krugman appearing on some of those shows.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
The corporate media is entirely hostile to anything actually progressive in issues of economics and national security. The reason is simple – the corporate media is controlled by big corporations which have a conservative bias, as Sumner Redstone pointedly admitted in the run-up to election 04.
The assertion of a left wing bias in the media is mind-numbingly insulting; the rhetorical equivalent of a blow to the face. It is a storyline pushed by bullies and cowards who can’t win a real debate and who falsely claim victimhood in order to skew the playing field in their favor. Their tactics have worked, because the corporations benefit from it, and so we continue to hear the lie.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
You’re right Shredder, Pinch Sulzberger and Bill Keller are secret Reaganites.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
See An Introduction to the Overton Window of Political Possibilities, a rather interesting concept that seems on point for this discussion. (HT to the Economist’s Democracy in America blog for pointing me toward this)
June 4th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
judd, I have to admit that you must live in a strange universe where people like Gingrich and Rush are invited on live TV to act as analysts because the press wants to “mock” them. But there you go. Some people live in a rarefied universe in which they trade in “truths” that don’t reflect reality but are useful to maintain a cultural belief system.
Anyway, we’ve all been through this before– journalists generally reflect the interests of the upper middle class and the neoliberal consensus around unions, health care, and free trade.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
We luckily have a real world example of arguing left vs far left, it is MSNBC primetime, and look at the ratings.
As I understand it, Olbermann and Maddow, who often come at Obama from the far left, have done quite well in the ratings recently, especially among the 18-49 demographic. People like Scarborough and Matthews, who run the typical hack talking head shows, aren’t doing all that well. Though one shouldn’t discount the relative quality of the shows (particularly Maddow).
June 4th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
But I do think that the controversial aspect of the story is something that will remain. And instead of Obama being the calm sensible voice against the right wing loonies, it might be the image of the feckless Obama dealing with left wing loonies who hold him histage etc etc.
So I think the point of all of this is to be careful what you wish for.
Well, I think for a lot of us “left wing loonies”, the fact that virtually nobody in the media is taking Obama to task about stuff like DADT, executive power and state secret issues, etc that he campaigned on is disheartening.
But in general I think the larger point you made is about the two “magnetic poles” and how they dominate the discussion. Really I’d just like to see a media that covers a wide range of viewpoints from across the spectrum instead of having every format be opposing views from people within the mainstream of those poles. But conflict drives ratings, and the best way to get conflict is to cast everything as one team against another team.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
As I understand it, Olbermann and Maddow, who often come at Obama from the far left, have done quite well in the ratings recently, especially among the 18-49 demographic.
You would be wrong.
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/the_scoreboard_tuesday_june_2_118089.asp#more
June 4th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
judd -
Obama is plenty left for the majority of the mainstream press, he is far from centrist, as you contend.
Further evidence that conservatives seriously need to recalibrate their understanding of the ideological spectrum. The equivalent to Rush and Newt on the left side of the spectrum is occupied by the likes of Alexander Cockburn and Naomi Klein. Not even Bernie Sanders qualifies.
The radical right is part of the mainstream while the radical left is stuck in the academic ghetto.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
judd,
The numbers you linked to are for the 18-54 demographic (and the overall numbers). What the 18-54 is useful for I have no idea but Olbermann and Maddow are both #1 in the 18-34 group.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Correction, the numbers judd linked to are for the 24-54 age group, not 18-54.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Do you have a link?
June 4th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
The coverage of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh is only skewed in the sense that they are providing a raw material for reporters to use. Meanwhile, Team Obama is busy setting up their TV camera crew cutting out the media at the White House, making the acquisition of raw material harder for reporters to get.
Additionally, they are providing some drama. Frankly, those stories about the many details of healthcare or “cap and trade” just aren’t sexy. Each and every reporter starts their day looking for the “most important story of the day,” and if it isn’t write it that way. But when you get real drama .. damn.
June 4th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I like how those like judd go down in flames, and facing approval of their psychosis at 1% they insist that the “liberal” media only has only right wingers on because the masses demand it.
Astonishing. But not bad, really. They should continue to be the face of the GOP on the intertubes. Srsly.
June 4th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
There’s an obvious way to establish Obama as a Centrist. Find a few articulate, noisy, brazen, repetitous, obnoxious but photogenic and charismatic, plausible left-wing nut jobs. Put the camera on them at all times, every day. Make it irresistable for the networks to get some quotes from them.
Basically, find some folks identical in demeanor to Cheney, Newt, Rush and Boehner, but ideologically opposite.
Coach these left-winger spokespeople to where they are barely plausible to modestly-intelligent viewers. Give them catchy slogans. Annoint them. Have a catchy reply to everything Obama and the Right do and say. And suffer their presence, knowing they’re serving a useful purpose.
It will work.
June 4th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
I dont think there is a left wing bias in the media. But to the extent that there is, that’s a GOOD thing. We need more of that.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
There isn’t room in the Wilderness for conservatives what with all these progressives residing there.
When it comes to power, influence, and controlling-debate, the conservatives are in a superior position to that of progressives and that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon
June 4th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
You can’t allow for a Centrist position on television or radio news. There’s no financial benefit that can support such a business model. Hear me out.
Compare “political news” to Professional Wrestling. Viewers have been conditioned to watch and like an idiotic freakshow of stock characters and shallow drama, and we call it professional wrestling. Viewers have also been conditioned to watch political pundits — screaming stock characters engaging in fake drama — and we call in news. TV is made for this sort of entertainment.
Now put into the ring the stock tough-guy character “RNC-Man” — Rush, Newt, Cheney-Man. RNC-Man is groomed for TV showing, and the rabid fans love him or hate him. Heck, audience members themselves are fighting about RNC-Man!
Now put into that same ring the highly intelligent and attractive “President Obama!”….and he doesn’t stand a chance against the maniac clowns sharing the televised arena. He’s tossed from the ring and defeated within seconds. The political news business has no tolerance for it.
It’s much like putting the recent Olympic Gold Medalist in wrestling into an arean with The Undertaker. Olympic Guy is scorned, beat, and rediculed into oblivion. No one in audience cares about him, if they even notice him. That’s your television and radio audience.
What the Left needs to put on television is “Superhero Dr. Progresso!” to combat these foes in made-for-TV battle! Your audience wants it, your advertisers want it, the station owners are begging for it. It’s about time we take network and cable news to the logicl spectacle that it is — no-holds barred Political Smack-Down News!
Simply groom a few left-wing nut-jobs to repeat pithy slogans, offer up the same left-wing extremist propaganda, give them a history of extremist positions, and turn them loose on the channels.
Before you know it, Barack will appear, when the stations actually show him, to be down-right Centrist and moderate, which is exactly what he is, and where he’ll keep winning elections.
This will work.
June 5th, 2009 at 3:44 am
@34 Tom Fisher: “Superhero Dr. Progresso!”
Ralph Nadar is out there.
Imagine if Ralph represented dead center on the American political spectrum. The new far Right would be Obama!
Needlessly to say, it would mean all politicians to the right of Obama, from the Blue Dogs to the existing far Right, would have been eliminated.
We would be living in the United States of Norway. How sublime!
June 5th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Ralph Nadar is not photogenic, charismatic, or given to repetitious sloganeering. So the media won’t point a camera in his face every day for assinine left-wing comments.
We really need a few favorite lefty nut-jobs on TV to comment on everything, so that the TV audience can see that Obama is truly smack in the center of America.
June 5th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
[...] about the dynamics of the American media in his column the other day (also worthwhile are Matt Yglesias’ and Ezra Klein’s responses). Despite the constant conservative clamoring about the a [...]