In Conclusion, Benghazi!
By
More on how Jeb! is trying to play the media like his brother, and apparently succeeding:
The formative experience of my political life was the 2000 presidential campaign, in which the media mercilessly persecuted Al Gore over a series of trivial exaggerations and now-forgotten pseudo-scandals while giving George W. Bush a pass on the fact that the central premises of his economic agenda were lies.
People too young to remember the campaign may wonder how Bush persuaded the country that budget-busting tax cuts for the richest Americans were the prescription the country needed. The answer is that he simply misdescribed his plan. In speeches, in televised debates, and in advertisements he represented his plan as consistent with a continued budget surplus and as primarily benefiting middle-class taxpayers.
Bush won the election and enacted hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Surpluses turned into deficits, and the promised economic boom never materialized.
None of this was surprising or unpredictable to anyone who cared to dig into the details. The problem was political reporters had found those details much less interesting than snarking about Al Gore’s wooden speaking style and complaining that his “demeanor” was disrespectful during a debate exchange in which Bush repeatedly attacked Gore with bogus math.
According to the conventions prevailing at the time, to offer a view on the merits of a policy controversy would violate the dictates of objective journalism. Harping on the fact that Bush was lying about the consequences of his tax plan was shrill and partisan. Commenting on style cues was okay, though, so the press could lean into various critiques of Gore’s outfit.
Today it’s clear that Jeb Bush is very much his brother’s successor, both in terms of a love of regressive tax cuts and in terms of a passion for making the case for them in a dishonest way. And reading mainstream political reporters characterize the Jeb tax plan as “populist” or some kind of break with conservative orthodoxy paired with endless front-page coverage of every new micro-development in the Hillary Clinton email inquiry is giving me a very uncomfortable sense of déjà vu.
[…]
Thus far this year, America’s collective journalistic manpower has spent a lot more time and energy on scrutinizing Clinton’s emails than on scrutinizing the content of Bush’s economic policy. And that’s a lucky thing for him, because what he’s put out there is an appalling edifice of flimflam based on three claims that don’t withstand cursory examination
I’m hoping the pushback will be more effective this time, but we’ve tried the “let Republicans tell massive substantive howlers while investigating meaningless trivia about a Democratic candidate” thing before, and it really didn’t work out that well.