LEHRER’S RERUN: Terrible, horrible, ungodly conduct!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2012

Part 5—What Lehrer did twelve years ago: Twelve years ago, at this very time, why was the Gore campaign so angry at Jim Lehrer?

(For background, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/9/12.)

We have no first-hand knowledge. That said, Lehrer had engaged in horrible conduct at the first two Bush-Gore debates.

If you lived in a rational world, liberals would have screamed about his conduct at the time. The events we’re about to describe would still be part of liberal lore. Many voters would have heard about this past misconduct.

But you don’t live in that kind of world. You live in a world where liberal elites just sat there and took it, for twenty long months, during Campaign 2000. (Indeed, many “liberal” elites were dishing it out. Does the name Frank Rich ring a bell?) And good lord! You live in a world where liberal hustlers were kissing Jim Lehrer’s ass even as last week’s debate approached, endorsing his brilliant non-partisan greatness, his undying status as our nation’s “master of moderation.”

They misled liberals—but built their careers! All hail our liberal elite!

Why was the Gore campaign so angry twelve years ago? We have no first-hand knowledge. But Lehrer had behaved extremely badly at the first two Bush-Gore debates.

This is what he did:

Lehrer ended the first debate in a very unfortunate way. It was time to introduce the night's final topic—the topic which would put the cap on the evening.

Lehrer turned to Candidate Bush. This is what he said:

LEHRER (10/3/00): New question.

BUSH: Yes, sir.

LEHRER: Governor Bush, are there issues of character that distinguish you from Vice President Gore?

In this way, Lehrer introduced the debate’s final segment—a segment which ran more than seven minutes. This final segment would be all about questions of Al Gore’s character.

Should Lehrer have ended the evening this way? In the end, that’s a matter of judgment. But there was no attempt to balance this question with some question about Candidate Bush—about his character; about his values; about his record in Texas.

There was no question about Bush’s proposals, which he had repetitively misstated all through this first debate.

Sorry! Extending a twenty-month war, Lehrer inquired about Gore’s character. In response, Bush rattled a list of complaints straight from the press corps play book. (The Lincoln Bedroom was mentioned.)

After Bush's heartfelt oration, Gore was given a chance to defend himself. At this point, Lehrer turned back to Candidate Bush and urged him to please say more:

LEHRER: So Governor, what are you saying when you mention the—the fund-raising scandals or the fund-raising charges that involved Vice President Gore? What are you saying that the voters should take from that that's relevant to this election?

BUSH: I think they ought to factor it in when they make their decision in the voting booth—

LEHRER: In what way?

BUSH: —who can do better job at—pardon me?

LEHRER: In what way?

BUSH: Well, I just, I— You know, I think that people need to be held responsible for dis—for the actions they take in life.

LEHRER: Yeah.

BUSH: I think that—

LEHRER: Go ahead. Excuse me.

Eventually, it was back to Gore. Washington’s master of moderation had this question for him:

LEHRER: Are you saying all of this is irrelevant, Vice President Gore, to this election?

You can watch this segment at C-Span’s site (links below). Ending the pivotal first debate, this whole discussion of Gore'sbad character lasted a bit more than seven minutes.

In our view, Lehrer showed extreme bad judgment when he ended this debate in this unbalanced way. But the Gore campaign’s angry complaints weren’t reported until after the second debate.

Eight days later, Bush and Gore debated again. As the session neared its end, Lehrer unveiled his final topic again.

Welcome to the land of déjà vu, where the guild's master dwelled:

LEHRER (10/11/00): New question.

BUSH: Yes.

LEHRER: Last question. For you, Governor. And this flows out some—flows somewhat out of the Boston debate.

You, your running mate, your campaign officials have charged that Vice President Gore exaggerates, embellishes and stretches the facts, etc. Are you— Are you, do you believe these are serious issues? This is a serious issue that the voters should use in deciding which one of you two men to vote for on November 7?

"Do you believe these are serious issues!" Go ahead! Enjoy a good laugh!

In an astonishing act of bad judgment—or in a desire to further a war—Lehrer chose to end this debate the same way he had ended the first. He lobbed a big, fat softball to Bush, asking him to discuss the idea that Candidate Gore “exaggerates, embellishes and stretches the facts.”

By this point, this had been a central theme for nineteen months in a long, ugly press corps war. On this occasion, Lehrer’s question touched off a final segment which lasted more than five minutes—a segment devoted to the idea that Candidate Gore isn’t truthful.

To grasp the absurdity of this conduct, you have to understand what happened at Bush and Gore’s first debate.

At that first debate, Gore made a few minor factual errors about a few inconsequential matters. One example: In this passage, Gore compliments Bush about the way he handled a fire emergency in Texas. A few moments earlier, Bush had mentioned the fires:

GORE (10/3/00): First, I want to compliment the governor on his response to those fires and, and floods in Texas. I, I accompanied James Lee Witt down to Texas when those fires broke out, and FEMA has been a major flagship project of our reinventing government efforts. And I agree, it works extremely well now.

As it turned out, Gore had not accompanied Witt to those fires. He had accompanied Witt to other fires, but he had accompanied Witt’s chief assistant to these particular fires.

This was an utterly trivial matter, but the pundit corps loved it dearly. They spent the next week claiming that this misstatement once again showed that Gore was a terrible liar. Lehrer was extending this theme as he lobbed this last softball to Bush.

Back to that first debate: At that debate, Candidate Bush had made a long list of major misstatements about his own major proposals. Most dramatically, he had insisted, for ten solid minutes, that his prescription drug proposal would take immediate effect for all seniors.

Quite correctly, Gore kept noting that Bush was misstating his own plan.

During this dramatic ten-minute segment, Bush essentially called Gore a liar. Before his repeated misstatements were done, Candidate Bush, seeking escape, had fallen back on this:

BUSH (10/3/00): Look, this is a man, he's got great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math! It's the scaring, trying to scare people in the voting booth.

As it turned out, Gore’s “math” about this wasn’t fuzzy at all; his numbers had been correct. As it turned out, his statements about Bush’s prescription drug plan had been accurate.

Good lord! Candidate Bush had spent ten minutes misstating his own prescription drug plan! And when Candidate Gore kept correcting his errors, he unloaded a scripted zinger, accusing him of “fuzzy math” and dropping the ultimate bomb:

Al Gore said he invented the Internet!

It was the ultimate press corps bomb. Under duress, Bush had dropped it.

Eight days later, Lehrer didn’t seem to give a flying fig about any of that. A scripted tool of insider power, he turned to Candidate Bush and asked him to talk about Gore’s factual errors! Here you see a fuller transcript as a tool of insider power helps a hopeful along:

LEHRER (10/11/00): New question.

BUSH: Yes.

LEHRER: Last question. For you, Governor. And this flows out some—flows somewhat out of the Boston debate.

You, your running mate, your campaign officials have charged that Vice President Gore exaggerates, embellishes and stretches the facts, etc. Are you— Are you, do you believe these are serious issues? This is a serious issue that the voters should use in deciding which one of you two men to vote for on November 7?

BUSH: Well, we all make mistakes. I've been known to mangle a syllable (pronounced sy-LAB-le) or two myself, you know. But—if you know what I mean. I think credibility is important. It's going important to be—for the president to be credible with Congress, important for the president to be credible with foreign nations. And yes, I think it's something that people need to consider. This is—

This isn't something new. I read a report or a memo from somebody in his 1988 campaign—I forgot the fellow's name—warning then Senator Gore to be careful about exaggerating claims. And, you know, I thought when—during his debate with Senator Bradley, saying he authored the EITC, when it didn't happen. He—I mentioned the last debate—

LEHRER: EITC?

BUSH: The earned income tax credit.

LEHRER: Right.

BUSH: Sorry.

LEHRER: That's all right.

So typical.

In fact, Gore never said he authored the EITC; that was one of the three million groaners the press corps had simply invented. And the remark he did make about the EITC—a remark about the program's extension, a remark which was perfectly accurate—had not been made at a debate with Bill Bradley.

Candidate Bush had that wrong too. The remark had been made in an interview with Time, back in November 1999.

But so what? The weekend before this second debate, Lawrence O’Donnell had revived this old groaner. Hacking away for John McLaughlin on his widely-syndicated program, O’Donnell recalled Gore’s (perfectly accurate) remark about the EITC, describing it as one of Gore’s “most ridiculous and most relevant untruths.”

Now, Bush repeated the same old groaner. The moderator let it go as he helped Bush along.

Our view? As you look at these transcripts, you are looking at unvarnished journalistic malpractice—at a deeply consequential subversion of your democracy. Was Lehrer acting in good faith? If so, his judgment was awful. For the second straight debate, Lehrer chose to end the evening with a long discussion of Gore’s bad character. The master helped Bush along with his answers, even as Bush continued to misstate basic facts about Gore.

Bush had made giant misstatements at that first debate—but by now, those giant misstatements had been disappeared. Lehrer asked Bush to discuss Gore’s lying. As he did, the liberal world sat silent, complicit, compliant.

At this point, it seems that the Gore campaign screamed. They got little help from the various hacks who were making sure that their own status wasn’t endangered.

E. J. Dionne didn’t say a word. Neither did Bob Herbert, Frank Rich. Gail Collins lazily burbled and clowned. Children! Jim Lehrer had spoken!

What did the Gore campaign say to Richard Berke, the reporter who wrote a rather fuzzy report about their complaints in the New York Times? We have no personal knowledge. But Lehrer had shown astoundingly bad judgment in these first two debates.

In our view, it was amazing when Lehrer chose to end the first debate in the way he did. When he ended the second debate the same way, the master of moderation had thoroughly jumped the shark.

Tomorrow, we’ll show you what Lehrer did in 1996, when he tried to goad Candidates Dole and Kemp into discussing Bill Clinton’s bad character. Incredibly, Lehrer discussed that conduct in last year’s peculiar book, describing the way he kept trying to get Kemp and Dole to discuss the character question.

In his weirdest passage, he even said that he wanted Kemp and Dole to discuss Gennifer Flowers! (She had been out of the news for four years.) Reviewers said nothing about this, of course. People! The master had spoken!

For today, let’s close things out with one final moment from that second Bush-Gore debate. This involves a factual error made by Lehrer himself.

By this part of the closing segment, Lehrer was scolding Gore for a minor jab his campaign had aimed at Bush in a press release. Lehrer misstated the facts in the highlighted comments. This made it look like Gore was dissembling again, provoking a laugh from the live audience:

LEHRER (10/11/00): Your campaign officials, Mr. Vice President, are now calling it's—now calling the governor a bumbler—

BUSH: Wait a minute!

LEHRER: I mean, is that— No, my point is, should this, is this—

GORE: I don't—I, I don't use language like that and I don't think that, that we should. I think that—

LEHRER: It's in your— It's in your commercial.

GORE: I understand. The, the— I haven't seen that.

BUSH: Yeah.

GORE: In my commercial?

LEHRER: Yeah. Yeah.

GORE: Well, the—

BUSH: You haven't seen the commercial?

“You haven't seen the commercial?” Bush said, mocking Gore and piling on as the audience laughed.

In fact, there was no such commercial; this fact explained Gore’s confusion. In this case, Lehrer had made a factual error—and his error had provoked a laugh at one of the hopefuls’ expense. (Tomorrow, we'll review the way Lehrer corrected himself at the start of the third debate.)

A few days after this second debate, Richard Berke's report appeared in the New York Times. Describing the anger within the Gore camp, he mentioned this factual error by Lehrer. But he didn’t mention the larger problem—the fact that Lehrer had ended each of the first two debates with extended discussions of Gore’s bad character.

Reading Berke’s rather murky report as a Kremlinologist must, we’ll guess that he may have chosen to fudge the larger complaint. Darlings! This was Jim Lehrer!

Back to Lehrer’s remarkable conduct:

As Lehrer structured these debates this way, the liberal world sat silent. E. J. Dionne could have spoken, of course. But what about E. J.’s career?

Twelve years later, two rising “liberal” TV stars praised Lehrer’s brilliance in Politico. They lined the pockets of their careers—and extended an insider scam.

This is how George Bush reached the White House. But children! If it’s Alex, Melissa, Chris, Rachel you watch, you will never be told.

Tomorrow: The master goads Kemp and Dole. Also: 2004!

Suggested viewing: Thanks to C-Span, you can watch the Bush-Gore debates on-line.

To watch the first debate, click this. For the second debate, click here.

The segments we discussed today come at the end of these debates. In the first debate, the ten-minute discussion of Bush’s prescription drug plan starts at minute ten.

If you watch that remarkable ten-minute chunk, try to remember this: This is the debate at which Candidate Gore was allegedly so rude and disrespectful. Question: How much “loud sighing” do you hear as you watch this ten-minute exchange?

One more question: Without the deceptions of the “press corps,” would it even cross your mind that any such thing had occurred?

The nature of bloated health care spending!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2012

David Brooks socks docs: In this morning’s New York Times, David Brooks voices approval of the Romney/Ryan Medicare plan.

The Romney/Ryan Medicare plan is one of the many proposals which have played almost no role in the press coverage of this campaign. Basically, we don’t really have press coverage of White House campaigns any more.

We have columns about dogs and reports about polls. After that, our journalists pray for gaffes.

That said, Kevin Drum bats Brooks’ presentation aside in this instant post. His headline is this: “The Conspiracy of Silence About Mitt Romney's Medicare Plan.”

Truth to tell, you could pretty much write that headline about every proposal, policy area or substantive topic in this election. When it comes to the press corps’ role in this campaign, your headline would likely be right.

(Within recent memory, this isn’t the way our White House campaigns have been covered.)

For ourselves, we don’t understand the Medicare proposal well enough to evaluate what Drum says. We’ll assume that Drum is right. For ourselves, we were struck by a paragraph Brooks casually tosses aside.

This strikes us as a remarkable portrait. Brooks doesn’t bat an eye:

BROOKS (10/9/12): The history of Medicare is strewed with efforts to control costs by controlling prices. The results are terrible. Providers just increase the number of services, redefine the classification of services or find other ways to get their money back. A study by the Congressional Budget Office found that, between 1997 and 2005, Medicare payments for individual treatments fell by 5 percent, but the total spent on these services skyrocketed by 35 percent. Doctors made up in volume what they lost in reimbursement levels.

Forget about the best way to control future Medicare costs. Just think about the practices Brooks describes in that passage.

Basically, isn’t Brooks describing a scam? In the picture he paints, “providers” know how much money they want to obtain. In order to obtain that amount of money, they find ways to provide a series of “services,” apparently whether the services in question are needed or not.

This country spends two to three times as much, per person, on health care as other developed countries. We assume that Brooks is describing the process by which “providers” bring that massive amount of spending into the world.

As he performs this service, Brooks doesn’t bat an eye. “Nothing to look at,” he seems to say. He doesn’t show the slightest sign of thinking he’s limning a scam.

We don’t mean this as a criticism of Brooks. He is arguing a different point—poorly, if Drum is right. But massive amounts of over-spending virtually define American health care.

Doesn’t that passage define a scam—a scam which creates this level of looting? If Gordon Gekko were a provider, wouldn't he provide his health care services in precisely this way?

Tax talk: The New York Times' broken culture!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2012

Saturday Night, Monday morning: Last Wednesday night, one major policy point popped from that first debate.

We refer to Romney’s tax proposal, a murky proposal the mainstream press corps has chosen to duck for months.

In August, the Tax Policy Center did a major report on the Romney proposal. As we noted at the time, the Washington Post and the New York Times treated this report like a minor distraction.

Last Wednesday evening, the tax plan popped, trailing a massive amount of confusion. The mass confusion has continued in subsequent pundit discussions.

But so what? As best we can tell from our searches, the New York Times still hasn’t done a full report on the Romney tax plan—on the basic question of what Romney is proposing.

By way of contrast, what was featured on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times? This agonized, minutely-detailed report about the creation of the skits on last weekend’s Saturday Night Live.

On page one, the report spread-eagled across four columns, advertised by a color photograph featuring Big Bird. Inside the paper, the report ate the entire top half of A16, swollen by three more photos.

All by itself, the silly, sycophantic report by Bill Carter ran more than 1300 words.

The New York Times still hasn’t told readers what Romney has proposed on taxes. But the Times does want its readers exposed to consummate nonsense like this:

CARTER (10/8/12): But the debate itself turned out to be a challenge. There were no big gaffes or obvious springboards for comedy. Instead, the first debate of this election offered up a blizzard of policy details and a lackluster performance from President Obama.

At home Wednesday night, Seth Meyers, one of the show's head writers, watched with increasing concern.

''It's boring enough when they're talking about all this and how it will affect Americans, but when you're sitting there trying to pull comedy out of it, it's really bad,'' Mr. Meyers said. ''There were people on Twitter saying: 'You must be really happy, there's so much in this debate. This is writing itself.' I was like: what debate are you watching?''

The job of turning the debate into comedy gold fell to Jim Downey, the longtime ''SNL'' writer who has created the show's debate parodies since the 1970s. This one, he said, was the hardest he had ever dealt with.

Let’s be clear. It isn’t Jim Downey’s fault that the Times composed this consummate nonsense, featuring it on the paper’s front page.

But Carter treated the invention of those skits in the same way other newspapers treated the killing of bin Laden. In his puerile, ass-kissing tick-tock, we stay with Downey as he fights the pressure involved in creating his deathless skits.

As the pressure grows, so does our concern! Will the operation come together in time? Meanwhile, readers of this empty pseudo-newspaper still don’t know what Romney has proposed for our federal taxes.

Do you understand what Romney has proposed? Over the weekend, we began to realize that we ourselves do not! The Washington Post has been saying one thing—and the New York Times, in its fleeting references, has been saying something different.

Tomorrow, we’ll review the clash in what the two newspapers have said. In the meantime, the Times wants you to know about the pressure on Downey last week. (And no, it isn't Downey's fault that the Times created this nonsense.)

Go ahead—make yourself read that whole report! No modern nation can hope to survive with journalistic “elites” of this type.

Dare to struggle, dare to win: Back in April 2003, we had a multiple brush with greatness.

We took part in a “Symposium on Political Humor” at the University of Virginia. Larry Sabato was our host—and Downey was one of our fellow panelists. The discussion aired on C-Span!

At one point, Downey played SNL’s skit on the first Bush-Gore debate, citing it as one of his greatest productions. In yesterday’s report, Carter was still kissing Downey’s ass about that famous skit.

Our evaluation was different.

We’ve never watched this panel ourselves. If you want to do so, just click here. Downey was a very good sport this evening—and we genuinely mean that. That said, his famous skit from October 2000 was—let’s be frank for once—standardized, scripted junk.

For once, somebody spoke back to power that night! As we skillfully said a bit later that evening, the college kids finally got to see a real debate!

In yesterday’s front-page report, Bill Carter kissed all the mandated asses. Increasingly, that’s what our upper-end “press corps” is for.

But by the way: What has Romney proposed on taxes? As best we can tell, the New York Times still hasn’t managed to do that report.

More on that question tomorrow. Just a guess: You may not be sure.

LEHRER’S RERUN: Last week wasn’t Lehrer’s first run!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2012

Part 4—Harshly, murkily criticized: Did Jim Lehrer do a horrible job moderating last week’s debate?

That is a matter of judgment. In a rational world, a skilled moderator might have clarified the discussion of Mitt Romney’s murky tax proposal, the policy issue which popped at this debate.

You don’t live in any such world. And Lehrer may have been following orders, a point we’ll discuss at the end of the week.

At any rate, Lehrer was widely criticized for his passivity at last week’s debate, and for his fatuous questions. Needless to say, sycophants came out of the woodwork to defend this greatest made man.

But just for the record, this isn’t the first time Lehrer has been harshly criticized for his work in presidential debates. The same thing happened in October 2000, after the first two Bush-Gore debates.

In our opinion, Lehrer misbehaved extremely badly during those crucial debates. For the most part, we’ll leave that discussion to tomorrow. For today, it might be instructive to see what was said after the second debate.

Forget the fawning you may have seen in the build-up to last week’s debate! Back in 2000, the criticism of Lehrer was so harsh that it forced the New York Times to write a news report about it.

On the down side, Richard Berke’s news report was rather murky at several key points. To a Kremlinologist, it may have had a slight Pravda feel.

Even from this point in time, one gets the impression that Berke may have been less than explicit about some of the criticisms he was hearing. At any rate, he started his report as follows. Given reactions to last week’s debate, this may sound very familiar:

BERKE (10/17/00): On the eve of the third and final presidential debate, questions have emerged not only about the performance of the candidates but also about the man in the middle: the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS.

Mr. Lehrer has been a target of intensifying criticism from partisans and analysts who complain that he did not sufficiently probe the candidates in the first two debates and was not particularly aggressive in following up his questions. The result, these critics say, is that the nominees were let off the hook on vital matters and the debates meandered to the point where they verged on being downright tedious.

In a telephone interview today from St. Louis, where the final debate will take place on Tuesday night, Mr. Lehrer said his critics were missing the point. His role, he said, is to foster give-and-take, and not become a star attraction.

"If somebody wants to be entertained, they ought to go to the circus," Mr. Lehrer said. "They ought to go to the movies. Or they ought to go to the ballgame. I didn't sign on to entertain people for 90 minutes three times. These have been tremendous exercises for democracy.”

In the wake of last week’s debate, these criticisms may sound familiar. The same is true of Lehrer’s reaction, in which he displayed the very thin skin he discussed, and displayed, in last year’s peculiar book (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/8/12).

In the passage we have posted, Berke says Lehrer was being criticized as insufficiently probing. As Berke continued, a very harsh criticism was quoted.

At one point, a Kremlinologist might try to discern what Berke was talking about:

BERKE (continuing directly): Still, many prominent Democrats and Republicans said Mr. Lehrer, anchor of "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," had set the wrong tone in pivotal encounters that could affect who is elected president.

"If you had a moderator who was trying to accentuate the differences, that would have been a fabulous debate," said Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, who blamed Mr. Lehrer for not pressing the candidates, especially Gov. George W. Bush, on the issues in the debate last week. "You could have picked 10 people off the street who didn't know Jerusalem from Georgia," Mr. Kerrey said, "and they would have had better questions.”

That second statement by Kerrey was extremely unflattering. So too with a quoted remark by Patrick Caddell. (“He is running the debates as though they were some kind of sherry hour at the institute of politics at Harvard. He refuses to press the candidates as the interlocutor on important issues.”)

But Kerrey’s first statement was murky. What did Kerrey mean when he said the debate would have been better had Lehrer “tried to accentuate the differences” between Bush and Gore?

He may have said and meant this:

Especially in the first debate, Lehrer seemed to stress the ways the candidates allegedly agreed on the day’s major issues. To a Democrat, this would have seemed to reinforce a basic pitch of the Bush campaign: the idea that Bush was “a different kind of Republican,” that he didn’t differ that much, on policy grounds, from the popular policies of Clinton and Gore.

One basic pitch of the Bush campaign went like this: On policy grounds, on basic instincts, we’re not that different from Clinton and Gore! So you can safely vote for us as a way of punishing Clinton and Gore for the moral turpitude they displayed when Bill Clinton got those ten blow jobs.

We’ll guess that Kerrey may have said something like that—and that Berke may have decided to fudge and smudge things just a bit. A bit more fudging may have occurred when Berke cited the anger within Gore's campaign—after letting a couple of sycophants fawn to Lehrer, of course:

BERKE: Mr. Lehrer has become such a fixture in presidential debates—he has been a moderator at the forums since 1988—that Peter Jennings, the ABC anchor, said in an interview that "Jim is the moderator for life."

And he has his share of admirers. Juan Williams of National Public Radio said in a television interview after the first debate, "You want someone that fairly disappears and allows the two candidates to emerge as personalities."

Gore supporters, on the other hand, have been especially vociferous in their criticism. Among their complaints is that in the second debate Mr. Lehrer said, incorrectly, that there were Gore commercials depicting Mr. Bush as a bungler. They also noted that in several of the exchanges at the end of the debate Mr. Lehrer allowed Mr. Bush to get the last word.

Some Gore campaign advisers said they now regretted that they prevailed when, in pre-debate negotiations with the Bush organization, they pressed for Mr. Lehrer as the moderator. Bush campaign officials had proposed Tim Russert of NBC, according to people involved in the talks, although at one stage they suggested Larry King of CNN and perhaps Mr. Lehrer for one debate each. In the end, Mr. Lehrer got all three, and Bernard Shaw moderated the vice-presidential debate.

What a shock! According to Berke, the Bush campaign had wanted Tim Russert, one of Jack Welch’s Lost Boys, as a moderator! For reasons which should be perfectly obvious, the Gore campaign had said no, Berke seemed to suggest.

At any rate, why was the Gore camp so angry at Lehrer? Once again, a Kremlinologist might feel the need to read between the lines.

In this passage, Berke mentioned a minor factual error Lehrer made at the end of the second debate—a factual error which made Gore look foolish, causing the studio audience to laugh at his apparent lack of candor.

Was that the problem which had Gore folks so angry? Berke failed to mention the truly horrible decision Lehrer made in these debates—his decision to end each of these debates with a full-blown discussion of Gore’s alleged character problems.

In our own view, it was astounding when Lehrer chose to end the first debate that way. He lobbed a big fat softball to Candidate Bush, letting him discuss the bad character of his troubling opponent. When Lehrer did the same thing at the end of the second debate, his decision-making was worse than astounding.

Again, he invited Bush to end the evening with a long rumination on Gore’s alleged moral failures.

Writing as a Kremlinologist, we'll assume that this remarkable conduct is what Berke meant when he said that Gore supporters “noted that in several of the exchanges at the end of the debate Mr. Lehrer allowed Mr. Bush to get the last word.” As a Kremlinologist, we will guess that that was Berke’s way of pretending to cite the Gore complaint without letting readers puzzle about what Lehrer had actually done.

Those are speculations, but they do unpack some of the puzzles lurking in Berke's rather murky report. Tomorrow, we’ll look at the closing segments of those crucial debates.

In our opinion, Lehrer showed astounding bad judgment in closing those debates as he did. (We’re being kind in seeing this a matter of judgment, as opposed to a matter of partisanship.) But in last year’s book, Lehrer notes that he did something very similar in the 1996 debates, when he tried to goad Candidate Dole, then Candidate Kemp, into discussing Clinton’s character problems at two separate debates.

In Lehrer’s book, a remarkable fact becomes clear. Despite the “courtly manner” to which Berke referred; despite the fact that Lehrer wasn’t an East Coast Irish Catholic, the group which produced the press corps' truly virulent Clinton-Gore haters; despite the fact that he wasn’t working for Jack Welch: despite these factors, it seems that Lehrer was one of the insider press corps’ leading Clinton-Gore haters.

It seems that he'd totally purchased the package: Clinton and Gore will do and say anything! In 1996, he tried to goad both Dole and Kemp into discussing this terrible problem. Four years later, he tossed big softballs to Candidate Bush at the end of each of the first two debates, giving him a very large stage on which to trash Gore’s character.

In our view, this was disgraceful bad judgment by Lehrer—and we’re being generous. Details tomorrow.

Writing as a Kremlinologist, we’ll assume that these may be the actual criticisms Berke had heard—that he simply didn’t want to describe them clearly in his report. It’s hard to believe that Gore supporters were in a fury over the embarrassing, but fairly small, factual error Berke managed to cite. We’ll guess that Berke was fudging the horrible judgment by Lehrer which we’ll discuss tomorrow.

One last point:

In last year’s extremely strange book, Lehrer discusses Berke’s report. In the process, he again displays his extremely thin skin and his fondness for rearranged facts.

Poor Lehrer! In his book, he says he “spent a full day in real hell” as a result of Berke’s softened soap. He says he spent “too much [time], in retrospect, dealing with it in the days before [the final debate], counseling with NewsHour folks, talking to the reporter, anguishing with Kate [his wife] and with our daughter Janie.”

Poor Lehrer! He was in Gethsemane again! He was in mortal agony there! Along with his wife and his daughter!

In his book, Lehrer exacts cheap, dishonest revenge on all parties involved in this matter (text below). He slimes both Kerrey and Berke, and blames the whole thing on Gore’s campaign—all while failing to tell his readers what he himself actually did.

Lehrer’s ass has been kissed for decades now. When we treat pubic figures that way, we end up with public figures with extremely thin skin—public figures who may not be especially honest about their own past conduct.

Tomorrow, we will review Lehrer’s conduct at those history-changing 2000 debates. As we do, remember this fact:

Two weeks ago, a pair of pseudo-liberal climbers were kissing Lehrer’s ass in that fawning profile in Politico. We hope the money is spending real good for Alex Wagner and the professor, because the wages of their careerism is the cluelessness of the liberals whom they agreed to mislead when they praised the wonderful Lehrer, who was the cat's meow, the perfect man for our debates.

Tomorrow: What Lehrer did and said—in 1996 and 2000!

The wages of sainthood: In a very strange book by a rather strange man, Lehrer exacts payback on everyone who criticized him in October 2000—even on some who did not! We have no idea how to explain the highlighted part of this passage:

LEHRER (page 103): After the Times story ran, Kerrey left a recorded message on my home phone in Washington, apologizing for what he said, claiming he didn’t really mean it and spoke only because “Rick Berke called me and said he needed ‘a hot quote knocking Lehrer’ for his story.”

I don’t know the truth of Kerrey’s claim because I have never taken the time to run it down. But I have no doubt that the same Gore campaign operatives who successfully pushed Berke to do the story also suggested Kerrey be interviewed.

There were other critics of those 2000 debates. National newspaper columnists as varied politically as Bob Herbert and William Safire of the New York Times and Richard Cohen of the Washington Post also took pokes at me. The cheapest of the shots was a one-liner in Time magazine, made cheaper because it was anonymously fired.

Note the way this journalist functions. Eleven years later, he still hasn’t "taken the time" to run down the truth of the claim he attributes to Kerrey. But so what! Lehrer proceeds to tell us what happened, saying he has “no doubt” about the machinations which produced Berke’s (rather mild) report.

Above, we've offered informed speculations about Berke's report. Lehrer has no doubts!

Meanwhile, we’re completely puzzled by that highlighted passage. We’ve reviewed the columns by Herbert, Safire and Cohen in October 2000. All three mentioned Lehrer in passing, but none of them criticized his performance—at least, not as mortals understand the term.

Cohen may have implied a very mild criticism of "the moderator" at one point, skipping Lehrer's sacred name. We can find nothing resembling a criticism in the columns of Safire and Herbert. That said, they did mention Lehrer’s name—and they failed to kiss his ass when they did.

To this very thin-skinned man, that may count as criticism, even eleven years later. This is the press corps we create when climbers insist on kissing the ass of their guild's flawed gods.

Does our discourse run on information at all?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2012

Robert Gibbs asks a good question: Yesterday, on Meet the Press, Robert Gibbs quoted Mitt Romney.

After that, he posed a question to Newt Gingrich. In our view, Gibbs asked a good question:

GIBBS (10/7/12): Let me just say this. Standing on the stage with you in Arizona, this is what Mitt Romney said. “Number one, I said today we're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country, by 20 percent, including the top one percent.”

Mr. Speaker, you mentioned that your opponent, Mitt Romney, had a problem with being dishonest in the primary. My question is, was he dishonest when he said that?

Gibbs was quoting Romney from the February 25 GOP debate in Arizona. Was Candidate Romney being dishonest when he made the highlighted statement?

It may be that he was! Three days earlier, Romney had unveiled a new tax proposal. He said he would reduce all income tax rates by twenty percent—and that he would eliminate loopholes to keep the plan revenue neutral.

In a brief rebuttal to Rick Santorum in that Arizona debate, he only mentioned the first part of his new proposal. Was he being dishonest?

It may be that he was! From that point on, Romney had a nice hook at his disposal. If he only mentioned the first part of his two-part tax proposal, he could give conservative voters the impression that people would get lower income tax bills under his proposal.

Of course, under terms of his full proposal, income tax bills would stay the same, due to the loopholes he eliminated! But from now on, Romney could give a pleasing impression if he conflated “taxes” with “tax rates”—and if he failed to mention the second part of the proposal.

Whatever his intention may have been, Romney gave a false impression in that fleeting remark in that one debate. On yesterday’s Meet the Press, here’s how Gingrich answered that question from Gibbs:

GIBBS (10/7/12): Standing on the stage with you in Arizona, this is what Mitt Romney said. “Number one, I said today we're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country, by 20 percent, including the top one percent.”

Mr. Speaker, you mentioned that your opponent, Mitt Romney, had a problem with being dishonest in the primary. My question is, was he dishonest when he said that?

GINGRICH: I think it’s clear he changed.

GIBBS: We don’t disagree that he changed.

But has Romney changed? In last Wednesday night’s debate, he gave a full account of the full proposal he first advanced in February. (Not eighteen months ago, as Obama twice said, incorrectly.)

In fact, Romney’s proposal hasn’t changed, although a major study has shown that it’s “mathematically impossible”—that it can’t be enacted exactly as proposed. It’s also a bit clownish to see the way Romney has framed his proposal:

He has been very specific about the carrot—the twenty percent cut in tax rates. At the same time, he has been very vague about the sticks—the deductions he would eliminate.

But uh-oh! By last Wednesday, it was Obama who was aping Romney from that Arizona debate! It was Obama who only mentioned the first part of Romney’s two-part proposal.

Last Wednesday, Obama did what Romney did in the fleeting statement quoted by Gibbs. He mentioned the part of Romney's proposal which involves cutting income tax rates. But he skipped the part about closing tax deductions to keep the plan revenue neutral:

OBAMA (10/3/12): So all of this is possible. Now, in order for us to do it, we do have to close our deficit, and one of the things I'm sure we'll be discussing tonight is, how do we deal with our tax code? And how do we make sure that we are reducing spending in a responsible way, but also, how do we have enough revenue to make those investments?

And this is where there's a difference, because Governor Romney's central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut, on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts—that's another trillion dollars—and $2 trillion in additional military spending that the military hasn't asked for. That's $8 trillion. How we pay for that, reduce the deficit, and make the investments that we need to make, without dumping those costs onto middle-class Americans, I think is one of the central questions of this campaign.

That highlighted statement isn’t exactly false. But it isn’t exactly true either.

In a better world, a skilled moderator would have helped wring clarity out of this murky discussion. We don’t live in a world like that. We live in a world of Jim Lehrers.

That said, Mitt Romney’s alleged “$5 trillion tax cut” was the star proposal which emerged from Wednesday night’s debate. Here’s our question:

To this day, has any major newspaper or news org really tried to explain this proposal?

In the days leading up to Biden-Ryan, we’ll be trying to answer that question. Has anyone really explained that proposal in anything like a clear, detailed way? More broadly, does our floundering public discourse run on clear information at all?

Reviewing the front page of this morning’s New York Times, our answer is obvious: No.

For one of the most embarrassing “news reports” ever published, go ahead—just click this turkey. Meanwhile, try to find the news report explaining what Romney proposed seven months ago.

Tomorrow: What the Faith Hill has Romney proposed? The Post and the Times don’t agree!

How do you like your blue-eyed boy now!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2012

The well-hidden Jack Welch comes out: Last Friday, the unemployment rate ticked down.

Jack Welch threw a fit. In his initial remarks, then in his ludicrous TV interviews, an extremely well-hidden figure found his way into the light.

Who is Jack Welch? We’ll guess he’s the most influential figure in recent political history whose influence has never been discussed.

In effect, he’s a different version of Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch’s influence is discussed all the time. Welch’s role has always been hidden.

Who the heck is Jack Welch? For all we know, he’s the world’s nicest guy. He hails from Salem, in the Boston suburbs, our own part of the world. He grew up within our own cultural zone—the East Coast Irish Catholicism of the middle part of the last century.

(Our family moved to California in 1960. Catholic culture was very different there.)

That said, from 1981 through 2001, Welch was chairman and CEO of General Electric. During that period, GE owned NBC.

That included NBC News. And when it came to NBC News, Welch was not a hands-off owner.

We have discussed the comical, disturbing story of Welch and NBC News many times in the past dozen years. The story starts with Welch’s recruitment of Tim Russert to NBC News. By the end of the Clinton years, the story involves the comical East Coast Irish Catholic mafia Welch had assembled as the face of his news division—and the highly non-comical way they went after Clinton, then Gore, getting rich and famous as they seemed to advance Welch’s political agenda.

Because the press corps doesn't discuss the press corps, this comical, disturbing story has rarely been discussed or reported. If it weren’t for Sallie Brady’s long-lost report in the Washingtonian, we don’t think we ever would have heard about the comical, inbred relations within NBC’s news division.

As far as we know, Brady’s report can’t be read on-line. To us, this was a striking window into an undiscussed world:

BRADY (8/03): Nantucket: Big Money, Exclusive Restaurants, and Power Players in Golf Shoes

"You made it!" shouts a tanned, leggy blonde, her tennis skirt flipping in the breeze, as she hops out of an open-air Jeep that she's pulled up to the arrivals curb at Nantucket Memorial Airport.

Air kiss. Air kiss. "We're in the middle of a game!" she exults, beads of sweat on her back to prove it.

[...]

In summer, Nantucket is a remarkable re-creation of Washington politics, fundraisers, and restaurant life, confined to a 3½-by-14-mile resort island.

Tim Russert remembers the first time he visited. It “was in 1972. I had graduated from college,” Russert recalled in a Nantucket Magazine profile. “About 20 of us drove up, and we all jumped on the [Steamship Authority ferry]...and as soon as I stepped off I said, 'This is something special.’”

Russert is part of the Nantucket NBC crowd, one of the cliques that fuels the isle's social engine. It was Jack Welch, the story goes, the 20-year chairman and CEO of NBC’s parent company, General Electric, who drew network folk to Nantucket.

Russert and his wife, Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth, began summering on Nantucket in 1992. Russert has said he can go days without leaving his house except for a bike ride to get the newspapers. Then he’ll sit in his rocking chair and watch the grass blow in the breeze.

Russert does make it back for Meet the Press, the show that made him and that helped finance the Nantucket hideaway he acquired in 1999. The sprawling gray-shingled house, with rooftop sundeck and cutting garden, lies down an unmarked dirt path through a secluded forest. Hanging over the portico, a wooden sign bearing the cottage’s name says it all: SUNDAY MORNING.

Russert’s boss, NBC CEO Bob Wright, is also on the scene...Although Welch retired in 2001, he’s still a power magnet. He holds court from a massive gray-shingled home festooned with window boxes, near Sankaty Head Golf Club. It was there that Welch once played Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, only to discover that two of the richest men in the world routinely bet only $1 a round.

Welch, Wright and Russert were all part of NBC’s East Coast Irish Catholic mafia. In the summer of 2003, Chris Matthews joined the trio on the island, buying a crib for $4.3 million with the money had had gained from (apparently) doing the political bidding of Welch.

Matthews became very rich under Welch. As he did, he waged a long, bizarre, ranting war, first against President Clinton, then against Candidate Gore.

This is a comical, dangerous story of major corporate inbreeding. It is especially strange because of the aggressive, inexcusable way Jack Welch’s Lost Boys pursued that twenty-month war against Candidate Gore during Campaign 2000. That includes Brian Williams, another charter member of the East Coast Irish Catholic mafia which was assembled, and richly rewarded, during the tenure of Welch.

This is a disturbing story of comical corporate inbreeding. In any other industry, this highly amusing story would have been pursued in the press.

But this story took place within the heart of the mainstream press corps, an industry which isn't discussed by the mainstream press corps. (Murdoch’s role was on the right, and it was directed from Britain, so it could be pursued.)

Jack Welch came into the light last week. His role has been hidden all along. You aren’t encouraged or allowed to think about his peculiar history with NBC News. But if you didn’t care for the reign of George Bush, you ought to be demanding answers from your favorite liberal stars:

Why wasn’t this story pursued? And what explains the crackpot political war which was pursued, for years, by manifest hustlers like Matthews?

You should be demanding those answers. But alas! What happens on Nantucket very much seems to stay there.

NBC News was crazed under Welch. The children have agreed not to tell.

Visit our incomparable archives: For fuller treatments of this matter, see our incomparable archives, especially at the original version of this site.

“Nantucket” and “Welch” would be useful search terms. What happens there stays there, of course.

LEHRER’S RERUN: In Gethsemane, victim of smears!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2012

Part 3—While the lapdogs fawned: Did Jim Lehrer fail at last Wednesday’s debate?

In fairness, it’s hard to say. He did very little to shape the discussion. He created little clarification of major issues, even concerning the most basic claims made by Obama and Romney.

That said, he may have been following orders! Post-debate, some members of the debate commission said Lehrer was simply doing what he’d been told—that he was following the commission’s plan for this year’s new debate format.

Before the debate, the story was different. More on that point on Wednesday.

Did Lehrer fail at Wednesday’s debate? History will have to decide! That said, the great man agonized in Gethsemane as the debate approached.

Last Tuesday morning, the New York Times discussed the changing status of moderators in our presidential debates. Jeremy Peters began his report live and direct from the garden.

First, he kissed the ass of a sanctified man. Then, the sanctified man bared his soul:

PETERS (10/2/12): Playing Roles of Referee and, Increasingly, Target During Debates

When Jim Lehrer takes the stage in Denver on Wednesday night, the tens of millions of people watching will see the same imperturbable voice of reason they have come to know in his quarter century as the country's go-to referee for the presidential debates.

But Mr. Lehrer, the former anchor of ''PBS NewsHour,'' has been seething. He said he was outraged by suggestions that he was a ''safe'' and uninspired choice to moderate the first of four debates. And he is offended by reports that questioned whether this—his 12th presidential debate—might be one too many.

''It's a rough, rough world—I know that,'' Mr. Lehrer said recently, his voice rising in exasperation. ''And those of us who have decided to play in that world have to play by those rules. I'm susceptible to the same smears as anyone else.''

Has Jim Lehrer really been an “imperturbable voice of reason” during his many White House debates? We’ll examine that question tomorrow.

But no.

That said, Peters said Lehrer was “seething” as he endured his passion. In Peters’ judgment, Lehrer was outraged by the (very mild) criticism which had been coming his way.

He was “offended” by other suggestions. In Gethsemane, Lehrer writhed in the face of comments which he regarded as “smears.”

Surprise! Peters was skirting a fact which is rarely discussed—Lehrer has some of the thinnest skin of any big player in Washington. Here’s how we learned that:

Last year, Lehrer wrote a strange but revealing book about his many White House debates. The book was called Tension City.

In his book, Lehrer rather weirdly described how much he hates being criticized. He then proved that he wasn’t kidding as he discussed past debates. In particular, Lehrer indulged in a great deal of payback concerning the (rather mild) criticism he took in October 2000, when he behaved extremely badly during the pivotal Bush-Gore debates.

Until we read Tension City, we ourselves had never realized that Lehrer has Washington’s thinnest skin. He basically said so in this strange book, then proved it with his fact-challenged accounts of his conduct, and the way he was criticized, in October 2000.

More on those topics tomorrow. But as last week’s debate approached, Lehrer was writhing in the garden, offended by all the smears.

Can we talk? The fact that Lehrer can see things that way shows how pampered he is. In fact, few mortals in any other profession are fawned over as Lehrer is.

He has his ass kissed as few others do. Presumably, this helps explain the thin skin.

In what ways is Lehrer fawned over? For an example of what we mean, consider the lengthy, pre-debate profile of Lehrer which appeared in Politico. As Dylan Byers began, he sloppily kissed the ass of “the master,” employing the voices of others:

BYERS (9/29/12): Jim Lehrer: The master of moderation

For the 12th time in the history of the televised presidential debates, Lehrer, the executive editor of PBS Newshour, has been asked to serve as moderator, making him by far the most experienced such moderator in modern history—a task for which Lehrer, more than any other journalist, is uniquely suited, according to his contemporaries.

“Jim’s reputation is unassailable. He reeks integrity,” Tom Brokaw, the veteran “NBC Nightly News” anchor, told POLITICO. “He knows that his role there is to make this about the two candidates, not about him.”

“Jim is the best person for the job, the straightest guy in this profession, and absolutely trustworthy,” said Robert MacNeil, Lehrer’s longtime co-host on the “MacNeil/Lehrer Report.” “His idea of fairness is fiercer than anyone’s—he has an almost religious respect for being fair. He stays so far out of the political swamps that he doesn’t even vote.”

But at a time when the electorate is as divided as ever, and when media scrutiny is more intense than ever, his is a task that carries unprecedented responsibility. Lehrer, colleagues and campaign strategists say, must ask tough, substantive questions and yet maintain total impartiality. He must shepherd the candidates through a range of topics while allowing them to drive the debate. And he must push Obama and Romney for genuine responses without injecting himself into the conversation.

If anyone can walk that tightrope, it’s Lehrer, whose commitment to fairness, sense of modesty and professional experience—developed over more than five decades in newspaper then television journalism—have earned him the respect of political strategists across the ideological spectrum.

When it comes to figures like Lehrer, this type of fawning has long been required by mandates of Hard Pundit Law. Within the guild, everyone knows that you must say such things about the guild’s masters and deacons.

Please note: The press corps fawns about its own as it fawns about no one else. For that reason, few mortals are shielded from criticism in the way Lehrer is.

Inevitably, Brokaw, McNeil and Byers were offering a highly skewed picture of Lehrer. In fact, Lehrer’s reputation has been assailed—during Campaign 2000, for instance. But people like Brokaw must say such things, and they constantly do.

They say such things so masters like Lehrer will say such things about them! They say such things so climbers like Byers will put their comments right at the top of these fawning, faux profiles.

In the process, we the rubes get fed gross deceptions about the greatness of the guild’s saints—the Russerts, the Broders and the Lehrers. We’re told a thousand things which simply aren’t true.

In the process, the masters’ noggins swell.

Within the guild, everyone knows it—if you’re on track to be a star, you have to kiss the asses of those who were made stars before you! And sure enough! Before the Byers profile was done, a pair of pseudo-liberal climbers had also kissed Lehrer’s ass:

BYERS: For all the talent on television today, few besides Lehrer meet those qualifications. Indeed, colleagues say, moderators of Lehrer’s ilk are severely lacking in today’s media landscape, where partisanship and showmanship trump once-sacred notions of fairness and balance.

“Jim represents a version of American political journalism that is much less prominent now,” Melissa Harris-Perry, the MSNBC host and academic, told POLITICO. “I have my own viewpoints, I regularly insert and assert—as much as I love what I do, that’s insufficient for a presidential debate.”

[...]

Given all that is at stake on Oct. 3, the entire political-media industry seems secure in knowing that Lehrer will serve as moderator. Even younger generations of television journalists, who noted a lack of demographic diversity or new-media savvy among this year’s moderators, feel comforted by Lehrer’s presence.

“Speed has not particularly been of service to American political landscape: Voters get little chance to sit back, soak in and really breathe deeply as far as where these guys stand,” Alex Wagner, the 34-year-old MSNBC host, told POLITICO. “The campaign feels like a washing machine…so I like the idea that Jim, who has so much experience in politics and understands the nuances of these issues, will be moderating.”

“Jim Lehrer moderating a debate is like Dick Clark hosting New Year’s Eve,” said the 38-year-old Harris-Perry. “It just seems right.”

How sweet! Even the “younger generation of television journalists” had been willing to stand in line to join the ranks of ass-kissers! Indeed, that’s where Politico's profile ended—with a pair of pseudo-liberal climbers kissing the ass of this deeply flawed man, thus advancing their own careers.

Unfortunately, Lehrer hasn’t performed in the manner described in this long, fawning profile. In his many White House debates, it isn’t clear that he has performed like “the straightest guy in this profession.”

Beyond that, he simply hasn’t done a good job exploring “the nuances of these issues.” That is a dream from the land of kissed keisters.

Harris-Perry dreamed it.

In fairness, the self-dealing lapdogs of the left gave Byers the kinds of quotes he wanted, while actually saying very little about Lehrer’s supposed virtues. But please:

Despite that first statement from Harris-Perry, Lehrer has very much seemed to insert his viewpoint into past presidential debates. In a world which wasn’t run by climbers, a TV-star liberal would say so.

And despite that fawning statement by Wagner, Lehrer has done a horrible job in past debates when it comes to “understanding the nuances of these issues,” or even their most basic outlines.

Let’s be fair! Wagner and Harris-Perry were doing what’s right for their own careers. Tomorrow, in a search for fairness, we’ll help you understand how Lehrer has really performed in the past.

We’ll remind you about those criticisms from 2000—the smears which still seem to have Lehrer seething. Beyond that, we’ll show you Lehrer’s own description of what he did in 1996—the strange account he gave in his book about the questions he asked during that year’s debates.

Who knows! Maybe Lehrer was following orders during last Wednesday’s lackluster outing! But Lehrer’s performance was awful last week—and that should have come as no surprise. Despite the bullshit Wagner emitted, Lehrer has never done a good job defining the outlines of major issues. And despite the bullshit from Harris-Perry, Lehrer’s past performance has been extremely shaky on the matter of partisanship.

Question: Did that rising young “academic” bother to read Lehrer’s book?

Tomorrow: 1996, then 2000

Wednesday—Epilogue: Was Lehrer just following orders? Plus a list of his three million books.

In case you missed it: Last Wednesday, Paul Glastris saw some of the same things we did. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/6/12.

Paul Glastris gets modern history right!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2012

A liberal reclaiming the truth: Paul Glastris is editor in chief of the Washington Monthly. In a fleeting brush with greatness, we met him once long ago.

Update:

As he watched Wednesday night’s debate, Glastris saw some of the same things we did. In this passage, he refers to his comments about the debate for the BBC:

GLASTRIS (10/4/12): I also said that it was simply difficult to argue with an opponent who is engaging in the level of factual mendacity we saw out of Romney, and that last night reminded me of the first debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000. As you may recall, in that debate Gore pointed out time and time again that Bush was misstating his proposed budget—that his tax cuts would go disproportionately to the wealthy and that those tax cuts would dwarf what he was claiming he would spend on education, health care, and defense. In response, Bush shamelessly dissembled and said it was Gore who was peddling “fuzzy math.” There was no way for the audience to judge who was right, and they got no help from the moderator, who was—surprise surprise—Jim Lehrer, the same person who moderated last night.

Of course subsequent events proved that Gore was right on the facts. But he was widely judged the loser of that debate.

In that passage, Glastris accurately describes one of the turning points in modern political history. Liberals have refused to confront these events for the past dozen years.

Glastris is right about that first debate between Bush and Gore. (Below, we’ll offer one amplification.) In one long, remarkable segment that night, Gore kept correcting misstatements Bush was making about his own prescription drug plan.

(There were also disputes about Bush’s very large tax proposal, with Bush falsely claiming that Gore was using “phony numbers.” But the most dramatic, extended exchange concerned the prescription drug plan.)

Over and over, Gore corrected Bush during that ten-minute segment—and Gore was right on the facts! Eventually, Bush went with a scripted zinger.

This is what Bush said:

BUSH (10/3/00): Look, this is a man, he's got great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math! It's the scaring, trying to scare people in the voting booth.

At this point, Bush changed the subject. He delivered a filibuster about his tax proposal, which wasn’t the subject under discussion. When he was done, Gore returned to the subject at hand—and delivered a comical knock-out:

GORE (10/3/00): I mean, it's just— It's just clear. You can go to the [Bush] web site and look. If you make more than $25,000 a year, you don't get a penny of help under the Bush prescription drug proposal for at least four or five years.

You can just "go to the web site," Gore said, gesturing toward Bush. And as it turned out, Gore was right about the substance of this long, dramatic dispute.

Incredible! Bush had spent a solid ten minutes misstating his own drug plan! But when Gore made accurate statements about Bush’s proposal, Bush pulled out the ultimate zinger: Al Gore said he invented the Internet!

By that time, “journalists" had been repeating that zinger for nineteen months. Now, Bush employed it too, as an escape from the facts.

Gore was right—and Bush was wrong! Indeed, Candidate Bush had been comically wrong—and Gore had offered a comical note of rebuttal, saying you can simply see what it says on Bush’s own web site!

But very few voters ever learned any of that. As he continued in Thursday's post, Paul Glastris began reclaiming our modern political history.

This is how Bush reached the White House. Glastris is telling the truth:

GLASTRIS (continuing cirectly from above): One thing, however, has changed since 2000. Back then, virtually no one in the mainstream media—save Paul Krugman—called Bush out on his dishonest numbers. But today, fact-checking sites that didn’t exist in 2000 have been picking apart the veracity of both Obama’s and Romey’s debate performances, and so far giving the latter nearly all the Pinocchios. As Ed, Jonathan Bernstein and others have pointing out, the real question is whether, over the next few days, the story in the press remains Romney’s “superior” performance, or the mendacity behind that performance.

In that highlighted statement, Galstris describes one of the great journalistic frauds of this or any age.

Gore was right—and Bush was wrong. Somewhat comically, Gore said you can simply look at Bush’s web site to see that Bush was wrong.

But so what? In subsequent days, the press corps worked extremely hard to avoid telling voters that Bush had been wrong. As Glastris correctly says, "virtually no one in the mainstream media...called Bush out on his dishonest numbers."

That's a remarkable, accurate statement: The press corps buried the truth.

In real time, we were churning the information, here and at the now defunct Speakout.com web site. But the mainstream press corps, “liberals” included, worked hard to keep voters from knowing the truth about that dramatic exchange.

Glastris is right about what happened back then. Beyond that, he is right about what’s happening today.

As Glastris says, what happened to Gore in October 2000 isn’t happening to Obama. Today, many news orgs are actively discussing Romney’s several misstatements.

That’s what journalists are supposed to do, of course. But in October 2000, the fix was in. The press had been at war with Bill Clinton about his deeply disturbing blow jobs.

When Clinton escaped removal from office, they went to war with Al Gore.

It was a genuine press corps scandal—a scam, a hoax, a fraud. And from that day right up to this, the liberal world has agreed that you can't be told what happened.

Joan won’t tell you. Neither will David. They are now kissing the keister of Chris, and Chris lies right at the heart of this twenty-month press corps scam.

(Chris worked for Jack Welch at the time—and Welch was making Chris very wealthy. You’re not allowed to know these things, though David and Joan of course do.)

We’re going to tell you to do it again: Go to C-Span and watch the ten minutes to which we refer. Starting at minute ten of this tape, watch Candidate Gore correct Candidate Bush again and again and again. (The exchange goes on for ten minutes.)

Gore was right and Bush was wrong. But it’s exactly as Glastris says: “Virtually no one in the mainstream media...called Bush out on his” erroneous claims. Twelve years ago this very week, you simply weren’t allowed to know that Gore’s “fuzzy math” and “phony numbers” had actually been correct.

You weren't allowed to know that Bush was wrong when he essentially called Gore a liar.

Instead, you were encouraged to laugh about Bush’s comical insults, including his zinger about inventing the Internet. And then, the press corps assembled a tape to make you think that Gore had loudly sighed all through this pivotal evening. (They also invented several lies Gore had supposedly told. That part has been disappeared now.)

Go ahead—watch that tape! As you observe Gore’s perfect deportment, please understand: This is the debate at which you’re still being told that Gore behaved so disrespectfully! In other words, this cosmic journalistic scam is still underway—and the liberal world still accepts it.

Go ahead—watch that tape! As you do, understand what Glastris says: Candidate Gore was right on the facts in that dramatic, ten-minute exchange! But “virtually no one in the mainstream media...called Bush out on his” bogus statements! Instead, they attacked Gore for alleged sighs and alleged lies. And sure enough:

In the week which followed that first debate, Gore sank like a stone in the polls. He regained ground in subsequent weeks. But Bush ended up in the White House.

In Thursday's post, Glastris reclaimed a pivotal bit of modern political history. That said, the rest of the liberal world continues to let this dog lie.

You see, many leading figures in the “liberal world” were deeply engaged in the war against Gore. You mustn’t be told what these people did! Darlings, it just isn’t done!

We honor Journalist Glastris today for stating what happened twelve years ago. One last question:

In October 2000, Glastris was a speech-writer for President Clinton. He wasn’t a journalist then.

But what was said by the Washington Monthly when this scam was unloosed on the world? What did the Washington Monthly say about this in real time?

Glastris says only Krugman spoke up. Given what Glastris is saying today, why did the Washington Monthly keep its pretty trap shut?

We compliment Glastris for what he has said. But truly, we need a truth commission to unpack this historic scam.

Just for the record: You won’t see major liberals expound on what Glastris has written.

Sorry, rubes! The scam is still on! Gore's sighs get louder with each passing year—and "liberals" aren't going to tell you the truth about what happened that night.

Dearest darlings! Careers are at stake! Truth-telling just isn't done!

Paul Glastris told the truth in that post. None of your heroes will.

Blitzer, Burnett and the undecideds!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2012

Deeply, horrendously awful: On Wednesday night, Erin Burnett watched the presidential debate with a group of undecided voters.

How horrible is our political culture? At one point, Burnett described the moments in the debate these voters objected to most. Host Wolf Blitzer said these were “the low points in the debate for President Obama and Governor Romney.”

Standing among her undecideds, Burnett began with a statement by Obama. His statement was perfectly accurate:

BURNETT (10/3/12): Now let's get to some of the lows, Wolf. And there were a couple of moments that our focus group at least reacted very negatively to.

BLITZER: And let's take a look at some of those lows, Erin. The low points in the debate for President Obama and Governor Romney.

Let's begin with the president first. It came at 9:18 PM Eastern, when he was talking about taxes but seemed to take a dig at Governor Romney. Men and women both rejected the president's argument. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: For 18 months, he's been running on this tax plan, and now five weeks before the election he is saying that his big, bold idea is, "Never mind." And the fact is that if you are lowering the rates the way you describe, Governor, then it is not possible to come up with enough deductions and loopholes that only affect high-income individuals to avoid either raising the deficit or burdening the middle class.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right. That was the president's lowest moment, according to our focus group our in Colorado.

Hopeless. Obama’s didn’t do a sensational job explaining that complicated point. He even said a few things which were wrong or misleading.

But in the bulk of that statement, Obama was accurately stating the problem with Romney’s absurd tax proposal:

Romney says he will lower tax rates by twenty percent. At the same time, he says he’ll close so many tax loopholes that his plan will be revenue neutral.

But according to the Tax Policy Center, this proposal is mathematically impossible. There simply aren’t enough tax loopholes or tax deductions to balance off the revenue that would be lost in those rate cuts for high-income earners. To keep the proposal revenue neutral, middle-income earners would have to pay more in taxes.

The Tax Policy Center explained this matter in early August. As we noted at the time, the Washington Post and the New York Times devoted very little coverage to this seminal point.

Two weeks ago, we did a workshop for some federal managers. We were surprised to see that very few of these bright, successful federal employees were familiar with Romney’s proposal.

In all likelihood, Burnett’s undecideds had little idea what Obama was talking about. And sure enough! Neither Blitzer nor Burnett made any attempt to tell them!

Burnett’s undecideds got upset when Obama made an accurate statement. It was his lowest moment! As Blitzer continued, he and Burnett explained where Romney rubbed them wrong:

BLITZER (continuing directly): Governor Romney's low point happened about halfway through the debate at 9:43 PM Eastern, when he talked about cuts to entitlements.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMNEY: But on Medicare, for current retirees, he's cutting $716 billion from the program. Now he says by not overpaying hospitals and providers. Actually just going to them and saying, we're going to reduce the rates you get paid across the board. Everybody is going to get a lower rate. That's not just going after places where there's abuse, that's saying we're cutting the rates. Some 15 percent of hospitals and nursing homes say they won't take any more Medicare patients under that scenario.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right. Let's go back to Erin. Erin, what did you make of that?

BURNETT: All right. There was some real frustration here. When we were all talking earlier I think you all can agree, we said when they got negative, everybody said, “Oh, gosh, I hated this, I hated that?” Fair description? OK. Fair description!

Let me just ask Chris (INAUDIBLE) here. You were frustrated when we just heard Romney talking about the $716 billion. That got to you.

WOMAN NAMED CHRIS: It got to me because it was like that was the only figure he continually threw out. And it was like, for me, as someone who—I have a small business, and I don't have health insurance anymore because I just turned 26, so luckily I was able to be on my parents' insurance for so long. Yet you're throwing out this figure of this number that's going to affect me at some point, but you're saying it only—you know, because you have a number to give from President Obama as opposed to I really don't have a figure to get from you because you've been working on state level and not federal.

BURNETT: So it's frustration there.

The undecideds got upset when Romney kept making that claim about the $716 billion. It was his lowest moment.

Full disclosure: We semi-agree! For us, that repetitive claim by Romney was the lowest point of the evening by far. But we were disgusted with Obama, who just sat there, head hung low, while Romney kept repeating this statement.

Romney’s dollar figure is accurate, of course, but Obama refused to explain the obvious. To wit:

There is a lot of excess spending within the Medicare program—within our whole medical system. It’s the job of any president to wring that excess spending out of the system.

Paul Ryan’s recent budgets have included these same adjustments in Medicare spending. In theory, these adjustments eliminate over-payments to health care providers without reducing services to Medicare recipients.

We were disgusted when Obama kept hanging his head and refusing to state these basic points. But according to Burnett, these undecideds got “frustrated” because of the “negativity” here.

Translation: If Obama had explained those points, they might have been more upset!

At any rate, Burnett and Blitzer made no attempt to explain the facts behind Romney’s repeated claim. Then, as Burnett continued, we hit the lowest point of this truly horrible segment.

Burnett invited another voter to criticize Obama. Then, she explained what these undecided voters really want:

BURNETT (continuing directly): And I also wanted to come over here quickly to Carroll Ward. You're a teacher. And there you—take a hold of that. You were frustrated when Barack Obama was attacking Mitt Romney there.

WARD: Yes, I was frustrated because the president just really didn't seem to listen to Romney when he was giving his plan, and he just kept sticking on that $5 trillion and the $2 trillion, and not listening is one of the biggest things that is a problem in this debate and in this election.

BURNETT: One final thing I wanted to just make a point here, Wolf, that everyone here felt. How many of you felt—I'll just walk out here, felt that you wished you got even more information from these candidates, that they didn't fully answer the questions? I mean everybody.

And that's something that stood out here. And people were saying afterward they wanted more information from the candidates. So I think that's something that stands out.

Burnett is one of the genuine flyweights of the millionaire press corps. But even for her, these final exchanges are simply gruesome. As she closed, she stressed the idea that these voters wanted more information about these issues. But she and Blitzer made no attempt to provide any info at all!

You can scan CNN’s coverage for yourself to see if the channel ever made any attempt to provide that information. But in this segment with Burnett, we see the horrible underside of the interaction between American voters and flyweight pseudo-journalists:

Many voters are under-informed about the statements the candidates make. Inevitably, this is part of the way the world works.

Voters go to work every day. Inevitably, they will need assistance from journalists to become better informed. In theory, news organizations exist to help these voters understand these issues better.

But our pseudo-journalists make a fetish of keeping these voters barefoot and clueless. Burnett and Blitzer were terribly horrible in this woeful but typical segment.

How does modern "journalism" work? Blitzer and Burnett showed us this night:

Obama made an accurate statement. It was his lowest moment!

What Mitt Romney did on his Labor Day weekend!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012

From the land of the snark and the snide: We’ve been re-watching Wednesday night’s debate.

Obama is doing better this time. It’s amazing how much expectations affect what a person sees.

That said, most people who watched the Wednesday night fight thought Romney walked off with the prize. He seemed brisker, more aggressive, more focused.

It seemed he might have prepared himself a bit more thoroughly. That possibility made us recall the snark and the snide we had seen on some cable TV shows.

It was Monday evening, September 3—Labor Day itself! The GOP had held its convention the previous week. The Dems were about to begin.

On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was snarking about the way Romney was spending his weekend. She posed as the world’s leading authority, as she so frequently does.

How was Romney spending his Labor Day weekend? Badly, Rachel Maddow said. He ought to be touring the country with Ryan, the world’s leading expert informed us:

MADDOW (9/3/12): Today, in this past weekend, there`s sort of a weird interregnum, over the holiday weekend but between the two conventions. Republicans just had their 72-hour infomercial for Mitt Romney and for the Republican Party.

In this interregnum, and maybe through the Democrats’ three days this upcoming week, the Republicans are supposed to be capitalizing on what they did last week. They’re supposed to be capitalizing on the momentum they built with their 72-hour infomercial. This is the part where you’re supposed to be campaigning at warp speed.

In 1992, after the Clinton/Gore convention, these guys [Clinton and Gore] did a 1,000-mile bus tour right after their convention.

In 2000, after the Republican convention, George Bush and Dick Cheney left straight from their convention to Ohio and Michigan and Illinois to tour it by train.

In 2004, John Kerry and John Edwards did the same sort of cross- country tour through Pennsylvania and West Virginia and Ohio and beyond.

In 2008, Barack Obama and Joe Biden went straight from their convention to Michigan and to Pennsylvania and to Ohio by bus.

You’re supposed to go out there and make it stick, right? It is post-convention momentum time.

Romney was supposed to be taking a tour, the way those other candidates did. But Romney wasn’t doing any such thing!

Rachel continued to snark about Romney’s strange inaction. Just listen to what he had done:

MADDOW (continuing directly): Mitt Romney today is not on a bus tour, or a train tour, or any kind of tour. When you get to be the presidential nominee of your party, you have what’s called a press pool that follows you around at all times. It’s basically a small pool of reporters who track your every movement all day long 24 hours a day and then they distribute that information to the rest of the press.

Well, today, the Mitt Romney press pool was informed at 10 AM that Mr. Romney was down for the day. That he had no events scheduled. The press was essentially told to stand down, Romney watch is over for the day, nothing to see here. You can leave, you got nothing to cover. That was at about 10 AM.

Then, an hour and a half later, this almost never happens, the press was called back into action. After being told that he was down for the day, they were informed an hour and a half later that Mr. Romney actually was going to be on the move. So the press pool immediately had to snap into action in order to cover this event.

(Videotape of Romney in boat)

Mr. Romney taking his boat out for a spin, on a lake. Instead of a cross-country whistle-stop tour, Mr. Romney spent the day boating, and also jet skiing with his family in a lake in New Hampshire.

They reopened the press pool for that, after closing it for the day earlier. Mr. Romney had no campaign events yesterday. He had no campaign events today, unless something is happening on this boat, and he had no public events scheduled for the rest of the entire week.

You know, that’s their call. They can do whatever they want to do. They can put Clint Eastwood on network primetime coverage instead of the candidate intro video, do what you want, it’s your campaign. But it’s not like they have it in the bag here and they can be this relaxed.

Rachel agreed that the Romney campaign could do whatever they pleased. But she was sure it was wrong.

Rachel Maddow snarked at length about the way Romney was wasting his weekend. But then, the rubber hit the road.

We learned what Romney was doing:

MADDOW: I mean, the news isn’t all totally bleak. There do seem to be little upticks in Mr. Romney's favorability numbers and his numbers among Latinos, very small upticks. We'll be talking about those a little bit later on. But basically, the Republican convention appears to have a negligible political impact and by the broadest measures, it appears to have no impact at all.

And now the Romney campaign is responding to that by doing absolutely nothing to try to improve on that! I know they won’t take advice on me on how to campaign, but it’s a little weird.

Their story is that Mr. Romney is too busy to do events this week because he`s doing debate prep for next month. But dude, there he is on a boat! Maybe Rob Portman is hidden on the boat prepping him and we can't see him because the boat is going too fast or something.

Is Rob Portman in the glove box? Do boats have glove boxes? I have no idea.

On the other side, the Obama/Biden ticket is not taking time off. Vice President Biden was in Michigan today. He addressed the AFL-CIO. President Obama again was in Toledo talking to autoworkers.

Posing as the world’s leading authority, Maddow told us how stupid it was that Romney was prepping for the debates! Is there any chance that this expert was wrong in her snark-laden assessment?

Maddow often poses as the world’s foremost authority. After Romney whipped somebody’s keister this week, we found our thoughts drifting back to this snark-laden expert report.

More recent snark from Mouseketeers Lawrence and Krystal: By late September, the boys and girls were eager for the debates to begin.

Last Thursday, Lawrence and Krystal were snarking about the approaching carnage. Disaster was still six days off:

O’DONNELL (9/27/12): [Republicans] are, of course, desperately trying to lower expectations for Mitt Romney in the debate to the point where if he can just stay standing for the 90 minutes, it will be considered a victory. Team Romney says, "It’s clear that President Obama will use his ample rhetorical gifts and debating experience to one end attacking Mitt Romney. Since he won’t and can`t talk about his record, he’ll talk about Mitt Romney. We fully expect a 90- minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent."

Krystal Ball, the president will not be allowed to speak for the full 90 minutes of the debate, I don’t think. Surely, Jim Lehrer will get something in there too. So I think the most we could possibly expect is maybe a 30-minute attack ad on Mitt Romney?

BALL: Although you never know. You know, the Romney camp, given how ineffectual he has been at talking at all, maybe they should put that in the rules that President Obama can just opine for 90 minutes instead of Mitt Romney having to say anything.

On The One True Pseudo-Liberal Channel, you frequently get the snark and the snide. In the aftermath of Wednesday’s defeat, our mind wandered back to the snark and the snide about Mitt Romney’s foolish debate prep.

In fairness, Obama is doing better this time as we watch the debate on tape.

E.J. Dionne and the change in the times!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012

The template for last night’s confusion: Until a few moments ago, we hadn’t seen this column by E. J. Dionne.

It appeared in yesterday’s Washington Post—in the late editions.

Dionne’s piece was written on the fly after Wednesday night’s debate. It’s grossly misleading regarding its substance—but it does show the change in the times.

Dionne was reacting to Romney’s statements at the debate about his tax cut proposal. Here’s how the column starts:

DIONNE (10/4/12): The strangest aspect of Wednesday night’s debate was Mitt Romney’s decision to change his tax policies on the fly. Having campaigned hard on a tax proposal that called for $5 trillion in tax cuts, he said flatly that he was not offering a $5 trillion tax cut.

“I don’t have a tax cut of the scale that you’re talking about,” Romney said— even though that is exactly the tax cut he has proposed.

Was Romney for his tax plan before he was against it?

We’re sorry, but that’s pure sophistry—and it's hard to believe Dionne doesn't know it.
That said, all the children were repeating this line on pseudo-lib cable last night.

Question:

Did Romney ever “call for $5 trillion in tax cuts?” Did Romney ever “offer a $5 trillion tax cut?” If you’re a pure sophist, yes—he did. In the proposal he unveiled in February, Romney proposed lowering all income tax rates by 20 percent.

That single action, on its own, would reduce federal revenues by roughly $5 trillion over the next ten years. But Romney didn’t propose that single action on its own.

Surely, Dionne understands that fact. Why won’t he share it with others?

When Romney proposed that cut in income tax rates, he also said that he would eliminate tax deductions to balance off the revenue loss. His proposal would be revenue neutral, he said.

In August, the Tax Policy Center reported that there simply aren’t enough deductions to balance the $5 trillion Romney would lose from that cut in tax rates. But Dionne is citing one part of what Romney proposed, while deep-sixing the other.

If Obama or Jim Lehrer had been prepared to function on Wednesday, someone might have asked the obvious question: What does Romney propose to do if he isn’t able to balance the revenue lost by that cut in tax rates?

No one asked, but on his own, Romney restated two basic principles he has stated since February:

He won't enact a tax proposal which costs the treasury money. He won't enact a tax proposal which lowers the share of taxes the wealthy are required to pay.

Or so he said.

Romney's proposal strikes us as foolish. Beyond that, as originally stated, his proposal doesn't seem to add up.

That said, Dionne’s account is stunningly misleading. We’d call that a sign of the times.

Back in the day, during Campaign 2000, E. J. Dionne kept his pretty trap shut about what his colleagues were doing.

He understood what his colleagues were doing in their shameless war against Gore. That much was clear from sidelong remarks in a few of his columns, and from the fact that Dionne is smart. But E. J. Dionne never tattled.

By now, times have changed. By now, a pseudo-liberal world has emerged. As an official MSNBC contributor, Dionne is part of the fun. And sure enough!

Dionne is still avoiding the truth. But back then, he avoided the truth is a way which massacred Candidate Gore. Today, he misstates the truth in a way designed to help Candidate Obama!

That column was stunningly misleading. Last night, it formed the template ac the children floundered and flailed on the One True Pseudo-Liberal Channel.

You’ve come a long way, E. J. Dionne! Wouldn’t tell the truth back then. Still won’t do so now.

Dearest darlings, careers are at stake! Careers and good jobs at good pay!

Krugman outlines a major misstatement!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012

But the New York Times offers no fact-check: This morning, in his New York Times column, Paul Krugman outlines a major misstatement by Mitt Romney at Wednesday night’s debate.

What do you call a misstatement like this? As his column begins, Krugman samples various names:

KRUGMAN (10/5/12): Romney's Sick Joke

“No. 1,” declared Mitt Romney in Wednesday’s debate, “pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” No, they aren’t—as Mr. Romney’s own advisers have conceded in the past, and did again after the debate.

Was Mr. Romney lying? Well, either that or he was making what amounts to a sick joke. Either way, his attempt to deceive voters on this issue was the biggest of many misleading and/or dishonest claims he made over the course of that hour and a half. Yes, President Obama did a notably bad job of responding. But I’ll leave the theater criticism to others and talk instead about the issue that should be at the heart of this election.

Krugman flirted with several names for Romney’s misstatement—a totally absent-minded mistake his campaign has corrected before.

Krugman suggested that Romney may have been “lying.” He flatly said that Romney had made an “attempt to deceive voters on this issue.”

He said that Romney made many claims in the course of the evening which were “misleading and/or dishonest claims.”

A “misleading” claim may be unintentional. A “dishonest” claim is not.

The claim in question involves health care—a matter of life and death. According to Krugman, tens of millions of people are involved in the sweep of Romney’s false statement.

For the full discussion, you should read Krugman’s column. Regarding the question of what to call it, this is where Krugman ends up:

KRUGMAN: One could wish that Mr. Obama had made this point effectively in the debate. He had every right to jump up and say, “There you go again”: Not only was Mr. Romney’s claim fundamentally dishonest, it has already been extensively debunked, and the Romney campaign itself has admitted that it’s false.

For whatever reason, the president didn’t do that, on health care or on anything else. But, as I said, never mind the theater criticism. The fact is that Mr. Romney tried to mislead the public, and he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

What did Krugman end up calling it? Romney’s claim was “fundamentally dishonest,” he said. Romney “tried to mislead the public.”

Excitable children like to throw the L-bomb—“lie”—all around. In most cases, this represents an excellent way to lose a political argument. That said, Romney is one of the great dissemblers in modern American political history.

The example Krugman cites involves life and death—and Romney’s campaign has corrected this absent-minded “mistake” before. This leads us to Krugman’s question:

Will Romney be allowed to get away with it? What will the press corps do?

Incredibly, there is no fact-check feature today in our hard-copy Times! But then, there was also no fact-check feature yesterday in our hard-copy Times.

Looking on-line, we see there was a fact-check feature in yesterday’s later hard-copy editions (click here). The Times seems a bit cavalier about getting this feature to us rubes who receive the "Washington Edition."

In the old days, such basic features were published in early editions one day late.

Meanwhile, yesterday’s fact-check didn’t discuss the inaccurate statement Krugman discusses. This isn't Krugman’s fault, of course. But might we rewrite his last paragraph?

The fact is that Mr. Romney tried to mislead the public. The New York Times fact-check feature didn't do diddly about it.

This isn't Krugman's fault, of course. But for oodles of New York Times readers, Candidate Romney was allowed to get away with this!