Some use the forbidden L-word -- "lies"

by Gene TeSelle, Witherspoon Society Issues Analyst

[10-27-03]

My interest was piqued when a fellow Presbyterian wrote, "Have you read Paul Krugman's book? It's like A Moment to Decide."

That book, published in 2000, traced the conservative assault on the Presbyterian Church, originally with funding from J. Howard Pew and more recently with broad-based conservative support; the goal is to undo the Great Society and the New Deal, even the trust-busting achievements of Theodore Roosevelt, and take us back to a period of unregulated economic exploitation. A parallel study by Leon Howell, United Methodism @ Risk: A Wake-Up Call, was published earlier this year.

We wouldn't want to claim that the religious press was the first to expose the tactics of the Right, including downright deception. But we may have pioneered the publication of outspoken books directed toward the general public.

In recent months at least five of them have been published, and it's time to review them briefly. All of them, I notice, are still in hard cover, all priced at $24.95 (in one case a bargain $24), so you may want to check them out of your public library (and be sure the library gets them).

The theme of Krugman's book is the "sea change" that recently occurred in U.S. politics -- the rise of a "radical right" that "now effectively controls the White House, Congress, much of the judiciary, and a good slice of the media." He characterizes the radical right as a revolutionary group akin to the Jacobins of the French Revolution (he was probably too gentlemanly to mention Leninism as another parallel). The similarity? A conviction that there are social and political institutions that "should not, in principle, exist." Since the leaders of the movement do not accept the legitimacy of the current system, they feel no obligation to play by its rules. Neither do they accept the rights of others to criticize them; when they do, there is a "no-holds-barred counterattack." "Yes, Virginia," he concludes, "there is a vast right-wing conspiracy."

Krugman asks that we "take the hard-line rightists now in power at their word" and not suppose, with many in the news media, that their goals are more limited than their rhetoric. Their behavior in office, Krugman says, indicates that their concern is not with free markets but with taking from the poor and giving it to the rich.

These are some of the generalizations that jump out of Krugman's pages. There is lots of detail, since the book consists of reprints of his columns since 2000. They are grouped by theme -- "Crony Capitalism," "Fuzzy Math," "California Screaming," etc. -- and they examine events as they occur, arguments as they are floated. If you want the detailed analyses, go read the book

In a full-length book Franken has already tangled with Rush Limbaugh, that courageous and consistent champion of get-tough policies toward drug addicts. Here he takes on a number of right-wing pundits, including Ann Coulter and Bernie Goldberg, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, Wesley Pruden (editor of the Moonies' Washington Times) and Paul Gigot (chief of the editorial page for the Wall Street Journal). He also takes on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel and Richard Mellon Scaife, the right-wing funder of many scurrilous attacks on the Clintons.

Franken is a master of what might be called "performance writing," not only keeping up a steady patter in the manner of a standup comic but supplying additional hints through tricks of typography. But that's not really the core of what he is doing. He goes into detail about the lies, misrepresentations, and downright fabrications of those who are now in power.

Franken pays such close attention to details that he is constantly deconstructing the smooth rhetoric of the spin doctors, showing that it is merely fancy painted scrim, and finding the facts behind their factoids. (To Presbyterians the book will be reminiscent of John R. Fry's occasional periodical in the 1970s, entitled Now Is the Time for the Witherspoon Society to Scrutinize the Layman [sic], in which he paid closer attention to its misrepresentations and half-truths than most people would care to give.) Franken often supplies his own statistical analyses to correct what the press usually just reproduces, and he sometimes goes on to create preposterous statistical fictions to show how easy it is.

Like Krugman, Franken outlines the "game plan" of the Bush administration: "Pretend to stay above the fray; use surrogates to lie, attack, and discredit; then get the media to report it." He also traces the relentless attack upon anyone who questions the Right's statements or actions. (A major instance, mentioned by several of these authors, is the way the administration tried to slime Dana Milbank after his October 2002 article in the Washington Post entitled "For Bush Facts Are Malleable: Presidential Tradition of Embroidering Key Assertions Continues.") Franken is especially impatient with the news media and their attempt to be "balanced." "Imagine a political game of seesaw," he says, "with two people sitting on one end, and two others sitting in the middle."

Like Krugman and Franken, Conason sees the dangers of the right-wing movement, calling them "sinister social termites gnawing away at the foundations of human civilization."

He unmasks the hidden lives of conservative champions of family values, including Helen Chenoweth of Idaho and Newt Gingrich of Alabama and lots of others.

He goes into detail about Trent Lott's declaration that if Strom Thurmond had won "we wouldn't have a lot of these problems we've been having ever since," overlooked by the media until messages began burning up the Internet. It was not just a misstatement; Lott for many years promoted the Council of Conservative Citizens, successor to the White Citizens Councils that functioned as "the respectable, white-collar counterpart of the Ku Klux Klan."

He analyzes the administration's penchant for "crony capitalism," described by Lars-Erik Nelson as abuse of "the government's coercive powers of taxation and legislation to funnel public wealth to the private sector."

He shows deception at work. When the Enron scandal broke in early 2002, George W. Bush pretended he knew Kenneth ("Kenny Boy") Lay only as "a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994," when in fact Richards got $12,500 from Lay and Enron, while Bush got $146,500.

He tells the full story of "compassionate conservatism," the rhetoric by which "Bush has pasted a smiley face over the alienating scowl worn by Republicans during the Clinton years." The actual character of Bush's program was discovered too late by John DiIulio, who was disillusioned after eight months running the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; he saw very little compassion and a lot of cynical patronage directed toward inner-city churches.

Conason thinks that liberals have to learn to "hit back hard." One correction has been offered by James McWilliams in a review in the Texas Observer (September 26, 2003): if you hit back, it means you were hit first; but people are more lastingly influenced by their first impressions, so the best defense is an early offense.

Corn not only exhibits the contradictions between Bush's emphasis on "personal responsibility" and his actual statements. He also engages in some philosophical inquiry, aided by Sisela Bok's book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. Acknowledging that most presidents lie, often "brazenly and with impunity," he judges them severely and goes on to argue that, in a democracy, office-holders have a responsibility not only to believe that what they are saying is true, but make every effort to know that it is true. Otherwise politics becomes what George Orwell said it was, "a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia," and "political speech" becomes "largely the defense of the indefensible."

In his conclusion, Corn tries his hand at explanation. He notes that reporters during the 2000 campaign disliked Gore's sanctimoniousness and blew every exaggeration out of proportion, while they thought that Bush was just "not so bright" and cut him lots of slack. In the debates, furthermore, they were surprised that Bush came off better than expected. "Presentation counted far more than accuracy." The same approach, of course, is found in Bush's repeated use of backdrops with slogans like "No Child Left Behind," stolen from the Children's Defense Fund.

The theme is that "for us it's déjà vue all over again. We spent six years watching the man as governor of Texas." The only good news she has to offer is that Dubya (or GeeDubya) has not been able to export the entire "Texas miracle." A chapter on the Harken case leads to the conclusion that "George W. Bush should declare himself a conscientious objector in his own war on corporate crime."

There are at least three interwoven narratives: GeeDubya's exploits in Texas, his years in the White House, and the effects that his policies have had on real people -- women in factories gutting catfish or chickens, with no chance for a restroom break; people on the receiving end of the lax regulation of polluting industries; people with Listeria because of the Agriculture Department's policies; Wyoming ranchers victimized by drilling for natural gas in the Powder River Basin; people living in cold houses because of a broken promise about funding the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

After all of this, Ivins and DuBose have two basic solutions: end our "cash and carry political system" with campaign finance reform, and replace the way Congressional districts are drawn in most state (whose result is that very few races are seriously contested by the parties) with Iowa's, having them drawn by a nonpartisan commission that shapes "compact and contiguous" districts.

Well, that's got to be more than enough by way of review.  Now go and read one or more of them!

We invite your comments on this essay, or on the books themselves. 
Just send a note! 
(And please tell us if you do not want it posted here.  And remember that we normally do not post anonymous notes.)