The Tremulous Punditosphere

We have an interesting illustration of how the internet is changing the nature of political punditry, in the form of the ongoing spat between Joe Klein and the liberal blogosphere. Bloggy triumphalism can be tiresome, and the MainStream Media aren't going to be replaced in the foreseeable future, if only because they actually put a great deal of effort and resources into real reportage. You know, calling people on the telephone, traveling to places where interesting things are happening, stuff like that. Annoying as they may be at times, the MSM are still the primary source for information about what is going on in the world. When it comes to opinionmongering, though, we are faced with a completely different kettle of fish -- ones with sharp teeth and short tempers. Journalism requires work, but anyone can have an opinion, and most everyone does. Not everyone has opinions that are interesting, or the ability to defend them persuasively using information and rational argument. That, in principle, is why we have pundits in the first place; they are supposed to be better-informed than average, and generally capable of intelligently articulating the opinions they have. The best pundits, presumably, should be those that have the most interesting opinions, and are the best at explaining and arguing for them. Problem is, these are subjective criteria. What typically happens in the MSM is that, by some quite mysterious process, an editor or publisher decides that some particular person with opinions would make a good pundit, whether its because of the sparkle of their prose or the cut of their jib. A column or regular TV appearances are granted. And then, amazingly, they're in forever. Rarely are columnists fired for not making sense; once they claim that status, they tend to keep it, no matter how pointless or uninformed their work turns out to be. It's as if the NBA drafted players straight out of high school, but then they never had to play a game; they all just received long-term contracts, with salaries based on how good they look during lay-up drills and dunk contests. Maureen Dowd will be taking up space on the New York Times Op-Ed pages for decades to come. Blogs work on a different model. Despite various well-documented biases and ossification of hierarchies, the blogosphere is still largely a meritocracy, in which success is driven by the free market of links. Say things that are interesting, well-informed, and thoughtfully presented, and someone will link to you. Word will spread, and you can be a success. Admittedly, you can also be a success by spouting complete nonsense, if you do it in a way that enough people approve of. The point is not that what rises to the top is exclusively meritorious; it's that merit is one of the ways in which you really can rise to the top. Joe Klein, longtime columnist for Time magazine and anonymous author of Primary Colors, is doing his best to inadvertently prove the dramatic superiority of the blog model for developing pundits. Klein has never been a favorite among lefty bloggers; although purportedly liberal himself, he comes off more as a smug apologist for accepted Washington consensus than as a shrewd analyst. On the Iraq war in particular, he's shown something other than courage; in fact, what ever the opposite of courage is, he's pretty much shown that. Now that the war has turned out to be a disaster on all fronts, he insists that he was against it all along. Which is funny because, in all of those columns he regularly penned for our largest-circulation newsweekly during the time when the wisdom of going to war was actually being debated, he forgot to mention it. He was asked about the issue point-blank at the time, by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, and replied "This is a really tough decision. War may well be the right decision at this point. In fact, I think it--it's--it--it probably is." Somewhat short of a full-throated denunciation. But what's a little weak-kneed simpering among friends? You don't have to go on the Sunday talk shows every week, and in a few months whatever you said at the time will be forgotten anyway. But now Klein has embarked on a new adventure -- he's blogging, as part of Time's group effort called Swampland. We begin to perceive the outlines of an actual conversation; there are comments on his posts, and other bloggers can link to him and offer critiques (with explicit citations) practically in real time. And they've been calling Joe Klein on his crap. (Or, I should say, "calling him on his shit," since one of the standard fallacies wielded against bloggers is that they shouldn't be taken seriously because they use curse words.) It's like all those young draft picks had to suddenly start playing games, and not against the Washington Generals, either. The results haven't been pretty. Atrios, in particular, has been tireless in combatting the idea that mainstream journalists are just liberal mouthpieces, and is quick to point out how often supposedly-liberal pundits like to carry water for Republicans. Most journalists probably do self-identify as liberals -- but, much more relevantly, they are part of the professional political class. With a few notable exceptions, they tend to cozy up to power, and try their best to reflect the conventional wisdom of their friends in the same class. Smart political operatives have learned to play them like very loud fiddles, so that the desired message can be broadcast under the cover of neutral journalism. Joe Klein is not pleased with how this conversation is going. He's taken to frequent self-defensive meta-blogging, in which is primary concern is to defend his honor against the onslaught of the unwashed masses. The problem, not to put too fine a point on it, is that Joe Klein isn't very good. He's a fine wordsmith, but he's not exceptionally smart, or analytic, or insightful. So he ends up lashing out, somewhat clumsily, at unnamed ideological extremists. The problem is that everyone knows he's talking about Atrios, and everyone who can read knows that "ideological extremist" is a preposterously inaccurate label. Atrios, like Kos, is a partisan advocate, but both of them are unfailingly pragmatic in their goals. They are vociferous and combative, which polite liberals aren't supposed to be, so their lazier critics prefer to write them off as blindly ideological. Atrios (whose real name is Duncan Black) couldn't possibly be more sensibly center-left when it comes to actual policy prescriptions; the fact that he calls people "wankers" does not imply that he's an organizer for the Socialist Worker's Party. And anyone who has read Kos's amusing takedown of Dennis Kucinich would be hard-pressed to describe him as a rabid leftist. These guys are devoted to the idea of getting Democrats elected, not promoting some sort of anarcho-communism. Between the cozy covers of Time, you can let fly with the occasional unsupportable accusation without too much bother. But, this being the blogosphere, people called him out for not making sense. To which Klein, in an attempt to explain himself, responded with a list of things that make you a left-wing extremist. Suffice it to say, it is embarrassingly awful. A bizarre mixture of weird positions that none of his prominent critics actually holds ("believes in a corporate conspiracy that controls the world"), along with utterly irrelevant stylistic critiques ("regularly uses harsh, vulgar, intolerant language to attack moderates or conservatives"). Compounding the supercilious vapidity with weaselly ambiguity, he mentions that such extremists will exhibit "many, but not necessarily all" of these attributes, and protests that it would be "wildly stupid" to actually mention the names of anyone who might fit these characterizations. I'm pretty sure I remember these rhetorical strategies, from back in junior high. In response to which, the blogosphere being what it is, much smarter people smack him down. Ezra Klein (no relation) and Scott Lemieux do the necessary dirty work, dissecting the fundamental dishonesty behind Joe Klein's smears. All of which (this whole bloated post, really) is to say: wouldn't the world be a much better place if Ezra Klein and Scott Lemieux were regular columnists in our major media outlets, instead of the people who are actually there? In the heated crucible of blogospheric debates, interesting and intelligent voices can percolate to the top, who might never have been heard if things were left to the whim of a small coterie of editors. Why not take advantage? How great would it be to see Shakespeare's Sister and hilzoy on the pages of the New York Times, instead of Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich? We're replacing "liberals" with liberals here, in the interests of ideological balance, but the same goes for conservatives. Orin Kerr and Tyler Cowen in place of George Will and David Brooks? One could go on. The dearth of intelligent commentary and insightful analysis in the punditosphere as currently constituted is a contingent condition, not a necessary fact of life. There are really smart people out there who are doing a better job for free than that for which the professionals are handsomely compensated. Sadly, a lot more people are still getting their opinions from the MSM than from intelligent blogs. (And, to state the obvious, there are plenty of non-intelligent blogs.) But someday soon, I have to think, some forward-thinking editors and TV news-show directors are going to start taking advantage of the wealth of talent that is sitting there before them. Of course, they have to have the wit and discernment to recognize a good thing. To date, the highest-profile example of a blogger becoming a major columnist is Ana Marie Cox, the erstwhile Wonkette who has now joined Joe Klein at Time. Which is fine, except that Cox is a comedian, not a political analyst. Her success is a paradigmatic example of the idea that what matters is the cleverness with which you can turn a phrase, not the actual substance of what you have to say. That's old-school thinking. Here's hoping that, amidst the sound and fury, the best of the blogosphere can help to elevate the discourse above what we're used to.