8/07/00 11:45 a.m.
Pianin Strikes Again
Reporter Eric Pianin lives up to his reputation.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

ric Pianin is one of the reporters Republicans on Capitol Hill loathe most. An “analysis” he wrote with Charles Babington for the Washington Post's news pages this Saturday shows why. The headline: “From GOP Ticket, A One-Sided View / Bush, Cheney Speeches Take Great Liberties.”

The thesis: Even by the standards of political conventions, the Republicans' rhetoric was dishonest (“describing the Clinton-Gore administration's handling of several key policies in terms that don't square entirely with the facts”). Let's take a look at the indictment.

1. Bush claimed that the administration did nothing to strengthen Social Security or Medicare. Pianin and Babington write that President Clinton was the first to call for using the Social Security surplus to pay down the national debt, “a move that arguably can improve Social Security's future.” So? A point that's arguable can assumed to be false in a convention speech. It's up to critics to argue for it. P&B also completely ignore Clinton's role in sabotaging a bipartisan commission on Medicare.

2. Cheney said that Clinton and Gore "have done nothing to help children." P&B quote Democrats such as former Congressional Budget Office head Robert Reischauer and Clinton aide Bruce Reed to show that the administration has too helped children, by spending money and enacting regulations. Now of course Cheney might dispute the notion that the money and the regulations help children; this again can be filed under “arguable propositions.”

But there's a much bigger problem with P&B's accusation: They've clipped Cheney's quote. The full passage reads: "For eight years, the achievement gap in our schools has grown worse. Poor and disadvantaged children falling further and further behind. For all of their sentimental talk about children, Clinton and Gore have done nothing to help children oppressed by bureaucracy, monopoly, and mediocrity."

Cheney's remarks make two factual assertions — the achievement gap is rising, and Clinton and Gore are hostile to real school choice — and both are true. The speech's other references to children are not part of a critique of Clinton and Gore.

3. "Bush and Cheney gave Clinton and Gore no credit for the nation's strong economy." True, and we'd be inclined to give them some credit: for promoting free trade, not getting in Alan Greenspan's way, failing to pass their health-care plan, etc. But the claim that Clinton and Gore deserve a lot of credit for the economy is hardly a matter of "facts." (By the way, P&B's claim that Clinton's tax increase "helped stabilize interest rates" is itself hard to square with the facts: Interest rates were falling before the tax hike passed, started rising almost precisely when it passed, and resumed falling around November of 1994.)

4. Bush blamed Clinton and Gore for creating a poisonous atmosphere of partisanship in Washington. P&B make a great show of fair-mindedness here, arguing that "there is plenty of blame to go around." But their bias is obvious. They write that Republicans' “efforts to impeach and remove Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal poisoned relations and all but foreclosed prospects for major agreements on big issues such as Social Security and Medicare reform.”

Here's how we'd rewrite this “analysis”: “Clinton's law-breaking, and his subsequent campaign to vilify anyone who tried to hold him to account, poisoned relations and” etc. The difference would be that we're honest about our political leanings.

Guilt by Non-Association
Andrew Sullivan in the New Republic (August 14): “Cheney comes from Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard was murdered, and had to represent his constituents in the 1980s…”