9/19/00 1:50 p.m.
A Washington Post Smear
D.C.'s local paper finds another conservative to call a racist.

By Ramesh Ponnuru, NR senior editor

ne of the fringe benefits of being a journalist is that occasionally you can defend your friends from vicious smears by other journalists. Such an opportunity presents itself today. Richard Nadler, the head of the Republican Ideas Political Committee, is an old friend of mine. When I was going to high school in Kansas City, he gave me a column in his newspaper, starting me on a path to conservatism and a life of crime. So read on with my bias in mind.

In a front-page story today, the Washington Post smears Nadler as a racist. Oh, John Mintz doesn't just come out and say it in quite those words. Instead, he says that Democrats condemn one of his group's ads "for employing racially coded language." Nadler is not quoted in response until nine paragraphs later, on page A9.

Here's the text of the ad, which is narrated by a mother of two: "In 1994, Ralph and I started Education Savings Accounts for the kids. Our Julie attended public schools. She was an honor student, and captain of the debate team. Her account helps put her through college.

"But when Jason started hanging out with the wrong crowd, we had to act fast." Here the scene fades to a group of three boys, including Jason. One is drinking a beer, another showing a gun. The mom continues: "We didn't want him where drugs and violence were fashionable. That was a bit more diversity than he could handle. So we sent him to a private school run by our church. There, he gets more attention, and the moral expectations are higher.

"Unfortunately, this administration thinks faith is more dangerous than drugs or violence. We had to pay a big tax penalty to save our child. That's why we support the Republican plan that Clinton vetoed. It would quadruple the amount we could shelter in our educational savings account. And it would let us decide what kind of education our kids need.

"The Democrats talk a lot about children. I wish they'd stop talking long enough to listen."

It sounds an awful lot like an ad about education savings accounts, doesn't it? The Post insinuates that it's really about race because of the ad's reference to "diversity" and because in the school scene, "a white teenager at a cafeteria pulls a pistol on a racially mixed group of students. Then the message flashes: 'Vote Republican.'"

The most charitable explanations of this is that Mintz, the reporter, is lazy or an idiot. The ad does not, in fact, show a white teenager pulling a pistol on a racially mixed group of students. No message to vote Republican flashes right after the scene. But what's Mintz's problem with the scene he imagines? Would he be happier to see a black teenager pulling a pistol on whites? The charge of racism makes no sense.

Mintz's article goes on to suggest that groups such as Nadler's "often provide little information about their true identity or sources of funding." He has, by this point, discussed no other groups, and at no point does he point out that Nadler's is a hard-money committee which must, and does, disclose its donors. Readers will conclude otherwise, thanks to Mintz's reporting.

There is one nice touch to Mintz's hatchet job. He says that Nadler's ad "demonstrates" that independent ads "can sometimes make life more complicated for the very politicians and parties they are intended to help." How has the ad caused any trouble for Republicans? Nobody in the Kansas City media has made the charge of racism. If Mintz's sources had gone to Kansas City reporters, who know Nadler, they would have been laughed at. Nadler's life has gotten "more complicated" only because of the Washington Post's bad reporting.