[Mb-civic] Krugman

[Mike Blaxill]

Questions of Character
    By Paul Krugman
    The New York Times

    Friday 14 October 2005

    George W. Bush, I once wrote, "values loyalty
above expertise" and may have "a preference for
advisers whose personal fortunes are almost
entirely bound up with his own." And he likes to
surround himself with "obsequious courtiers."

    Lots of people are saying things like that
these days. But those quotes are from a column
published on Nov. 19, 2000.

    I don't believe that I'm any better than the
average person at judging other people's
character. I got it right because I said those
things in the context of a discussion of Mr.
Bush's choice of economic advisers, a subject in
which I do have some expertise.

    But many people in the news media do claim,
at least implicitly, to be experts at discerning
character - and their judgments play a large,
sometimes decisive role in our political life.
The 2000 election would have ended in a
chad-proof victory for Al Gore if many reporters
hadn't taken a dislike to Mr. Gore, while
portraying Mr. Bush as an honest, likable guy.
The 2004 election was largely decided by the
image of Mr. Bush as a strong, effective leader.

    So it's important to ask why those judgments
are often so wrong.

    Right now, with the Bush administration in
meltdown on multiple issues, we're hearing a lot
about President Bush's personal failings. But
what happened to the commanding figure of yore,
the heroic leader in the war on terror? The
answer, of course, is that the commanding figure
never existed: Mr. Bush is the same man he always
was. All the character flaws that are now fodder
for late-night humor were fully visible, for
those willing to see them, during the 2000
campaign.

    And President Bush the great leader is far
from the only fictional character, bearing no
resemblance to the real man, created by media
images.

    Read the speeches Howard Dean gave before the
Iraq war, and compare them with Colin Powell's
pro-war presentation to the U.N. Knowing what we
know now, it's clear that one man was judicious
and realistic, while the other was spinning crazy
conspiracy theories. But somehow their labels got
switched in the way they were presented to the
public by the news media.

    Why does this happen? A large part of the
answer is that the news business places great
weight on "up close and personal" interviews with
important people, largely because they're hard to
get but also because they play well with the
public. But such interviews are rarely revealing.
The fact is that most people - myself included -
are pretty bad at using personal impressions to
judge character. Psychologists find, for example,
that most people do little better than chance in
distinguishing liars from truth-tellers.

    More broadly, the big problem with political
reporting based on character portraits is that
there are no rules, no way for a reporter to be
proved wrong. If a reporter tells you about the
steely resolve of a politician who turns out to
be ineffectual and unwilling to make hard
choices, you've been misled, but not in a way
that requires a formal correction.

    And that makes it all too easy for coverage
to be shaped by what reporters feel they can
safely say, rather than what they actually think
or know. Now that Mr. Bush's approval ratings are
in the 30's, we're hearing about his coldness and
bad temper, about how aides are afraid to tell
him bad news. Does anyone think that journalists
have only just discovered these personal
characteristics?

    Let's be frank: the Bush administration has
made brilliant use of journalistic careerism.
Those who wrote puff pieces about Mr. Bush and
those around him have been rewarded with
career-boosting access. Those who raised
questions about his character found themselves
under personal attack from the administration's
proxies. (Yes, I'm speaking in part from
experience.) Only now, with Mr. Bush in desperate
trouble, has the structure of rewards shifted.

    So what's the answer? Journalists who are
better at judging character? Unfortunately,
that's not a practical plan. After all, who
judges their judgment?

    What we really need is political journalism
based less on perceptions of personalities and
more on actual facts. Schadenfreude aside, we
should not be happy that stories about Mr. Bush's
boldness have given way to stories analyzing his
facial tics. Think, instead, about how different
the world would be today if, during the 2000
campaign, reporting had focused on the
candidates' fiscal policies instead of their
wardrobes.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101405K.shtml