Facts not in evidence

There has been, over the past several years, a lot of praise for the 2008 Obama campaign, for being effective and efficient and well-managed. Well, in his always excellent "Best of the Web" article today, James Taranto makes a point that I've made before. Or at least comes close to it - we concur in part and disagree in part.

When Stephanie Cutter accuses the Times of bias because its poll delivers some hard truths, one assumes it is because the campaign is accustomed to media flattery of the sort that Brooks and National Journal are dishing out. It seems to us that flattery is actually running counter to Obama's goal of being re-elected, because it masks his weaknesses. True, he had fawning media coverage in 2008 and won the election. But to think the former caused the latter is a classic example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Similarly, John Podhoretz of the New York Post is astonished that re-election effort has stumbled so badly, "given how astonishingly competent the Obama 2008 campaign was." But was the '08 campaign really all that competent? Or was it successful because he was lucky enough to have incompetent opponents?

We are in complete agreement that his election victory is not proof of "astonishing competen[ce]" from his 2008 campaign. Where we disagree is in whether or not the media coverage was responsible. He thinks not. I think so. I'm not certain that the McCain campaign was incompetent. Less than perfect, of course, because we all are, but incompetent? I don't think so. I think that they were up against a set of facts that were, politically, insurmountable at that time, and every one of which was spun by the ostensibly objective media in a way which benefited Obama.

I noted several years ago that

The premise that's wrong is that the Obama campaign was "so good at campaigning." The fact is that he gaffed and blundered all over the campaign trail, all over God's creation, and was dragged across the finish line by the most biased mainstream press operation in history. A press corps that was enamored of every move he made.

There was no background checking, no pushback on the things he said that were clearly false, no attempt whatsoever to "vet" him as a potential chief executive. It was obvious from day one that he had done absolutely nothing in his life to qualify him for the position that he now holds, but the people who present the campaign story to the country weren't interested in that, either. The inability to speak off the cuff - ignored. The vacuousness of the rhetoric - ignored. The hard left voting record - ignored. The radical friends - ignored. The lack of any kind of managerial experience - ignored. The corrupt bargains for his housing and Michelle's job - ignored. The press had room in their dispatches for one Hero - Barack, the ONE - and one villain - Sarah Palin. And that was the storyline. He won the election not because he ran a great campaign, but because his campaign was, and was going to be, called great no matter what he did. He was the "Great Black Hope," and once he became a viable candidate, he was going to win regardless of what happened.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy, because many things do not have dispositive influence, or even influence at all, on events which follow them. But that doesn't mean that all cases in which one attributes the outcome of an election to the effects of an earlier event, or events, is fallacious. Yes, the media was in the bag for Obama. Yes, Obama won the election. No, that does not prove that the favorable coverage caused him to win the election. But it doesn't disprove it, either. Since we cannot examine it in lab conditions, this is a case where people need to make their own judgements.

I don't disagree with anything I wrote earlier. Was the media coverage solely responsible for Obama's election? Probably not - the situation was a difficult one for any Republican candidate. But did the coverage make his campaign look a lot more impressive, a lot more competent than it actually was? Oh, yeah. Is there any evidence, other than the fact that he won (and you want to talk about post hoc fallacies, there's a good one) that he ran a great campaign? I didn't see it then and I don't see it now.

The Last War

I strongly recommend James Taranto's look at the differences between the election results of 1994 and the expected results of 2010, The Last War

Then again, Obama could "reach out" in a heavy-handed way or in pursuit of unpopular policies, or it may turn out that he's already irretrievably alienated independents. By all means, politicians should study and learn from the past. But the wise thing to have done in 1994 won't necessarily turn out to be the wise thing to do in 2010.

I think he's absolutely right about almost everything in there...

"...a particular type of stupidity..."

James Taranto:

"People will never know" is gentler than "a nation of dodos," but the underlying message isn't that different. Axelrod, speaking of the president, tells the Washington Post: "This is someone who in law school worked with [Harvard professor] Larry Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein's theory of relativity." That's got to be a joke, but the message is clear: President Obama and his men are a lot smarter than the average voter.

It is likely that this is true. Shockingly, half of all Americans have IQs below the median. But intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom or sense. Very intelligent people have been known to advance very compelling arguments on behalf of very bad ideas.

What's more, there is a particular type of stupidity to which intelligent people are uniquely prone: intellectual snobbery, or the tendency to cultivate an attitude of contempt toward those who are not as bright. This may appeal to New York Times readers or voters in, say, Hyde Park--that is, to people who think they're better than everyone else too. But it may prove Barack Obama's undoing as a national politician.

Does anyone suppose that Barack Obama or David Axelrod or Joe Klein have ever read Gulliver's Travels? The whole thing, that is, and not just the journey to Lilliput? Everyone who wants to impose projects and plans on the people on the ground that they represent an intellectual elite should read Swift's account of Gulliver's trip to Laputa. And then watch the They Saved Lisa' Brain episode of The Simpsons. And then take some time to try to develop a little bit of perspective about themselves and their elitism...