Hewitt Blog

Let’s review the past 18 hours of New Republic death rattles. Last night, Michael Goldfarb reported that Scott Beauchamp “signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only ‘a smidgen of truth.’” Today, TNR responded with a terse non-denial denial that quoted Army spokesman Major Steven Lamb saying in regards to Beauchamp’s sworn statement, “I have no knowledge of that. If someone is speaking anonymously, they are on their own.”

Remember, one of the burning issues here is whether or not The New Republic is being forthright and honest as Andrew Sullivan promised they would be. This is the first time Major Lamb has made it into one of the Beauchamp-related epistles that the TNR editors periodically issue. Too bad, because Major Lamb has said some other interesting things regarding the Beauchamp Affair. One of those things was, “An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false.” Odd that TNR didn’t include this statement in its relentless quest to get to and publish the truth.

Once again, we see evidence of what I was talking about this morning. The New Republic editors are trying to save their hides by building a case for themselves like a lawyer would. A very bad and clumsy lawyer for sure, but the term “lawyerly” still applies. They are picking and choosing the facts that they think will help them. But really – with their disingenuousness having become so transparent, will even Matthew Yglesias vote to acquit at this late date?

SO WHAT ELSE HAVE WE to do but form a Franklin Foer Death Pool?

Even when Foer knew he was fully in the wrong, he audaciously took to the airwaves and demanded an apology from those reckless bloggers who dared question his honesty and competence. Franklin Foer’s dishonesty and arrogance has been exposed as surely and as thoroughly as Scott Beauchamp’s.

How long will Foer remain head of The New Republic? It’s your turn to guess. Please leave the date and time when TNR will announce Franklin Foer’s termination/resignation. The winner will receive a signed and personalized copy of “A Mormon in the White House?” along with the pride that comes with having triumphed in such a fierce competition.

Good luck to all. Naturally, “The Price is Right” Convention applies. And needless to say, New Republic employees and their family members are not allowed to participate and unfairly leverage any inside knowledge.

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Or so David Evans warns:

If you measured the blogosphere by revenue it would barely register. One estimate puts the total revenue at $500 million, which sounds big but is not considering the amount of effort. In fact, it works out to about $5 of revenue per blog and $25 per active blog. Nevertheless this new media industry has a significant and growing impact on the economy as well as culture and politics.

The newspaper industry mentioned earlier is the obvious example (see my other posts on this). People go to the blogs for news and opinion, and read newspapers less. Advertising revenue has fallen at newspapers because there are fewer readers and because advertisers have a better option for reaching people through blog advertising (as well as in other online venues). The newspaper industry is in a reverse catalyst reaction or what I have described elsewhere as a death spiral.

Other media industries are likely to face competition from blogs as well. As magazines race to get online they will find that there is a similar blog providing content and attracting advertisers. And YouTube and other video sites make it easy for blogs to compete with traditional and online video entertainment. If blogs continue to attract audience and volunteer labor, digital media will find it increasingly hard to make the sorts of money online that they grew accustomed to make in the fat and happy years of the last half of the twentieth century.

(HT: SCSU Scholars --the self-proclaimed "Billy Preston of the NARN")

It seems to me that a blog in the higher orders of the ecosystem will become increasingly profitable, but that the struggle to reach those higher orders will become more difficult over time. Given the ongoing expansion of blogging (along with the ongoing drop-off of those who grow bored), the value of keeping or gaining a perch among the trafficked blogs is high and going to go higher even as the amount of effort required to maintain that position becomes greater.

In other words, if you want to make money blogging, work on those rankings. Now. 

From a Romney campaign press release:

"When Al Qaeda calls into America, we should be listening. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted against this common-sense foreign intelligence tool. They are dangerously out of touch when it comes to defending the homeland. Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive. We must use every reasonable measure to keep America safe." – Gov. Mitt Romney

Exactly right. The decision by the two Democratic senators to oppose modernizing surveillance authority in an age of terror is a major issue for the fall of '08, even if they realize prior to the next vote that they shouldn't be on the side of preserving the privacy interests of terrorists.

When either of the two next confront a member of the MSM, perhaps lightning will strike and they will be asked why they opposed the FISA reform which carried both houses of Congress handily and with bipartisan support.

 

Posted by Generalissimo

Just a short time ago, in response to the Michael Goldfarb story in the Weekly Standard citing a high level military official saying that anti-war reporter Scott Thomas Beauchamp has signed a sworn statement denying the stories that the New Republic supposedly fact-checked and ran, the editors of the New Republic posted the following:

A STATEMENT ON SCOTT THOMAS BEAUCHAMP:

We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Major Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, "I have no knowledge of that." He added, "If someone is speaking anonymously [to The Weekly Standard], they are on their own." When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, "We don't go into the details of how we conduct our investigations."

--The Editors

So instead of saying Houston, we might have a problem here, the editors at the New Republic are walking further out onto the plank. They have no problem wanting you to believe that they have their unnamed sources to back up Beauchamp's claims, and that they still are sticking by their story, much as Dan Rather did in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and yet they are reacting to the Weekly Standard's unnamed source with a knee-jerk reaction that it can't be trusted. You can't have it both ways. You'd think at this point, Franklin Foer, the beleaguered editor of the New Republic, would start to realize how far out over the water he is walking, and that he might want to think twice about doubling down and blindly backing his stories. The further out on the plank you walk, when you do eventually get wet, the harder it is for anyone to reach you with a life preserver.

 

Coming on the heels of the YouTube debate fight, YearlyKos has sparked a lively conversation on the right about what needs to be done to reinvigorate our movement online. The leading lights on this are Mark Tapscott, Soren Dayton, Amanda Carpenter, and Robert Bluey.

A common thread is that the other shoe won’t likely drop until we have Hillary to unite against. I’d like to pick apart that assumption.

The basic assumption is sound. The online right was ascendant in the Clinton years, just as the online left was in the Bush years. Opposition galvanizes political movements, and not just online.

My question is when does this kick in? When Hillary becomes the nominee? Or if she becomes President? A lot of people are hoping many of these issues will work themselves out on February 6th when the Hillary menace will start to stare conservatives in the face. I’ve expressed that hope too.

But a lot of folks also hoped that we’d be at least partly there by now. With Hillary looking good on the Democratic side, and Republicans in the opposition (and on offense) in Congress, have things gotten any better? Is there any evidence that the Stop Her Now stuff that was so effective in 2000 is working this time around? I haven’t gotten as many direct mail letters or fundraising e-mails with Hillary front and center as I would have expected by now.

A lot of people are also arguing that we are weighed down by President Bush and Iraq. But why should that be? Rudy, Fred, and Mitt aren’t President Bush, and are strong in many areas where the President is weak. The nominee will likely have something different to say about Iraq. You would think that Republicans would view this field as a vehicle for moving beyond the current poisoned political environment, and feel some measure of optimism and relief. After all, Mitt Romney reinvigorated Massachusetts Republicans after taking over from a weak caretaker, Jane Swift. In France, Sarko wrote the playbook on pivoting against an unpopular leader of your own party and winning. It can be done. So why aren’t they doing it? What do they need to do to do it? Or is it just too soon?

Or is the truth that we need Hillary to take office before we reap the benefits of a fired-up base? That may be. Remember, that in the campaign, Hillary will present herself in only the most favorable light. She won’t be accountable for what happens in Congress, or deep in the bowels of HHS when someone starts funding condoms and needle exchange, or for the fact that she’ll be forced by the exigencies of being Commander-in-Chief into a more Bush-like position on Iraq. Campaigns are a clean business next to governing. Not many people hated George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign, or for the first two years he was President, and the left was slack enough to allow for a fatal third party schism in the form of Ralph Nader.

So when does it start to happen for us? 2008? 2009? 2010? 2012?

I think it ideally should have started in January 2007, with campaigns starting anew, George Bush starting to fade into the background, passions on immigration running high, and the Democrat majority in Congress. It’s still early yet, but does anyone see any signs of a new conservative coalition starting to take shape, or anyone trying to engage it?

Even if Movement 2.0 is two or more years away, there are things we should be doing now to prepare. At this point in the Clinton years, MoveOn had already started. Perhaps the analog to that is the immigration issue, where the right kicked ass. But, again, what did we create with the immigration issue? Where is the million person email list of people who got involved because of immigration, and can now be activated on other issues? It sounds like people were thinking of the right techniques for radio, but not for online.

I think it will also require a shift in thinking of how the movement relates to the Republican Party. We are very much in the position the Democrats were in at the end of the 20th century where “the groups” did not think of themselves as part of the party. The netroots revitalized liberal interest in the Democratic Party not by selling out, by positioning themselves as the authentic Democrats, where the Joe Liebermans and pro-Iraq War Dems were outside the party. What that the phrase, again? Oh, yes… The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

Do conservatives today really think of themselves as the “Republican wing of the Republican Party” or removed from the Republican Party entirely? That’s a key difference, and one that will have to be reconciled if we are going to finally quit being pundits and start being activists.

And, finally, is there any way this gets started without Hillary Clinton? I’ve read the same history books, and I don’t think the New Right was built on personal animus towards JFK and LBJ — and it thrived in power in the ’80s.

Ideally, we would figure out a formula for this stuff that wouldn’t require us to lose in 2008.

 

On Friday night, Franklin Foer momentarily emerged from his extended state of isolation and took to the airways in Los Angeles. He was one of the guest hosts for Los Angeles-based KCRW’s weekly schmooze–fest called “Left, Right and Center.” At the end of each broadcast, the hosts are allowed 25 seconds apiece to vamp on a topic that interests them. Here’s how Franklin Foer used his time:

“My magazine this last week has been subject of basically a smear job by the Weekly Standard and a lot of the conservative blogosphere over a piece that we published from a soldier in Iraq, which we have gone back and re-reported and it turned out to be aside from one mistake to be the case and I just wish that there was, and this sounds like a trite mainstream media criticism, but that those in the blogosphere who kind of move from one reckless allegation to another reckless allegation for once apologize when they get something wrong."

Believe it or not, I don’t actually listen to “Left, Right and Center.” I only became aware of Foer’s comments when an alert reader sent them to me on Saturday morning. After offering my correspondent some good natured yet vulgar suggestions of how Foer could extract an apology from me, I had to step back and admire young Frank’s moxie.

Here he was, caught completely with his pants down, and he was staying on offense. He knew how weak and obfuscatory his magazine’s August 2 defense of the Beauchamp Diarists was. He’s foolish, not dumb. And yet Our Boy Frank couldn’t just settle for the fact that certain gullible dupes like Matthew Yglesias, Andrew Sullivan and Ezra Klein chose to read TNR’s explanation uncritically and embrace it wholesale. No, Franklin Foer decided to go into high dudgeon mode and race about demanding apologies when he knew full well that none were due.

AS THE GENERALISSIMO NOTED BELOW, The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb is reporting that Scott Beauchamp has “signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only ‘a smidgen of truth,’ in the words of our source.”

I can’t imagine this development comes as much of a surprise to The New Republic. Let’s take a ride in the wayback machine to July 24. Here’s how Franklin Foer described the putatively rigorous fact-checking that preceded the publication of “Scott Thomas’s” most controversial Diarist:

“We showed the stories to people who'd been embedded in Iraq to make sure that it all smelled good. We talked to one of the members of his unit to confirm the woman, a female contractor. We talked to a medic who'd served in Iraq to make sure that a woman could be in an FOB. We spent a lot of time with him on the phone asking hard questions.”

Knowing what we now know about TNR’s “confirmation of the woman,” I’d like to posit that TNR’s fact checking consisted of no effort at all or, at most, very little effort. I would imagine the only thing that TNR did to confirm the stories, if indeed the magazine did anything at all, is run it by TNR staffers or their acquaintances who had been to Iraq to see if it “smelled good.” For the record, if those people actually thought it “smelled good,” they were the only people who have been to Iraq who felt that way.

Armed with minimal to no fact-checking, details of the story’s implausibilities came to Foer’s attention. Suddenly, his magazine was challenged to prove the existence of dog-dissecting Bradleys, human skulls that fit comfortably under combat helmets and the presence of a grievously injured woman at a Forward Operating Base. Our Boy Frank then had a choice – he could launch a proper investigation and follow where the facts led or try to put enough lipstick on the pig that he could credibly stand by the story.

The first course, the honorable one, promised to be problematic. Fabulists who told outrageous tales that confirmed the prejudices of The New Republic have suckered the magazine in the past. Whether Foer and his team could survive a similar scandal was questionable. Perhaps even more ominously, some people at The New Republic had to be wondering how long an entity that purports to be a news magazine can repeatedly publish fabrications and still survive.

The Lipstick on a Pig option, though clearly unethical and immoral, was the more pragmatic decision. TNR could perform an internal investigation and pronounce itself satisfied. In one of his essays on the subject, the Standard’s Michael Goldfarb outlined some simple criteria by which TNR could, if not prove, at least provide some support for Beauchamp’s allegations:

We want to know:

1) Dates. When did he mock the woman at the mess hall? When was the soldier wearing and playing with the child's skull? With dates, these incidents can be verified.

2) Names. He can argue that he would get the dog-killer in trouble by naming him, but how about the names of soldiers who witnessed the event at the mess hall and those who saw the guy with the kid's skull? Real live witnesses can verify the incidents.

The New Republic’s defense of the Diarists not only avoided any verifiable hard information such as dates and names, it elided past defending the specific stories and instead argued for the plausibility of certain elements of the stories. Nevertheless, Andrew Sullivan and Matthew Yglesias pronounced themselves satisfied, and surely that counted for something.

NOW, EVEN THE DIARISTS’ AUTHOR no longer stands by his stories. It will be interesting to hear his explanation of how his essays ever hit the pages of TNR and what kind of fact checking preceded them.

Given his past conduct, it’s a safe bet to say that Franklin Foer will stand by the fabrications even after their author has disowned on them. He’s in too deep to admit error. He can argue that Beauchamp signed a statement for the Army to protect himself, but that he was telling the truth when he wrote for The New Republic. Except of course for the stuff about that disfigured woman where, to use Ezra Klein’s wordage, he “misremembered” where the event took place.

Nevertheless, the end game is afoot. At some point, even Foer’s most ardent defenders will realize that Our Boy Frank chose as his man in Baghdad someone who went there specifically to tell fantastic tales. Their accuracy was never an issue for the author or his editors. When confronted with his writer’s mendacity, Foer promised to get to the truth of the matter. But he didn’t conduct an honest and forthright investigation. Instead he played the role of a lawyer, zealously advocating for a client with an exceptionally weak case. The client wasn’t Scott Beauchamp. The client was the once-again beleaguered New Republic.

It’s a safe bet that Franklin Foer won’t resign unless he’s given the choice between resignation and termination. If he were capable of a selfless act of honor, he probably would have shown that ability by now. But The New Republic has once again been suckered, and the enablers of this fresh entry into TNR’s burgeoning Hall of Shame will have trouble walking away from the wreckage unmarred.

FRANKLIN FOER SET OUT TO HAVE A BAGHDAD DIARIST who would show what combat is really like, and what it does to men’s souls. Ironically, instead of revealing the true face of war, Franklin Foer instead revealed the true face of certain members of the media: Agenda-driven, arrogant, prejudiced and woefully unaware of their own biases. The Diarists purpose was to provide confirmation of Franklin Foer’s pre-existing prejudices and to slander the war effort by slandering the soldiers. As I’ve said countless times on this site and on the air, The New Republic’s original sin in this matter was publishing the Diarist without putting its stories into the proper context of our 160,000 men and women who are serving honorably in Iraq.

Even today, I’m sure Foer has no idea why these little back-of-the-book items so exercised his magazine’s antagonists. In the course of writing this blog, sitting in for Hugh and writing for the Standard, I’ve been in touch with many men who have served in Iraq, who are serving in Iraq and who likely will serve in Iraq. These are the best men our country has to offer. Slandering them is no small matter.

Franklin Foer and others on the left have completely bought their own rubbish about how much they “support the troops”. For over two weeks now, the TNR staffers at The Plank and Andrew Sullivan and Howard Kurtz have either parroted Foer’s weak defenses or accepted them uncritically. While they’ve been aiding and abetting Franklin Foer’s slander of the troops, dozens of American soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq.

The milbloggers and the other writers and bloggers who have hounded Foer really do support the troops. Foer and his kind are so blind to their own biases, they likely don’t see this crucial difference between themselves and their critics.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

 

Glenn Reynolds has a comprehensive set of links.

Over at The New Republic's blog, The Plank, silence.

Oblivious to irony, TNR's trumpets an article by Andrew Bacevich:

The Overhyped David Petraeus
General David Petraeus may be the best man for the job in Iraq. But he's not enough.

I supposed the editors could counter: "We know overhyped."

UPDATE: At The Plank this morning, two posts on the DeYoung/Ricks Basra story, but nothing on the diaster in their own nest. Terrible journalism topped by terrible taste.

"But before Jayson Blair, there was Stephen Glass." And now after Blair there is Beauchamp. And Foer. And the quiet, complete stillness of The Plank.

Note The Plank's explanation of The Plank, especially these lines:

The New Republic has done its fair share to invent and reinvent opinion journalism in this country. And we've had our share of success in the blogosphere. But blogs, like TV shows, can't (or perhaps shouldn't) live forever. So, we're trying to mix up the lineup. You can expect The Plank to satisfy your procrastination jones about six times a day--and a few times more when we can gloat over the jailing of political enemies.

Reinventing opinion journalism again, but definitely not satisfying our "procrastination jones" on this story.

"[O]ur fellow writers and editors at the magazine shouldn't be held accountable for The Plank's idiocies," the introductory note concludes, but that doesn't work the other way. Not at all. No one needs to be an accomplice to the meltdown, but shrugging shoulders and averting eyes and keyboards from the train wreck is not a neutral act.

UPDATE 2: Finally, bold, bright journalistic courage --the editor be damned, I have self-respect-- as Planker Jonathan Chait posts:

You can watch me and Ross Douthat of the Atlantic discuss Scott Thomas Beauchamp, Bill Kristol, foreign policy, and other topics on bloggingheads, here.

--Jonathan Chait

 

Over at OpinionJournal, John Fund warns the Congressional GOP that it is still deaf to the demands for reform. He also notes that the scandal engulfing Alaska's ted Steven's may just be beginning. "f you thought Jack Abramoff was a symbol of Washington sleaze," Fund writes, "see what happens if Mr. Stevens is further embroiled in scandal."

What will happen is that every Democrat in every Senate race will run against Stevens, and quite successfully. Democratic voters don't get exercised over earmarks, and some not even over Tammany Hall-style graft.

But the GOP base won't have it, and if the Congressional GOP circles the wagons around its compromised members, the base will be on the outside firing in.

 

don't buy this painting:


Or this one:

 

E.J.Dionne's a lefty of course, but also a shrewd observer of politics for three decades. After reading this morning's column, some GOP activists will be wondering if Dionne is cheering for Mitt because he's hoping to help along the weakest of the GOP Big Three, or simply calling it like he sees it in the tradition of Post political columnists dating back forever. His column this morning opens:

Watch out, Fred Thompson: By the time you get into the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney may have run away with your constituency.

Dionne then renders his judment on Sunday's debate:

Sunday's Republican debate on ABC's "This Week" suggested what has been obvious to many of the party's professionals: Of all the candidates, Romney has the most comprehensive strategy not only to win the Republican presidential nomination but also to position himself for next year's election.

Romney has managed to become a favorite of the Republican establishment, including members of the Bush family -- Doro Bush Koch, the president's sister, has raised money for him, while both Jeb Bush and former president Bush are favorably disposed. At the same time, Romney has distanced himself from the unpopular incumbent.

I think E.J. is calling it like he sees it because of the last two graphs, which reveal his hopes that Romney is genuinely a "compassionate conservative":

Still, when he was asked about health care, Romney rebuked conservative orthodoxy: He insisted that "tax exemptions" were not enough to cover the uninsured because "the people that don't have insurance aren't paying taxes."

As a rule, Republicans don't think much about people too poor to pay a lot in taxes. It's another reason Romney could pose a serious danger not only to Giuliani, McCain and Thompson but also to the Democrats.

This reminds me of why, from among all the Democrats, I hope Senator Clinton gets her party's nod. Should a Dem occupy the Oval Office in January '09, I want it to be the most security-minded, toughest-on-the-enemy in the Democratic field, which is clearly Clinton. In the same way, Dionne seems to want the Republican most aware of the plight of the distressed to be the GOP standard-bearer.

I have to send E.J. a copy of A Mormon In the White House. Anyone who has served in the positions Romney has in the LDS Church has encountered a lot of human suffering and counseled a great number of people down on their luck, and the book details Romney's experience in those positions. Romney's desire to help the poor is genuine, but so to is his deep respect for markets and the fundamental truth that only economic growth and robust private sector employment can provide the opportunities that the people near or below the poverty line need for long term improvement in their conditions. Expect from him --and I suspect Mayor Giuliani as well-- a "compassionate conservatism" tethered tightly to the experience of working with the urban poor as well as middle-class people dislocated by a rapidly changing economy. Romney's scoffing Sunday at tax deductions for health insurance for the poor who have no income from which to deduct premiums reflected this realism, as did Giuliani's shredding of the assumption that raising taxes provides more money for the repair of bridges. Both men bring a great deal of executive experience to these debates, an extraordinary advantage in the contest for the nomination and in the general election to follow.