A new Pew survey shows a rather steep “Partisan Knowledge Gap,” with Republicans and Independents generally better informed than Democrats.

Mary Katharine Ham finds this quite amusing and also notes that, “if the polling had gone the other way, the NYT would shout it from the rooftops.”  She provides examples of the mainstream press doing just that on previous occasions.

We’d need a more wide-ranging set of questions and more replication over time to make any definitive conclusions about the relative knowledge of various partisans.   This does, however, seem to belie the recent White House-approved meme that Fox News and its ilk aren’t really news outlets.   The fact of the matter is — and this has been borne out over time — that people who listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity are among the best informed people out there.   It’s not that those hosts are unbiased — Lord knows, they are — but because they draw an audience that’s much more interested in the news than most Americans.

CNN’s current business model is straight news, with the opinion shows pushed to their sister HLN.  But people actually watch Fox.

Topping Memeorandum is Mike Allen’s wild speculation for Politico about a presidential run by Roger Ailes.

Friends and associates are encouraging Fox News chief Roger Ailes to jump into the political arena for real by running for president in 2012, top sources tell POLITICO.

“Ailes knows how to frame an issue better than anybody, and that’s what we need now,” says one Ailes friend who is encouraging the Fox founder, chairman and CEO to seek the Republican nomination to run against President Barack Obama.

Ailes, 69, has an aggessive, winning personality that made Fox News a huge success — and a huge target for liberal critics.

Frank Luntz, the well-known Republican pollster, said Ailes could be a force if he makes the run. “I have known Roger Ailes for 29 years,” says Luntz. “No one knows how to win better than Roger.”

Talk of an Ailes run, which informed sources said is based on more than mere speculation, could escalate the White House war with Fox war in wildly unpredictable – and fun – ways.

This is a befuddling idea.

To be sure, Ailes is a smart guy with good strategic sense and a command of Republican ideas. Presumably, he wouldn’t have trouble raising money.  And, until such time as he actually declared, he could get a lot of free air time on the most popular news network on the planet.

But he’s not exactly presidential material.  While one could make the argument that “media mogul” is better preparation for president than “community organizer,” he’s never sought elective office or held comparable positions of responsibility.  In modern times, no person has ever been elected to the presidency — or to my recollection nominated by one of the major parties — without having been vice president, governor, senator, or  a famous general.

I can’t see Ailes breaking that mold.  And he’ll carry the baggage of every silly thing that Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity has ever said with him on the campaign trail.

UPDATE:  Ailes has already dashed this one, citing an obvious point that I neglected to mention:

Fox News President and CEO Roger Ailes is laughing off the entreaties of some friends and associates and will not run for president in 2012, an aide said Friday.

Ailes replied when asked about the possibility, according to the aide: “This country needs fair and balanced news more now than ever before, so I’m going to decline a run for the presidency. Besides, I can’t take the pay cut.”

Can’t say I blame him.

Correction: The original version said no person had been elected president without holding major office. As two commenters rightly point out, Abraham Lincoln (who ran for senator and lost) did just that.  The circumstances were, of course, rather more unusual in 1860 than 2008.  Relying on more than my memory, I quickly discovered that James Madison had not been more than a member of the House prior to his election.  They seem to be the only exceptions.

Rush Limbaugh has gotten everyone from Media Matters to The Guardian to Andrew Sullivan to Paul Krugman to Raw Story to FireDogLake up in arms because he allegedly suggested that a NYT reporter kill himself.  Except that, to anyone familiar with either Limbaugh or the conventions of American English, it’s rather obvious he was illustrating absurdity by being absurd.

Here’s the actual quote, as supplied by Media Matters:

I think these militant environmentalists, these wackos, have so much in common with the jihad guys. Let me explain this. What do the jihad guys do? The jihad guys go to families under their control and they convince these families to strap explosives on who? Not them. On their kids. Grab your 3-year-old, grab your 4-year-old, grab your 6-year-old, and we’re gonna strap explosives on there, and then we’re going to send you on a bus, or we’re going to send you to a shopping center, and we’re gonna tell you when to pull the trigger, and you’re gonna blow up, and you’re gonna blow up everybody around you, and you’re gonna head up to wherever you’re going, 73 virgins are gonna be there. The little 3- or 4-year-old doesn’t have the presence of mind, so what about you? If it’s so great up there, why don’t you go? Why don’t you strap explosives on you — and their parents don’t have the guts to tell the jihad guys, “You do it! Why do you want my kid to go blow himself up?” The jihad guys will just shoot ‘em, ’cause the jihad guys have to maintain control.

The environmentalist wackos are the same way. This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?

Rather clearly, Limbaugh isn’t so angry about a silly blog post that he actually thinks Revkin deserves to die.  Rather, he thinks Revkin is an idiot with really screwed up priorities. Limbaugh is employing standard reductio ad absurdum logic here:

• Revkin argues that we should reduce the number of babies being born as a means of reducing CO2 emissions and thereby saving the planet.
• By that logic, “the planet” is more important than people
• Revkin should demonstrate his commitment by ending his own life.

Update (Alex Knapp): Actually, Rush Limbaugh’s big crime here isn’t “telling someone to off himself” — it’s plagarism. This is almost exactly the same joke that the late, great comedian Bill Hicks did in his act around 1991:

People pay lip service to saving the planet, but they don’t – they fail to make the big leap that if you want to save the planet, kill your fucking self. The planet will be saved without you. And what a delightful place it’ll be.

I’ll give Limbaugh credit: he’s stealing from possibly the best comedian of the 20th Century.

Joseph Ashby argues that something fishy is being ignored in the matter of Rush Limbaugh’s failed bid to buy the Rams.

NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith served as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and was a member of Barack Obama’s transition team.

[...]

Despite the fact that Smith’s opposition was based on Limbaugh’s political commentary, the report failed to mention that Smith’s political connections (including those to whom he donated thousands of dollars) have a vested interest in Limbaugh’s discrediting.

[...]

Smith’s gross conflict of interest and apparent political targeting of Obama’s top foe is a huge story. Unfortunately the media appears too blinded by their prejudice of Limbaugh to report on it.

To summarize, we know that a former Obama official and political ally–who was chosen by the NFLPA specifically for his political clout and connections to the highest rungs of power in government–directly attacked Limbaugh for the radio-talker’s political commentary.

Historically politicians have been prone to vindictive and petty behavior, but never in American history has someone had so much power to pummel his political opponents as President Obama. With control over banks, insurance companies, car companies, media (sports media included) and unions (like the NFL players union), Obama tentacles seem to penetrate into nearly every corner of the nation.

Glenn Reynolds, from whom I got the link, doesn’t directly comment but does pass on this from a reader email: “BTW this is a big, big deal, and something Nixon ( or maybe Gene Talmadge or George Wallace in his heyday.) would have done. The difference is the press wouldn’t have played along then. Not because it was wrong. The press could care less about that ( Go look up Walter Duranty), but because Nixon wasn’t a Democrat. It’s all about power with the press…their power. You get in between them and it, heaven help you.”

Now, unlike Glenn, I am not a lawyer (or, as they say on the Internets, “IANAL”).  But I fail to see a problem here.

For the sake of argument, let’s concoct an outlandish conspiracy totally unsupported by facts:

Attorney General Holder personally called Smith and says:  “Hey, Rush Limbaugh has placed a bid to become a minority owner of the Rams.  He’s been a real thorn in our sides.  Do whatever you can to screw him over and paint him as a racist.  I’ll send over some fake quotes that I saw on Wikipedia which will help!’

Smith:  “Yes, sir, boss!   I’ll also call up Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.  They’ll help for free, since Limbaugh makes fun of them all the time.”

At this point, the story unfolds as we’ve seen it.

(Again, this is a completely made-up scenario.  It strikes me as far more plausible that Smith and Holder — both African American liberal Democrats — came to dislike Limbaugh independently and needed no coordination whatsoever. Ockham’s Razor and all that.)

Would any laws have been broken?  Would Smith or Holder be in violation of any professional codes?  Would Smith be in any violation of his fidiciary duties as NFLPA head? None that I can see.  Limbaugh’s a controversial figure believed by a not inconsiderable number of people to be racist.   It’s quite likely, then, that some number of NFLPA members were antsy about Limbaugh as an owner.

Further, Smith is an attorney.  Like many in his profession, he’s had numerous clients.  Does having had a client in the past that might have some tangential interest in a matter being worked on for a current client usually require some sort of formal disclosure?   I’m unaware of such a requirement but, again, IANAL.

Glenn Reynolds links some poor sap who is angry at the NFL because Rush Limbaugh has been dumped from the group bidding for the Rams and is going to start a one-man boycott under the banner “Punt the NFL.”

I have cancelled my DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket package (including the Supercast). I will not watch ONE MINUTE of NFL games or coverage this season—including the Super Bowl.

I guess I’m going to have to go for it on 4th down.  (Or is “Teflon” punting on 2nd down, given that we’re only 5 games into the season?)

In addition to not being overly outraged at Limbaugh’s fate (see the above link),

• I think boycotts are stupid.

• I’ve been watching football for more than three decades now, predating my ever having heard of Rush Limbaugh.

• Limbaugh didn’t own an NFL franchise when I signed up for Sunday Ticket again this year, so why should I be upset with the status quo ante?

• Sunday Ticket is non-refundable.  The NFL doesn’t care a lick whether you actually watch the games.  This is precisely as effective as burning a Dixie Chicks CD you bought last year.

• While the owners were unlikely to approve the bid with Limbaugh in the ownership group, the NFL technically didn’t ban Rush — the senior members of his bidding coalition did.

• See bullet one.

Missouri native Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from membership in a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams and keep them in the city.  This speeds up the inevitable conclusion fo the NFL’s owners refusing to let the controversial pundit join their ranks.

Limbaugh was to be a limited partner in a group headed by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts. Checketts said in a statement Wednesday that Limbaugh’s participation had become a complication in the group’s efforts and the bid will move forward without him.

Checketts told the Associated Press he will have no further comment on the bid process.

Three-quarters of the league’s 32 owners would have had to approve any sale to Limbaugh and his group. Earlier this week, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay predicted that Limbaugh’s potential bid would be met by significant opposition. Several players have also voiced their displeasure with Limbaugh’s potential ownership position, and NFL Players Association head DeMaurice Smith, who is black, urged players to speak out against Limbaugh’s bid.

A Limbaugh spokesman told ESPN that Limbaugh would have no comment on Wednesday. Earlier, on his syndicated radio show, Limbaugh was defiant, holding on to hope that he still could be part of the ownership group that buys the Rams. “This is not about the NFL, it’s not about the St. Louis Rams, it’s not about me,” Limbaugh said. “This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative. “Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we’re going to have.”

I’m sympathetic to Limbaugh here, in that he’s been smeared by made-up quotes and vilified for making perfectly reasonable and legitimate political arguments in a provocative manner.  Conservatives are frequently branded as “racists” and “sexists” and “homophobes” as a tool of stifling debate. While I long ago got tired of his shtick, I still think he’s a decent guy who’s made a lot of enemies with his act.  Given that he’s been doing three hours of live radio five days a week just about every day for nearly twenty years, he’s bound to have said quite a few stupid things.

Further, there’s an argument to be made that he’d be good for the NFL.  He’s a true fan of the game and loves his boyhood home, so he’d bring a lot of passion to his minority stake in the Rams.  And this bid is the best chance to keep the team in the city.   He could be an NFL version of Mark Cuban, which the No Fun League could use.

Among those making pretty powerful arguments against Limbaugh’s bid, ironically, is Mark Cuban.

The problem with Rush is that its his job to take on all of life’s partisan issues and problems.  Not only is it his job to take on these issues and problems, its key to his success that he be very opinionated about whichever issues he feels are important to him and/or will cause his very large audience to tune in.  Given that we will never know what the “next big issue ” in this world that Rush will be discussing on his show is,  its impossible for the NFL to even try to predict or gauge the impact on the NFL’s business if something controversial, or even worse yet, something nationally polarizing happens. There is an unquantifiable risk that comes with the size of Rush’s audience.  The wrong thing said on the show, even if its not spoken by Rush himself,  about a sensitive national or world issue could turn into a Black Swan event for the NFL.

Thats a huge risk that is not commensurate with the value a minority investment in a franchise brings.

This isnt about Free Speech. Its about the NFL protecting their business.  There is no reason to put it at risk.  If Rush were to retire from his show, or become a local DJ in Sacramento, or just about anything else he may want as a vocation, then I dont think they would have any problem with him being an investor in a team.

And, frankly, in the Age of YouTube, even a local shock jock would have the same issue.

Steven Taylor points out that the NFL is institutionally conservative on such matters:

First, the NFL is extremely image conscious and Rush makes a living going out of his way to say things that make somewhere between 30%-60% of the population mad on a daily basis (depending on what he is talking about).  As such, it is hardly a shock that some NFL owners are a bit skittish about welcoming him into their ranks.

The second business point I would make is that this is a case of pure capitalism at work:  private owners making decisions concerning with whom they are willing to do business.  Conservatives really have no ideological grounds to object if the NFL owners have found Limbaugh too controversial for their business tastes.   Heck, if Major League Baseball thinks Mark Cuban is too controversial, it is hardly a shock that there was pushback on Limbaugh from the NFL.

All of this does boil down, however, to the voting rules, as institutions do matter.  To wit:  for a purchase to be approved, 75% of the league’s owner have to agree on the sale.  There are 32 teams, meaning 24 had to say yes, but much more importantly, only 9 had to say no.   One of the simple facts that is often ignored by casual observers about super-majority rules is that they empower the minority substantially.

Add to that, by the way, that the League is about to enter into serious labor negotiations that are already extremely contentious.  No way are the owners, who need serious concessions from the players to realign the business model, going to antagonize the union — which is overwhelmingly comprised of African Americans — by accepting an owner that many players deem racist.  (Now, if Limbaugh were the majority bidder and offering to substantially overpay for the Rams, it might well be a different story.)   Fair?  No.  But not much about the business of professional sports is.

Now, as Doug Powers and others point out, the NFL has some shady characters in its midst already.  But there’s a much higher tolerance for thuggish behavior on the part of great athletes than for prospective owners. Rick Moran notes, too, that the NFL has always been way behind the other leagues in minority hiring. But that’s really all the more reason for owners to be cautious.

Sean Hackbarth argues that Limbaugh has done himself no favors, either.

Rush failed to treat his quest as a campaign with the end goal being a stake in an NFL team. He played the politics wrong and lost this chance to be an owner. With better preparation the conservative giant would have better anticipated the attacks against him and eased the worries of certain owners during the firestorm.

As soon as he had an inkling to want to own an NFL team Rush needed to start laying the groundwork to make sure there wouldn’t be nine opposing votes. He should have started a process years in advance to soothe owners’ fears that he wouldn’t be an annoyance as an owner. Owners are businessmen who love football, so they would prefer to focus on improving their teams and growing their fan bases instead of dealing with the distraction of the latest fake-controversy created by Rush’s opponents. Running a business is partially about managing risks. Controversy is a risk that can be avoided, so it’s not a surprise NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said what he said.

Finally, as Tom Maguire observes, “Rush, love him or hate him he has made fabulous living being controversial and (that awful word) divisive.  That has opened some doors to him and, unsurprisingly, closed others.  Quel surprise.”

Too soon Rush, too soon:

“Discussing the passing of the lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy . . . and were were his prey.”

via Karl Frish via Teresa Kopec

Conor Friedersdorf wants to ban several conservative talk hosts from news programs cable news networks on the grounds that they “consistently prove themselves to be intellectually dishonest, intemperate partisans whose very approach to public discourse is deeply destructive of it.” This strikes E.D. Kain as “reprehensible” because “Intellectual dishonesty is not something you can scientifically pin down. One man’s intellectually dishonest pundit is another man’s political mentor.”

Conor has therefore offered a means of operationalizing and coding for intellectual dishonesty:

a) factually inaccurate statements, b) misleadingly edited audio clips, c) misrepresenting the views of political opponents, and d) using obviously fallacious reasoning

He suggests that Rush Limbaugh does one or all of these things in virtually every three hour show and is therefore obviously intellectually dishonest.   Maybe so.  Then again, virtually every pundit who is controversial enough to be repeatedly invited back on television does all of those things (save perhaps for the audio clips) as a matter of course.  So, application of this rule — presuming the coding is done by people unsympathetic to the pundit — would essentially eliminate the entire pundit class from appearing on television.  Which may be a good thing!

The basic format of television “debate” programs promotes and rewards intellectual dishonesty of this type.  The “Firing Line” model of intellectuals blathering on back and forth on a single topic for an hour is long dead.  In the modern era, TV discussions are brisk, loud, and pit black vs. white with no grays permitted.  Analysts who fail to make bold, decisive judgments without a lot of pesky caveats simply don’t fit in.

Two blogging conventions, Netroots Nation (the successor to Daily Kos) and RightOnline, are being held in Pittsburgh this week.  As Timothy McNulty reports for the Post-Gazette, they’re different in ways other than politics.

The RightOnline conference starting tomorrow morning at the Sheraton Station Square will have about a quarter of the 2,000 attendees at the liberal conference in the convention center, and only about 20 speakers to the 400 at Netroots. Liberals are throwing multiple parties at the Warhol and a gay-lesbian kiss-in. Conservatives end Friday night with a film criticizing Al Gore.

What, no conservative homosexual kiss-in?! Shocking!

Matt Yglesias says it’s the demographics, stupid:

The over-60 demographic is a hotbed of conservative sentiments, but it’s also very disinclined to go online. The stereotype of progressive bloggers and blog readers as “young” tends to be wildly overstated, but what is true is that the online universe contains relatively few senior citizens, and the current version of the conservative coalition contains quite a lot of seniors.

But conservative bloggers aren’t seniors, so that doesn’t explain it.  Demographics do matter, however. The Netroots do skew younger and their most prominent bloggers tend to have institutional affiliations or be full-time bloggers.  Most of the top conservative bloggers still have day jobs that don’t involve blogging.

An additional explanation is offered in McNulty’s piece:

“The problem by and large remains that on the right, the focus still tends to be on punditry as opposed to activism,” said Erick Erickson, the editor of RedState, and a speaker at RightOnline on Saturday. “It has been focused on bloggers trying to be the next Rush Limbaugh or the next columnist, not on urging readers to call members of Congress or go to tea parties.”

Beyond that, as Chris Bowers and others have argued for years, liberals have tended to be more communal online whereas conservatives have tended to be individualistic.  I, for one, can’t imagine traveling to Pittsburgh to talk about blogging for several days.

Photo by Flickr user Neeta Lind under Creative Commons license.

Danny Glover reports on President Obama’s total restructuring of the White House message machine in a piece ominously titled “The Cost of Controlling The Press.”

Barack Obama’s White House is spending more than $80,000 a week to staff its old and new media offices. Add the price of speechwriters and the White House communications tab reaches nearly $100,000 a week, or nearly $5 million a year-and that is for salaries alone.

[...]

Although other staffers undoubtedly did work on the White House website and other Internet projects, Bush’s dedicated new media team appears to have consisted of two people-a specialty media director who earned $84,000 a year and a website assistant who earned $34,000. By contrast, Obama has the 11 employees in the Office of Public Engagement and another nine aides with titles such as new media director, new media creative director, deputy director of video and e-mail content/design lead. Those nine earn nearly $700,000 a year combined.

One has to read well into the piece, however, to understand that this is mostly a reshuffle of existing resources:

Overall, Obama is spending about 12 percent more for his communications operation than Bush-$4.97 million compared with $4.44 million.

So, while the White House spending nearly $5 million in taxpayer dollars for propaganda  seems outrageous on its face, it’s essentially par for the course. Presumably, the increase is a combination of cost-of-living adjustments and a reallocation of staff from other areas to communications. After all, Congress controls presidential spending on staff.

More troubling: Glover notes that the new communications team has managed to bypass the already Obama-friendly press on numerous occasions, including staged “town hall” meetings with preselected guests and even disinviting the press entirely from mundane events like photo-ops with championship sports teams, preferring to produce their own videos for release on the Web.

I don’t like it.  But, again, it’s a natural evolution of the system.  Ronald Reagan’s team was legendary for limiting access to the president and ensuring that their preferred sound byte was pretty much all the press had to report in a given day.  Bill Clinton famously bypassed the more difficult talk shows during the 1992 campaign, instead going on talk radio and late night comedy shows.  George W. Bush and his team gave more time to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other friendly outlets.   Obama is taking that to the next level using social media techniques that PR firms have been advocating for their clients for years.

Again, this is probably not healthy.  The press is an important check on our politicians and, to the extent the politicians can bypass the press to get their message out, we lose that check.  It’s especially problematic at times, like the present, when the White House and Capitol Hill are controlled by the same party.

It’s quite possible, however, that the press will grow tired of being manipulated in this way and go out and do some actual reporting.  Hanging around the press room for scraps isn’t really journalism, after all.

It’s been years since I’ve quoted Ted Rall here. He hasn’t appeared in a post title since September 2005’s “Rall: Charities are for Suckers.”  The man’s eminently quotable, if in a train wreck sort of way, but constantly pointing out that some commentators are crazy attention whores really doesn’t advance the debate much.

But you’ve got to hand it to Rall:  He’s a consistent loon.

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

Take that, Rush Limbaugh!  In your face, G. Gordon Liddy!

For what it’s worth, while I didn’t vote for Obama and will quite probably* vote for his Republican opponent in 2012, I neither think Obama has done anything to merit resignation nor think he’s sold out to lobbyists any more than the next guy.  Being president is much harder than being a pundit, in that actions have consequences.

For example, I simultaneously believe the Turks committed genocide nearly a century ago and that the United States Government should refrain from rubbing their noses in it.  Whatever satisfaction an individual might get from Speaking Truth to (Middling) Power, Turkey is an important ally at the nexus of several of our most pressing foreign policy hotspots.  Alienating them over something that happened generations ago is foolish.  The President Obama, faced with that reality, is more cautious than was Candidate Obama, is a feature, not a bug.

___________

*There are a handful of plausible nominees that could put me off the reservation.

So says E.D. Kain:

Fox News is simply not conservative.  The fact of the matter is, I find NPR and even News Hour more conservative than Fox – but in a different sense, I suppose, than the standard boiler plate conservatism that has so infested American politics.  What I mean to say is that the conservatism of Fox News tends to be wrapped up in loud, divisive, trashy television that is cheap and ugly and reactionary and essentially all things distasteful that conservatives should look at with scorn and antipathy.  The measured, reserved, thoughtful and culturally sensible tone of NPR is far more conservative.  I’d rather my kids listen to it than watch Glenn Beck.  I’d rather they listen to Fresh Air than Rush Limbaugh.  Why have conservatives let go of the high culture war?  Why have they conceded defeat there – in the arts, in literature, in music – trading it instead for trash television and cheap rhetoric?

Now, I’d disagree with the counter-premise that the Left is somehow more highbrow.  I don’t know that MSNBC is any less histrionic than FOX or that lefty talk radio is sweetness and light — or even that every show on FOX is lowbrow (”Special Report” was worth watching in Brit Hume’s day, as was “Fox News Sunday”).  And comparing mainstream NPR programming with unabashedly partisan shows is rather unfair.  But much of what passes for conservative commentary has certainly strayed from the path of William F. Buckley, Jr.

The particular case of Glenn Beck is interesting.  I watched a couple episodes of his Headline News show before growing bored and haven’t seen his Fox show, aside from a handful of clips on the blogs and other television shows.   From what I gather, he comes across as a raving lunatic who’s afraid of his own shadow.

The reason this fascinates me is that, perhaps three or four years ago, I was a regular listener to his talk radio show, which was on in the afternoons when I was making the 45-minute commute from my then-job to my then-home.  He was a bit more emotional than the typical show host, which I ascribed to his personal story of recovery from a series of poor personal choices, but seemed like a genuinely decent fellow trying to make sense of the world.  This was well after the shock of the 9/11 attacks, so the subsequent stylistic change is not part of the “everything” that changed on that fateful day.   So, I’m honestly flummoxed as to where the current incarnation of Beck came from.

Meanwhile, the leading lights of liberal commentary, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, are taking the approach pioneered by Rush Limbaugh of making fun of the other side in a way that’s genuinely entertaining.   They don’t come across as afraid of or hating conservatives but as simply bemused by their opponents. [To clarify, I'm not arguing that Stewart and Colbert are Limbaugh imitators; they're not.  But Limbaugh was a pioneer in combining political commentary and humor in a way to attract a mass audience on a weekdaily basis.]

Regardless, I’d have to agree that I’d much rather spend an afternoon with your average NPR host — or, goodness, Stewart or Colbert — than most of the ranting loons passing themselves off as the voice of conservatism these days.

“It was easier for Obama to fire the CEO of a private company than it is to fire most federal employees.” – Radley Balko

“I don’t know if you know this or not but starting today the United States government will stand behind your warranty on a newly purchased General Motors car.  Now, that’s going to be cool, isn’t it?  You take your car in for a problem and you’re going to have to argue with the government representative you’re dealing with as to whether or not it’s really a problem and whether you caused it.  You think dealing with the DMV is a struggle now, wait ’til this kicks into gear.” – Rush Limbaugh

Regular readers know I’ve become increasingly annoyed with Limbaugh in recent years (although I was a faithful listener for nearly a decade) but it’s an amusing thought.  One wonders, indeed, how the government will manage warranty service if, as seems likely, GM goes through bankruptcy proceedings.

Hat tip to Kate McMillan for the Limbaugh link. Graphic via Limbaugh.

CBS’ Brian Montopoli reports on a new poll by his network that has Rush Limbaugh’s favorability ratings at 19 percent:

No talk show host in history has been re-elected with numbers that low.  Oh, wait . . .

Chris Cillizza’s report that the Obama campaign apparatus is being “activated” by the Obama administration gets A1 treatment in today’s WaPo:

President Obama will kick off an all-out grass-roots effort today urging Congress to pass his $3.55 trillion budget, activating the extensive campaign apparatus he built during his successful 2008 candidacy for the first time since taking office.

The campaign, which will be run under the aegis of the Democratic National Committee, will rely heavily on the 13 million-strong e-mail list put together during the campaign and now under the control of Organizing for America (OFA), a group overseen by the DNC. Aides familiar with the plan said it is an unprecedented attempt to transfer the grass-roots energy built during the presidential campaign into an effort to sway Congress.

David Plouffe, who was Obama’s campaign manager and is now an adviser to OFA, called this effort the “first major engagement” of the group in the legislative process and said in a statement that it will call on supporters “to help the President win the debate between those who marched in lockstep with the failed Bush economic policies and now have no new ideas versus the Obama agenda which will help us manage the short term economic crisis and puts us on the path to long term prosperity.”

Matt Yglesias thinks this is “a good idea” and I agree up to a point.   Even though, like Rush Limbaugh, hope Obama fails in enacting many of his budget priorities, it makes sense for him to use the tools available to him to do what he was elected to do.

My concern here, though, is that OFA merges the White House and a campaign apparatus in a way we haven’t seen since the Nixon Administration.  I assign no nefarious intent here and have no reason to believe that Team Obama is doing anything illegal, immoral, or improper. The relationship between elected official’s offices and campaign staffs are often murky and that’s been true of presidents of both parties for as long as I can remember.   They call it a “permanent campaign” for a reason.

But this may be a case of a difference in degree amounting to a difference in kind. OFA is operating under the aegis of the DNC because it would have been illegal for it to be run out of the White House.  You can’t use political mailing lists for official government business, for one thing.  But, of course, the transfer to DNC is purely a legal fiction.

Is this just the natural evolution of how the game is played?  Or a new game entirely?

Photo by Flickr user baratunde, used under Creative Commons license.