POLITICS FEBRUARY 28, 2013
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Gene Sperling once intimidated me.
It happened in the West Wing, in 2011, during a discussion about the federal budget. I suggested the Obama Administration was not doing enough to protect Medicare. Sperling got in my face, leaned into me with the entirety of his five-foot-five frame, and unleashed a verbal torrent. Had I noticed the president protected low-income seniors? Had I read the full text of the fiscal 2012 budget proposal? Had I seen the latest microeconomic forecasts? The statistical assault went on for minutes—searing, painful minutes—and I've never quite gotten over it. At night, when I'm trying to fall asleep, sometimes I hear Sperling's Midwestern twang, taunting me with obscure citations from the Congressional Budget Office.
I might never have had the courage to speak up about this, if Bob Woodward hadn't broken the silence that Sperling's victims have long maintained. In an interview with Politico, Woodward talked about his own difficult encounter with Sperling. It came via e-mail: If Woodward proceeded with an article claiming that Obama had "moved the goalposts" in budget negotiations, Sperling warned, Woodward would "regret" it. "They have to be willing to live in the world where they're challenged," Woodward told Politico, adding later. "I don't think this is the way to operate." 1
Am I making light of this controversy? Yeah, I am. I don't deny the real, if wonkish, ferocity Sperling can bring to his arguments. I also don't question the journalistic acumen Woodward brings to his projects. But Woodward's great talent has always been assembling the facts, not analyzing them.2 Lately he's come to symbolize many of Washington journalism's worst habits, among them the tendency to mistake access for insight—and to take what sources say as gospel. This latest episode is a perfect illustration.
As you probably know by now, Woodward and the White House have been criticizing each other over the history and meaning of budget sequestration, the automatic spending cuts set to take effect on Friday. It was in the course of that ongoing debate that Sperling and Woodward apparently had a conversation in which Sperling raised his voice. Afterwards, he sent Woodward the now-infamous e-mail—the one that Woodward read aloud during his interview with Politico. (To be fair to Woodward, he never used the word "threat." That came from the Politico writers, Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei.)
The idea that a thin-skinned Obama Administration adviser would try to bully a critical reporter is hardly far-fetched. They do it, just like their predecessors in the Bush administration did and their counterparts on Capitol Hill still do. Woodward himself has been accused of similar tactics, as Jason Zengerle reminds us. But the email exchange between Sperling and Woodward isn't an example of such treatment. On the contrary, it's an example of how sources and reporters should communicate.
The bulk of Sperling’s note is about policy substance—the specific history of how the sequester came to be and what assumptions each side made about it. The rest is almost embarrassingly contrite about the previous conversation the two men had: "I apologize" … "my bad" … "my apologies again" … "feel bad about that and truly apologize." When Sperling says Woodward may "regret" taking a different opinion, he clearly means that Woodward may regret being wrong. Perhaps the most telling evidence of the note’s real tone, and how it was interpreted in real time, is Woodward's equally polite and gracious response. "Gene," Woodward writes, "You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat." (You can read the full exchange at BuzzFeed or Politico.)
This controversy has deflected attention away from the underlying substantive dispute, which is significant. Woodward maintains that Obama is responsible for the cuts—because his advisers proposed it, because he hasn't reached a deal with Republicans to avoid it, and because his demand for new revenue is unreasonable. But when Obama proposed the sequester, he wasn't trying to extort Republicans. In fact, he was reacting to extortion: Republicans were threatening to not raise the debt ceiling, creating economic chaos. In any event, Republicans agreed to the cuts and House Speaker John Boehner explicitly defended them. Whether Democrats or Republicans have been more intransigent is obviously a subjective question, but evidence of Republican unwillingness to negotiate keeps coming out—most recently in Ryan Lizza's New Yorker profile of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. In it, Cantor says he was the one who persuaded Speaker John Boehner to scuttle talks over a grand bargain, so that the two sides could fight about fiscal priorities in the election. As for "moving the goalposts," Obama and his allies were, from the very beginning, calling to replace the sequestration cuts with a package that includes revenue, just as Republicans have been calling to replace the sequester with a package that includes cuts to entitlement benefits.
Obama and his advisers should not be above criticism—not as a matter of principle and not when it comes to the sequestration debate itself. Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, for example, argues in the Financial Times that Obama made two key mistakes—first, vowing never to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 a year and, second, proposing his own deep cuts to discretionary spending. The tax threshold is still below what Republicans would countenance and the discretionary cuts are not as steep as the ones the sequester would impose. But those pledges, Sachs says, set a tone for the political debate that makes raising taxes harder and cutting spending easier.
Sachs makes a valid argument, much as Woodward’s reporting adds to our understanding of what actually happened in 2011. Woodward remains among the best fact-gatherers in the business. But making an argument means understanding what those facts mean. And in the debate about fiscal policy, as with the e-mail exchange, Woodward seems to have made some rather odd conclusions.
9 comments
Woodward most likely objects to Obama's less than great skill at managing the Republicans. Sachs is wrong. Obama's biggest mistake was not letting the Bush tax cuts expire. If he had, he would have a pocket full of chits to trade for what he wants from Republicans. As the other Jonathan has suggested, it's easy to make a deal with Republicans: tax cuts for the wealthy in exchange for good policy for everybody else. Chits given away for very little include - do I really have to include the depressing list. Obama is a fine president; if only he had been elected at a time the nation's, the world's, economy wasn't in crisis and the opposition party wasn't so damn narcissistic.
- rayward
February 28, 2013 at 4:58pm
Woodward has said that President Obama moved the goal posts because the Sequester was about cuts only and the President now seek more revenues. The Republicans, on the other hand, insist that it was the Fiscal Cliff negotiations which locked down "no more revenue," implying that revenue was alive as an element of negotiations at least until 12/31/2012, contradicting Woodward's Moving Goal Post Claim. I agree with the premise that paying a hostage taker does not qualify the payor as someone who pays people to take hostages. The sequester has to be judged against the alternative of shutting down the government in that stupid debt ceiling debate, which was something not only thought of, but unilaterally created by the Republicans; unlike the sequester voted on by both Houses.
- Nusholtz
February 28, 2013 at 5:35pm
People. People! Have you not realized that Bob Woodward is only the latest to fall to the epidemic of old-white-guyism? Perfectly unobjectionable people have come down with this, especially over the last four years. There's I-got-mine-opia, moocheritis, and keep-your-hands-off-my-Medicare-osis. While OWGism has merely exacerbated Clint Eastwood's pre-existing conditions and Pete Petersen has a virulent chronic strain, this disease is dangerous and is bringing down John McCain as we speak. Recent epidemiologic work from the CDC has uncovered a recombinant form that is capable of infecting non-white guys. Ben Carson is the highest profile sufferer, but he is by no means alone.
- chaitless
February 28, 2013 at 7:34pm
Y'all should check out the comments thread after John Cassidy's post on this topic over at www.newyorker.com. Cassidy makes essentially the same points as Jon Cohn does here--although he is noticeably less deferential to Woodward--but man alive, did his post ever pull the trolls out from under their bridges! It reminds me of the brief spell back in 2007 when TNR experimented with letting non-subscribers comment. It also reminds me of Obama's town-hall meetings on health reform back in 2009. Right-wing screamers all pile on and make it so unpleasant that other more reasonable voices shut down and go home.
- AaronW
February 28, 2013 at 10:59pm
The only way deficits have ever been paid down throughout history is with new taxes. Spending cuts slash jobs and eliminate even old tax revenue. And only raising taxes or creating new jobs can create new tax revenue. Woodward is just another clueless Republican on this matter. He should have criticized the GOP for submarining Obama's efforts to create new jobs (infrastructure, etc.). We don't need to raise taxes if we create enough jobs. We have gone down exactly the wrong path to pay down the deficit--and made an army of people angry and millions destitute in the process. And what kind of deal could Obama have made with Tea Party fanatics before sequester was mentioned as a way to avoid a total collapse of the world economy, which the GOP was holding like a pistol to the President's head? Jonathan is right here. Woodward is not qualified to analyze politics. He was only good at reporting them. I repeat--was.
- magboy47.
March 1, 2013 at 2:59am
Woodward was a personal hero of mine for a very long time, so this is very sad. Watching him at work for the past, oh, decade or so reminds me of Willie Mays stumbling around the outfield for the '73 Mets.
- W_Bombay
March 1, 2013 at 2:28pm
"Watching him at work for the past, oh, decade or so reminds me of Willie Mays stumbling around the outfield for the '73 Mets." Yeah, but at least the '73 Mets went to the World Series. Woodward's Washington Post is more like the mid-70's Mets, when they routinely dwelt in or about the NL East celler, traded Tom Seaver to the Reds for a bunch of stiffs and publicly humiliated Cleon Jones and his wife for an extramarital peccadillo.
- wildboy
March 1, 2013 at 3:01pm
"I also don't question the journalistic acumen Woodward brings to his projects."//Er, perhaps you should. I am not suggesting that Woodward is a douche-bag just because he behaves like one; or a wingbag just because he sounds like one; or, for that matter, a lazy journalist because his stuff comes across as the product of lazy entitlitis. Still, as a journalist he is failing his metier by making himself into the subject of discussion; even a fiction writer should avoid becoming the story when a book of his is out. One might, of course, argue - pace Wilde - that every book he writes is, in any event, really the portrait of Woodward than the alleged subject, but it is not necessary to go that far. The moment he whined about 'regret', he made himself and not Obama, or the sequester, the story.//All of which begs two essential questions. The first one is his idiotic complaint that Obama is respecting the law too much - that alone should strike him off the reading list of any serious person. The second is, who gives a flying fork who proposed the sequester and why. Congress passed it; it's there. If it's good, well, what in the name of God is Woodward - or Cantor - on about; if it is bad, they should repeal and replace. That, as Oscar might have put it, is all.
- icarusr
March 1, 2013 at 3:04pm
The point missing here, perhaps because it is deemed to obvious to mention, is that the "sequester" was never intended by anyone to be a proposed budget. It was intended to be a poison pill that would induce Congress to COME UP WITH a budget. It contains cuts that were deemed so distasteful to all parties that it would compel them to negotiate a real budget in good faith. To say that Obama has "moved the goal post" because his proposal for a real budget includes additional revenue is utter stupidity. Dhurtado
- NR143296
March 3, 2013 at 11:26am