JONATHAN CHAIT JUNE 22, 2011
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Great point here by Adam Serwer:
[T]he press is turning a much more skeptical eye towards Obama’s dubious arguments than it ever did towards Bush’s arguments. Indeed, media outlets mostly acquiesced to Bush’s argument — recall the New York Times’ decision to deploy euphemisms for “torture” because Bush and his supporters had simply redefined the term. This is partly because the Obama administration never tried to bully the press into adopting its chosen terms the way the Bush administration did.
More to the point, though, is that President Obama faces what you might call a “hack deficit.” There simply aren’t many legal scholars on the left who are willing to give Obama a pass. Unlike right-wing legal writers, left-leaning ones are treating Obama and Bush equally. Bruce Ackerman, who called for the impeachment of torture memo author Jay Bybee, has now blasted the White House, claiming it “has shattered the traditional legal process the executive branch has developed to sustain the rule of law over the past 75 years.” His colleague Jack Balkin wrote: “If one is disturbed by Bush’s misuse of the process for vetting legal questions, one should be equally disturbed by Obama’s irregular procedures.” Liberal writers like Eugene Robinson and James Fallows have also rejected Obama’s attempt to redefine the term hostilities. Even in his own administration, State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh was the only one of Obama’s top legal advisers who backed his interpretation of the War Powers Act while the OLC, Pentagon Counsel Jeh Johnson, and Attorney General Eric Holder all disagreed.
Unlike with Bush, Obama doesn’t have a large stable of liberal legal scholars and commenters who are willing to pretend they don’t speak English in order to defend his policies.
I think this phenomenon is best understood within a larger context. Conservatives have developed an ideological critique of a wide swath of elite institutions that serve a mediating role -- media, academia, even science. In the right wing view, all these institutions are bastions of liberalism hiding behind a facade of disinterestedness. Conservatives have developed their own alternative networks, whose members operate under a far more partisan and ideological ethos, on the view that they're merely offsetting the liberalism of their counterparts. Thus the political culture is tugged right by the asymmetry of liberal elites trying to act objectively and conservative counter-elites making no such attempt.
7 comments
Well said. And for the most blatant example, see the Huffington Post articles on Jon Stewart's interview with Fox commentator Wallace.
- AllanL5
June 22, 2011 at 12:04pm
When the most esteemed of the legal establishment of the right stakes out the territory on the very far right, how can the left compete when the legal establishment of the left stakes out the territory barely left of center. Or looked at from another perspective, if someone from the legal establishment of the left held a high profile political position staked out the territory on the far left, he would be impeached if not tried for treason. Earl Warren, for example, was hardly a wild-eyed liberal yet the right depicted him as a threat to the republic and worked tirelessly for his impeachment. By contrast, who in the legal establishment on the left has called for Nino's impeachment? Yet, Nino authors opinions that are laughably partisan. Again and again, Nino authors opinions whose effect is to disempower the already powerless, from cases that involve unions to cases that involve class actions, at every turn making it all but impossible for Americans of limited means to combine their resources in order to seek redress for their grievances. I could identify Dahlia Lithwick as someone who at least gives an honest assessment of the pillars of the legal establishment on the right, but where is she in the legal pecking order. Besides, she is a Canadian!
- rayward
June 22, 2011 at 12:28pm
I am guessing that the post refers to the lack of support among constitutional scholars for the US intervention in Libya rather than the administration's views on same sex marriage. If it is, then it may be said there are many in Congress who are disturbed by the White House definition of "hostilities" in lieu of any definition in the War Powers Act. Not many scholastics can improve their status by arguing that US actions in Libya are entirely humanitarian.
- Doug12
June 22, 2011 at 12:50pm
If, as Chris Wallace and Rush Limbaugh have put it, conservative media is there to tell the other side; and Obama is criticized by the main street media; what does conservative media do when there is no other side? Or are they really just Republican media that tells the Republican propaganda side of things?
- Nusholtz
June 22, 2011 at 1:44pm
Republicans don't like reality, so they have created their own alternate reality.
- liberalref
June 22, 2011 at 1:52pm
So the Left owns satire & comedy, and the Right owns propaganda, anti-intellectualism, & narrow-mindedness. And American voters are roughly evenly split in supporting Dems & Repubs. Super. This is why the well-being of the next generation of Americans will depend on proper education.
- Konstantin
June 22, 2011 at 3:16pm
All this does is reinforce the evidence of the worst stereotypes of the MSM, in particular they're shallow, lazy and easily cowed by the right wing. Sigh.
- tmmats
June 22, 2011 at 4:43pm