Opinion Editorial | |
| Wednesday, August 25, 1999 | |
In Politics, Ideas Matter More Than Money |
Anyone who reads the national press or watches network television knows that reporters and pundits are obsessed with campaign finance reform. Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal, for example, seldom writes about anything else. But he is only the most extreme case. His view that money is poisoning politics is shared by virtually the entire national press corps. The question is why?
There is certainly no doubt that money is important in politics, but its importance is grossly overstated. If money is all that matters to win, then Michael Huffington would be a U.S. Senator from California. He spent far more than his opponent, but lost. In every election cycle there are candidates who lose to underfunded opponents. But these cases are seldom reported, because they do not fit into the media's world view.
I believe that the media obsess about money in politics mainly because they either don't believe ideas matter or because they are afraid of the possibility. Either way, by ignoring the role of ideology, policies and issues in elections, they are able to maintain their own virtual monopoly in deciding what the national agenda should be. Also, the focus on money makes it easier for them to mathematically determine who is up and who is down.
The fact is that all national political reporters have an ideological ax to grind, and that is liberalism. There is not one single conservative beat reporter covering national politics at any TV network or at any of the major national newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. There are a couple of conservative columnists like Robert Novak and Paul Gigot who cover national politics, but their work is automatically dismissed by beat reporters by virtue of their being columnists.
National political reporters don't even bother to deny that they are overwhelmingly liberal anymore. Instead they argue that it doesn't affect their reporting. This is just nonsense. Even if one concedes that they strive for objectivity and accuracy in their reporting -- a big concession -- the liberal bias clearly impacts reporters' judgment about what is news and what isn't, about whose views deserve respect and whose are outside the mainstream, and about how ideas and people they disagree with are characterized.
It is well known, for example, that the national media always label those on the right side of the political spectrum as conservative or ultra-conservative, while those equally situated on the left side of the spectrum are very rarely called liberal and never called ultra-liberal. I think this is mainly because to someone who is liberal, who spends almost all of their time with liberals, liberal groups like the Brookings Institution define the mainstream. A group would have to composed of Marxist revolutionaries to be so far to the left that it seemed necessary to label it as left-wing. By the same token, just being a Republican is so far to the right of most reporters that mainstream conservatives appear to be radical right-wingers, indistinguishable from outright fascists.
Given this pervasive liberalism among the national press, it is clear that no conservative would ever get elected dog catcher if they had to depend on fair coverage. But clearly they do. There are two reasons. First, the American people are far more conservative than most reporters. Second, conservatives can break through the liberal bias with paid advertising. That is why liberals are so intent on campaign financing reform. They want to deny conservatives the possibility of going around their stranglehold on the national media so that the American people will only get the liberal spin on every candidate and issue.
Source: Bruce Bartlett, senior fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis, August 25, 1999.
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