Krugman - Don't Prettify Our History [2000 stolen election, Iraq

[Vitruvius]

The 2000 election is still an open sore on the body politic. That was clear from the outraged reaction to my mention last week of what would have happened with a full statewide manual recount of Florida.

This reaction seems to confuse three questions. One is what would have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't intervened; the answer is that unless the judge overseeing the recount had revised his order (which is a possibility), George W. Bush would still have been declared the winner. The second is what would have happened if there had been a full, statewide manual recount - as there should have been. The probable answer is that Al Gore would have won, by a tiny margin. The third is what would have happened if the intentions of the voters hadn't been frustrated by butterfly ballots, felon purges and more; the answer is that Mr. Gore would have won by a much larger margin. <SNIP>

<SNIP> the 2000 election remains deeply disturbing - not just the fact that a man the voters tried to reject ended up as president, but the ugliness of the fight itself. There was an understandable urge to put the story behind us.

But we aren't doing the country a favor when we present recent history in a way that makes our system look better than it is. Sometimes the public needs to hear unpleasant truths, even if those truths make them feel worse about their country.

Not to be coy: election 2000 may be receding into the past, but the Iraq war isn't. As the truth about the origins of that war comes out, there may be a temptation, once again, to prettify the story. The American people deserve better.

[texpatriot2004]

1. Give me the plain ugly truth over the pretty bullshit stories this

administration wants to sell anyday. Thank you Krugman, once again, thank you for your honesty.

[BlueEyedSon]

2. kick, recommended

[Uncle Joe]

3. The Daily Howler's Take

http://dailyhowler.com/

THE MISSING (PART 1)! One cohort is AWOL in Harris’ story. Perhaps you can guess who it is: // link // print // previous // next //
MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 2005

"THE LATEST DISAPPEARED FACT: As Paul Krugman notes in this morning’s column, pundit reaction to his previous (August 19) column was truly remarkable. In that prior column, Krugman reported a simple fact about the Florida vote in Campaign 2000: “Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.” This fact has been perfectly clear since November 2001—but most Americans have never heard it! And amazingly, pseudo-con typist John Podhoretz seemed to be numbered among them last Friday. As a general matter, it’s hard to tell when modern pundits are faking, dissembling, playing dumb or lying. But when pundits make statements as laughably wrong as those which follow, you can generally assume that they’re truly uninformed. Go ahead! Emit dark laughs as Podhoretz responds to Krugman’s original column:
PODHORETZ (8/19/05):
KRUGMAN TRIES TO PULL A FAST ONE: Paul Krugman tells a whopper today in his column about media recounts in the 2000 election: "Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore." Um—no. Wrong. Bzzzzz...This will be the subject of about a billion blog entries today. Did Krugman really think he could get away with this?
Podhoretz spent the next several days back-tracking from this remarkably uninformed post. But, most simply put: Um—yes. True. As Krugman is forced to waste time explaining today, both consortium recounts showed that Gore would have won if all Florida votes were recounted. Almost surely, Podhoretz didn’t know this fact—a fact which has been clear for four years. And therein lies a remarkable tale—a tale which Krugman under-tells in this morning’s column.

Why is it? Why is it that most Americans, including Podhoretz, never heard that Gore would have won if all Florida votes were recounted? Krugman is “charitable”—a bit too much so—as he gives his answer:
KRUGMAN (8/23/05): So why do so many people believe the Bush win was rock solid?
One answer is that many editorials and op-ed articles have claimed that no possible recount would have changed the outcome. Let's be charitable and assume that those who write such things are victims of the echo chamber, and believe that what everyone they talk to says must be true.
The other answer is that many though not all reports of the results of the ballot reviews conveyed a false impression about what those reviews said. A few reports got the facts wrong, but for the most part they simply stressed the likelihood—in some cases presented as a certainty—that Mr. Bush would have won even if the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't intervened.
Krugman is right—press reports tended to “stress the likelihood” that Bush would have won under certain scenarios. And they tended to bury the fact Krugman cited last week—the fact that Gore would have won if all votes were recounted. Unsurprisingly, this tendency was visible in Krugman’s own paper, where Richard Berke’s “analysis” of the Times recount completely failed to mention the outcome that had Podhoretz so bollixed last week. (The Times news report, by Ford Fessenden, was more forthcoming.) People like Berke deep-sixed this result—and four years later, people like Podhoretz were outraged by Krugman’s “whopper!” But so it has gone, in so many areas, over the past dozen years.

For our money, Krugman continues to be a bit too polite as he explains why newspapers reported the recounts in the manner they did. “The tone of these reports may have been influenced by the timing: the second consortium's report came out just two months after 9/11,” he writes. “The country wanted very badly to believe in its leadership. Nobody wanted to write stories suggesting that the wrong man was sitting in the White House.” That’s all well and good, but in fact, the press corps’ reporting of these recounts plainly matched its bizarre reporting of Campaign 2000 as a whole. In fact, the press corps adopted a Bush-friendly line throughout Campaign 2000 as they conducted their War Against Gore; the way they tilted their recount reporting was of a piece with their earlier work. And the results of the Miami Herald recount were released in May 2001; 9/11 hadn’t occurred when this first recount was released. But the press corps managed to look away from the Gore-friendly outcomes there, also.

Most Americans have never heard the fact which had Podhoretz so flummoxed last week. Funny, isn’t it? As with so much of our recent history, the mainstream press corps kept its mouth shut—and as a result, the public is clueless. Such deceptions, of course, are much more important in other parts of the Clinton-Gore era."