Credible Non-Partisanship Is the Only Kind of Non-Partisanship
According to the New York Times, Republicans objected to an economic report published by the Congressional Research Service that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth. The GOP complained that the study relied on an oversimplistic methodology. The CRS eventually withdrew its report (A spokesperson with the Republicans described the communication as 'a good discussion. We have a good, constructive relationship with them. Then it was pulled.'). Causality might be assumed, but it's not proved. If Republican raised good questions, the CRS could have decided, on its own, that there really were major flaws and the report needed a second look.
Is this a Republican war on analysis? Would I ask a rhetorical question if it were?
Mr. Hungerford [the author of the report], a specialist in public finance who earned his economics doctorate from the University of Michigan, has contributed at least $5,000 this election cycle to a combination of Mr. Obama’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
That paragraph is buried at the bottom of the item. It's a doozy: Hungerford has donated to each of the major campaign committees of the Democratic Party. Not only is that bad for the credibility of Hungerford and his report, but he's not exactly the small-dollar donor so frequently touted by party heads.
Now, individuals can and should donate to their causes, and doing so doesn't make them incapable of doing good work. (Though as Patrick Brennan and George Gilder argue, it wasn't particularly good work.) It's just weird to see the Times downplaying the donations when good journalists are aware of how appearances mean a lot when credibility is on the line. The Times's Public Editor very recently addressed the value of credibility in a post defending Nate Silver:
[H]ere is the problem: Mr. Silver’s offering a wager could be interpreted, by critics who already paint him as partisan, as evidence that he has a rooting interest in a particular outcome. Yes, even though the winnings would go to charity and even though he was betting to make a point about his model. There may not be a true conflict of interest, but there is an appearance of one. And appearance matters — it affects credibility, which is at the heart of good journalism. (There is a school of thought that rejects this idea and many people articulated that well on Friday.)
Emphasis mine. If making a wager makes someone seem as though they have a rooting interest in a particular outcome, then donating to a cause most certainly proves it, doesn't it? It's like James Taranto says in his Best of the Web column: Two papers in one!
The credibility of the CRS very much hinges on its non-partisanship, and the fact that someone inside the service is leaking gripes about Republicans presents a challenge. That animus is probably the very reason the CRS decided to withdraw the report, realizing that there wasn't a strong enough defense or clarification of its methodology.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial on the issue is smart, especially for its inclusion of two important facts that undermine the Times's own report: The first is that the Times insinuates (without a source) that a member of Congress requested the CRS study in the first place, but the CRS's spokesperson says that's not so. The second is that the Times makes it sounds like Republican objections led to the report getting pulled -- the CRS spokesperson denies that too.
So, what was this? Probably just some score-settling from within CRS because someone didn't like having his work challenged.
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Comments:
Dec '11
Re: Credible Non-Partisanship Is the Only Kind of Non-Partisanship
Fundamentally there is no such thing as non-partisan.
Mar '12
Re: Credible Non-Partisanship Is the Only Kind of Non-Partisanship
I agree. Partisanship is ubiquitous.
There is bi-partisanship where both sides work together.
Mar '11
Re: Credible Non-Partisanship Is the Only Kind of Non-Partisanship
The way this sentence is phrased might leave someone with the impression that one can never arrive at the truth of things but only a partisan interpretation--and this smacks too greatly of a dangerous relativism to me.
Let us, rather, recognize for the time being that for practical purposes partisanship is ubiquitous. Even having said that, can't we also distinguish between better and worse forms, and more and less egregious expressions of it?
If CRS was cooking its books in such a way that anyone trained in the arts of statistical analysis could recognize the dodgy methodological choices made by the reports authors that heavily skewed the results, and that further the authors may have made these choices so as to benefit their own political cause, truth be damned, than can surely be seen as a dishonest partisanship.
Whereas, the man of the opposite party who critiques that report--while certainly not unbiased himself and while he certainly has how own partisan interest in debunking it--he has been animated by a healthier form of partisanship, has he not?
Edited on November 4, 2012 at 7:32amDec '11
Re: Credible Non-Partisanship Is the Only Kind of Non-Partisanship
Worldviews dictate the way we view the world, and vicariously partisanship.
I do believe that we live in a concrete world, but the filter by which we view it is not. There is nothing free from that filter.
Mar '11
Re: Credible Non-Partisanship Is the Only Kind of Non-Partisanship
Guruforhire: Worldviews dictate the way we view the world, and vicariously partisanship.
I do believe that we live in a concrete world, but the filter by which we view it is not. There is nothing free from that filter. · 11 minutes ago
Yes, surely "worldviews" are the lens through which we initially see the world--we are rooted in traditions, we speak particular languages, we were born in a particular time and place, and so on.
But the question turns on whether it is possible to transcend one's initial worldview in any sense, or whether it entirely dictates all that we can think and say. Really this question is--can be said to be--whether reason exists, whether truth exists, how accessible it is to us. Is philosophy possible?
Our time is particularly accustomed to thinking the way you have formulated the point in your third sentence--"nothing is free from that filter" but it is unclear if that proposition is true or if it is merely the prejudice of our time.
To say the very least, all traditional religious perspectives speak against this view, and certainly the great classical philosophers of the past have also rejected this view.
Edited on November 4, 2012 at 7:55pm