Specter Skates

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 4, 2009 10:45 AM

I was surfing the cable news channels, where the swine flu outbreak was being treated as possibly the next bubonic plague, displacing the news of President Obama's 99th day in office, when word broke that Arlen Specter was switching parties.

The political bombshell reverberated across the screen for hours, until the networks ditched the Pennsylvania senator for a low-speed police chase of a stolen rig with a man clinging to the back. I was waiting in front of a camera at that moment to talk about the feverish flu coverage on Headline News, and never did make it on the air.

News seems more ephemeral than ever in this age of TiVo and tossed-off tweets. But it's worth hitting the pause button to examine how media organizations chronicled the Specter saga.

The political elements, naturally, were front and center -- Specter's fear of losing a GOP primary next year, and his moving the Democrats within one Al Franken victory dance of a filibuster-proof majority. But in the straight-news reports, little attention was devoted to this question: Was this a betrayal of the voters who elected Specter?

Most journalists assumed the role of handicappers, accepting as a given that this is the way the game is played. So what if Specter had promised to serve six years as a Republican? So what if Specter had told Newsweek less than three weeks earlier that "I'm a Republican and I'm going to run in the Republican primary and on the Republican ticket"? He was acting to save his skin; no further explanation necessary.

This value-neutral reporting was reflected in the headlines: "Specter Switches Parties; More Heft for Democrats" (New York Times). "Specter Gives Dems a Boost in Stifling Dissent" (USA Today). "Specter Leaves GOP, Shifting Senate Balance" (Washington Post). Not a hint that he had done anything untoward.

There were some exceptions among mainstream journalists. Doyle McManus wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Specter was "cheerfully open about the cynicism of his move." Time's Michael Grunwald said the move highlighted his "desperate opportunism." The question surfaced only briefly on two Sunday shows: CBS's Bob Schieffer asked Specter about Republicans who voted for him and whether "you let them down," while NBC's David Gregory asked about David Broder's criticism, in The Washington Post, of the senator's "willingness to do whatever will best protect and advance the career of Arlen Specter."

Correspondent Carl Cannon, on AOL's new Politics Daily site, says conservatives are right in complaining that much of the media have "a double standard regarding party-switchers . . . When Republicans morph into Democrats, we tend to act like they finally saw the light, and quote them ad nauseam about how the Republican Party has gotten too narrow, etc., etc." But when a Democrat joins the GOP, "we concentrate on the tactical advantage to the party switcher."

When it comes to commentators, their analysis often turns on the direction of the defection. In 1994, when Democratic Sen. Richard Shelby switched parties days after the Republicans won control of Congress, a New York Times editorial said: "Talk about slipping out of the hills to bayonet the wounded! . . . His desertion to the victorious Republicans this week was hardly a huge surprise." But when Jim Jeffords flipped control of the Senate to the Democrats by leaving the GOP in 2001, the Times said approvingly that the Vermont lawmaker had given George W. Bush "an embarrassing lesson" for having pulled a "conservative bait-and-switch" on the country.

Specter's move also gave rise to plenty of prognostication about the struggling Republican Party. To be sure, a party that has been virtually wiped out in the Northeast and controls nothing in Washington is in poor health. But it's worth recalling how quickly the diagnosis can change.

Days after Bush was reelected in 2004, the New York Times reported that "the Democratic Party emerged from this week's election struggling over what it stood for, anxious about its political future, and bewildered about how to compete with a Republican Party that some Democrats say may be headed for a period of electoral dominance." Another piece said there were "signs" of "a Democratic party seemingly trapped in second place," with Democrats asking: "What will it take to break the pattern -- an act of God?"

The Los Angeles Times said the '04 outcome "threatens to leave Democrats at a long-term disadvantage in future races for the White House and battles for Congress." Another story had "insiders" concluding that "the blue-state party needs a face from a red state if it is going to expand beyond its base on the two coasts and preserve its hold on the Upper Midwest." Funny, then, that a Midwestern nominee carried such states as North Carolina and Virginia.

There was, of course, no way to predict that Bush's second term would be sunk by Katrina, bloody chaos in Iraq and a financial meltdown that would require a massive bank bailout. But that is precisely the point: Crystal-ball journalism tends to be overtaken by events.

By week's end I turned my attention back to swine flu -- excuse me, the H1N1 outbreak -- and the not incidental question of whether we're all going to die. But that was soon overshadowed by Chrysler's bankruptcy, which was eclipsed by Justice David Souter's retirement announcement, which spawned rampant speculation about who might be named to succeed him.

Still, the constant cable coverage suggested that the flu remained exceedingly scary, or why would the story be on hour after hour? Only after days of such teeth-gnashing did ABC's in-house doctor, Timothy Johnson, say the media were overreacting and the Los Angeles Times report that scientists believe the virus may do less damage than run-of-the-mill outbreaks.

If that's true, swine flu will have been the most over-hyped story since Paris Hilton went to jail -- and the media will lurch toward the next crisis.

Fading Sun

The firings last week at the Baltimore Sun, where nearly a third of the newsroom was axed, left the survivors confused about the paper's future.

"That's the question all of our members are asking: What's the plan?" says Angie Kuhl, the top Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild official at the Sun.

Editor Monty Cook says the paper will have to get by with fewer editors as it merges its newspaper and Web site. "We're not backing away from accuracy," he says. "We're not sacrificing accuracy for speed."

A third of the 61 people who were fired were editors, including the deputy managing editor, two top editorial page editors, two sports editors, the science editor and about half the copy desk -- who were asked to leave the building immediately. "They do seem to be preserving the beat reporters and investigative reporters," Kuhl says. "But all the people who make the paper behind the scenes seem to be devastated."

While most newspapers are undergoing sharp cutbacks these days, the Sun's situation is especially severe because its owner is the bankrupt Tribune Co. Given how thin the paper feels these days -- and despite Cook's plans to hire "community coordinators" to engage with bloggers and Facebook users -- it's hard to see how these cutbacks will help the Sun rise again.

"We are not abandoning the print product," Cook insists. On a personal level, he says, "this was one of the most difficult weeks any of us at the Sun has experienced."

Premature Disclosure

After a newsroom revolt, Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern has halted a marketing project that asked readers to react to summaries of stories in progress that had not yet been published. Kern told his paper he took responsibility for what he called "a failure of communication and a breakdown in judgment."

Globe Faces Shutdown

You can read my piece on the New York Times Co. filing a 60-day notice of intent to close New England's largest newspaper here. It is difficult to imagine Boston without the Globe.

SCOTUS Speculation

The battle is underway, despite the inconvenient lack of a nominee:

"Supreme Court Justice David Souter's planned retirement touches off a fierce fight between the parties that could reinvigorate moping Republicans and, depending on his choice, enhance or tarnish President Barack Obama's bipartisan image," Politico says.

"Within hours of Thursday night's leak about Souter's plans, Republicans were circulating claims that potential nominees were 'liberal' and 'activist,' and pointing reporters to comments that Obama and Vice President Joe Biden had made about the confirmation process when they were in the Senate."

Never forget: All politics (and journalism) is local:

"Ever since Barack Obama's election as president, there has been anticipation among scholars at the University of Chicago's Law School that one of their own could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court bench in the next few years," the Chicago Tribune observes.

"Almost every short list of possible nominees to succeed Justice David Souter includes three individuals with strong ties to the Hyde Park law school: U.S. Appeals Court Judge Diane Wood, Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein and U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan."

At The Page, Mark Halperin poses these SCOTUS questions:

"1. Will Republicans be drawn into a discussion about whether they will consider a filibuster?

"2. Does the new White House make any vetting mistakes?

"3. Do the Republican senators, Republican Party, conservative activists, and the right-wing echo chamber get together -- quickly, like today -- and figure out a strategy they can all stick to in order to frame and win a battle for the future, even if, as is almost certain, Obama's nominee is confirmed?

"4. Does the White House get drawn into a discussion of an abortion litmus test for its nominee?

"5. Does the White House leak out names as classic trial balloons?"

Why bother, when the media are floating so many of their own hot-air balloons?

Could the coming fight unify the GOP? Josh Marshall doesn't think so:

"I've heard a few people mention that this represents a political opportunity for the Republicans. But for the life of me I cannot see that. Supreme Court nominations are extremely high stakes battles for partisans on both sides and each party wants to hit a nomination struggle with the most political muscle possible.

"President Obama has extraordinarily high personal popularity at the moment. His approval rating, while down a bit off the inaugural high, has stabilized and even tracked up a bit at a strong 60%. His party is nearing 60 seats in the senate. And the Specter party-switch, while perhaps not that significant in numerical terms, has left the Senate Republican caucus deeply split and demoralized -- with one faction savoring an emasculated, tea-bag-driven ideological purity and another disgusted with the party's ultras and anxious to reenter the actual national political conversation. In other words, it's about the worst footing imaginable for senate Republicans to try to defeat or stand united against whomever Obama chooses."

National Review's Ed Whelan tries to turn the president's own words against him:

"In explaining his vote against [the confirmation of Chief Justice] Roberts, Obama opined that deciding the 'truly difficult' cases requires resort to 'one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy.' In short, 'the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart.' No clearer prescription for lawless judicial activism is possible.

"Indeed, in setting forth the sort of judges he would appoint, Obama has explicitly declared: 'We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old -- and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.' So much for the judicial virtue of dispassion. So much for a craft of judging that is distinct from politics.

"Souter has been a terrible justice, but you can expect Obama's nominee to be even worse. The Left is clamoring for 'liberal lions' who will redefine the Constitution as a left-wing goodies bag."

Funny, because the NYT offers a different outlook after interviewing Obama's law school colleagues and students:

"Mr. Obama believes the court must never get too far ahead of or behind public sentiment, they say. He may have a mandate for change, and Senate confirmation odds in his favor. But he has almost always disappointed those who expected someone in his position -- he was Harvard's first black law review president and one of the few minority members of the University of Chicago's law faculty -- to side consistently with liberals."

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey isn't expecting a legal giant:

"The biggest tension will come from the far-Left activists of Obama's party. They're losing a stalwart. They can't afford to have Souter replaced by a middle-ground justice who may not vote as reliably liberal as Souter. In fact, that will be Obama's problem for all of the likely retirements on the Court -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens.

"Based on Obama's appointments thus far, expect a mediocre candidate that will be just middle enough to get a few Republicans on board. Don't expect it to go quietly, but the Republicans probably won't stage any extraordinary action to block it, unless something arises like tax problems or other issues that rise to incompetence or corruption."

I agree with the last point -- but how the heck can we know in advance that Obama will pick someone "mediocre"?

More Trouble for Edwards

First John Edwards faced reports that his wife Elizabeth's forthcoming book rips him for his affair with a former campaign aide. Now federal investigators are "sifting through Edwards' financial records to probe whether he used any donations solicited for his campaign to keep quiet his affair with Rielle Hunter," the Raleigh News & Observer reports.

Newly uncovered records "show that Edwards' 2008 campaign got a huge boost from a single source: $3.48 million from a holding company for Rachel 'Bunny' Lambert Mellon, a 98-year-old matriarch of the late industrialist Andrew Mellon's family." That is one big chunk of change.

Feeling Old

Anna Quindlen, once a baby-boomer star at the New York Times, bids her Newsweek column farewell:

"Journalism will have to keep changing as this country changes. It will have to reflect the interests of people in their 20s and 30s, not merely complain that people in their 20s and 30s don't behave the way their elders do. There is nothing quite as tedious, or as useless, as ritual recitations of the good old days, which most often weren't."

Playboy Prime Minister

Silvio Berlusconi's wife wants a divorce, and we learn the following about the Italian PM:

--His wife, Veronica Lario, had lured Berlusconi from his previous wife.

--A week ago Lario released a letter chiding him for cavorting with other women.

--The prime minister has been hanging around with an 18-year-old girl and showed up at her birthday bash, prompting this rejoinder from Lario: "That surprised me. Because he never attended the 18th birthday parties of his own children, even if he was invited."