Post Columnists Blog the Convention

Fred Hiatt
Washington Post Opinion Editor
Monday, August 25, 2008 12:00 PM

Washington Post opinion editor Fred Hiatt was online live from the Democratic National Convention in Denver on Monday, Aug. 25 at noon ET to discuss the 2008 election, the conventions and the launch of Post Partisan, where his team of columnists will be blogging for the next two weeks.

The transcript follows.

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Fred Hiatt: Welcome from sunny (and a lot less humid than Washington) Denver, and thanks for joining this chat.

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San Francisco: Why did you select the political conventions to reveal your partisan bias for George W. Bush's war, wiretapping and waste policies by naming your blog Post Partisan?

Fred Hiatt: Thank you for asking about Post Partisan! This is a new feature we're trying, in which Post columnists and editorial writers post observations during the convention. I'd love to hear from readers and viewers whether you think it's worthwhile; we're trying to find a good balance between thoughtfulness and timeliness as we navigate the new world.

Not sure why you think the name reveals our bias--it's just meant to suggest that we'll have people with strong opinions on all sides blogging.

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Raleigh, N.C.: Good morning! Do you read the straight reporting in your own paper? \ I doubt it, because so often your opinions are based on beliefs about objective reality that are contradicted by that reporting.

Fred Hiatt: I do read the reporting in our paper--often the best out there. In addition, and I think this is something people don't always realize about editorial writers, we do a lot of our own reporting before we write.

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Boston: Fred, how can a guy with zero credibility and an obviously manufactured platform like Jerome Corsi get a week's worth of media attention, while Phillip Butler -- who is John McCain's friend, classmate, shipmate and POW cellmate gets completely ignored?

washingtonpost.com: Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain (Military.com, March 27)

Fred Hiatt: This is a good spot for me to point out, right at the top, that as editorial page editor for the Post, I have zero control over news judgments the paper makes.

But--in general--you point to a really tough challenge I think for the media during these campaigns, which is how to cover, or debunk, rumors and false stories without giving them more attention than they deserve.

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Chicago: Hey Fred, The Post has been very hard on Russia and supportive of Georgia. How does The Post's editorial staff justify Georgia's assault and invasion of South Ossetia? South Ossetia is a tiny autonomous region that is much weaker than Georgia. If The Post condemns Russia's response, why can't it condemn the initial aggression

Fred Hiatt: That's a good question. A lot of how the war started is still murky; the South Ossetian militia were firing pretty heavily into Georgian villages, from behind Russian 'peacekeeper' lines, before Georgian moved on Tskhinvali. That doesn't excuse Georgia's move, and we've said so.

But I also think you have to understand the war in the broader context, which is Russia's unwillingness to allow a neighbor to pursue an independent course. Moscow has worked hard to keep the South Ossetia and Abkhazia conflicts unsolved just so they could use them against Georgia in this way.

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Washington: Ombudsman Deborah Howell seemed to give out all Post staffers' e-mails in yesterday's edition -- why didn't that happen before? Ruth Marcus particularly seems to assail the innocent and protect the guilty.

washingtonpost.com: Why Isn't The Post Easier to Reach? (Post, Aug. 24)

Fred Hiatt: Not sure why it didn't happen sooner. Most of our columnists give their addresses with their columns (mine is fredhiatt@washpost.com)

Don't know what you mean about Ruth--I think her column is one of the best things going.

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Curious: How effective do you think the Republican machine will be in getting their countermessages out during this week (not including their Fox Network), or will they make limited responses and wait until next week to take their shots? Also, for next week, do you expect the Democrats to use the same tactics as the Republicans during their convention?

Fred Hiatt: I'm sure both parties will be watching each other's conventions closely, looking for material to bash. But for the most part I think the attention this week will be on the Democrats. Then the Republicans will try to shorten Obama's "bounce" with a veep designation...

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Chesapeake Beach, Md.: Why does The Washington Post's editorial board have such a jones for "fixing" Social Security? If it's broke, it ain't very: the Congressional Budget Office says the trust fund's not expected to run out for another 40-plus years, which means its demise hasn't gotten any closer during the past 15 years. The trust fund has a better than 20 percent chance of outlasting the youngest Boomer's 100th birthday. The 75-year actuarial imbalance amounts to 0.38 percent of GDP, or 1.06 percent of taxable payroll. That's really not very big. And you mention none of this in this morning's " Social Security on Ice" editorial.

Meanwhile, we've got much bigger problems to deal with in the same time horizon. Climate change is much more in need of being addressed quickly, and the long-term consequences are considerably more severe. We're paying a much bigger share of our GDP on health care costs than the European and East Asian democracies are, and that's going to bust the Medicare trust fund. But for some reason, you guys harp on "fixing" Social Security to a much greater degree than these other problems. What's the deal?

Fred Hiatt: We agree that health care costs, and the looming Medicare deficit, are a bigger problem than the Social Security deficit--and will be harder to fix. When you put them both together, the US is on an unsustainable path that will put huge burdens on younger workers to take care of more and more retirees. What we've said is, if SS is easier to fix, let's at least do that, because the longer you wait, the harder it gets--and if we can't do that, it doesn't bode well for fixing the more complicated ones.

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Wake Forest, N.C.: Why do I have to find out from a U.K. paper that a U.S. air strike in Afghanistan killed up to 80 civilians, including children? While I believe Obama's pick for vice president and the Olympics are important, there are other things going on in the world that should be covered.

washingtonpost.com: Afghan civilians said to have been killed in U.S.-led air raid (Reuters, Aug. 21)

Fred Hiatt: I read about that in American papers, including I'm pretty sure our own.

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Washington: Now that the Bush administration has acceded to a timetable in Iraq that is very close to Obama's position (especially once you do away with the Bush administration's signature caricature of Obama's position as disregarding conditions on the ground), don't you think it's time to stop beating up on Obama on the editorial page and recognize that he was ahead of the game in terms of the political strategy needed to achieve a relatively stable settlement in Iraq?

Fred Hiatt: The problem on that one is that he was against the strategy that has brought such improvement in Iraq--though things in Iraq are still very tough.

I will wait to see what the Iraq-US agreement, if they reach one, actually says. Initial reporting says it will have a timeline but with some acknowledgement that withdrawal schedules should depend on conditions, which is certainly what US military commanders there believe. We continue to think it would be terrible to jeopardize progress by withdrawing too hastily.

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Rochester, N.Y.: Do Washington Post editorials ever issue corrections? Do you fact-check your editorials at all? I've noticed a disturbing pattern of factual inaccuracy, especially with regard to your coverage of the Scooter Libby trial.

Fred Hiatt: We do publish corrections; you can find them at the bottom of the editorial column.

I'm not aware of any errors in our coverage of the Libby trial. If you have specifics, send them to me please.

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Baltimore: Did you see Ted Kennedy? How is he looking? I've been hoping for good news about him despite everything that's been reported. Will tonight be a swan song, or is there any cause for hope in his diagnosis?

Fred Hiatt: The only Kennedy I've seen so far is Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a Marylander whom I admire. I don't know any more about Sen. Kennedy's prognosis than you do. I am hoping for good news too. As we wrote when the diagnosis was reported, he has been an exceptional contributor to the Senate and to American life.

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Reporting: Fred, it seems to me back in the '70s, when I was a kid, a lot of the opinion pieces were based on "reporting." You say that is still the case, but as I read your columnists I don't see that much reporting anymore. In an age where people are paid to babble nonsense on TV and Maureen Dowd types up her internal dialog and becomes the top columnist out there, why would columnists want to do the hard work of reporting?

Fred Hiatt: Another good question. I still believe that the best columns are often--not always--based on reporting, and some of our best columnists (Ruth Marcus, EJ Dionne, Mike Gerson to name just three) do a huge amount of reporting. Of course one of the masters of the reported column was Bob Novak, who also has been sidelined by a brain tumor.

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Pittsburgh: An elderly relative forwards all manner of absurd e-mails containing scurrilous accusations against Democrats to a huge mailing list (though she's learned to conceal her list lately, after I started using "reply to all" to provide factually reliable refutations and their sources). Another such e-mail just arrived yesterday. Clearly there's a segment of the American populace that really wants to believe even the most implausible claims against Obama, Biden, the Clintons, et al. The guy who's filed suit in Federal Court to get Obama declared not a natural-born American is no one I've ever heard of, despite his claim of having run for governor (obviously he wasn't a major candidate). As far as I can tell, he's just another nutjob. My question is, what percentage of eligible voters really swallows this bilge?

Fred Hiatt: I like to think it's a pretty small segment, which can seem a lot bigger because of the way things get magnified on the Web. But even a small number of voters could have a big impact in some states, obviously.

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Northern Virginia: Sorry, I'm not following the discussion so far. Seems like more heat than light. What is Post Partisan? Please take a few sentences if needed. Is it a Fred Hiatt feature or will there be several different voices under one umbrella? Is it just for this campaign? Some of the "journalistic five Ws" would help this reader catch up with the group. I'd like to submit a more substantive question but don't understand the context here.

washingtonpost.com: Post Partisan Blog, with columnists posting live from the conventions.

Fred Hiatt: You can find links to it on the washingtonpost.com home page or opinions page or politics page. There will be close to a dozen voices, of our varying Post columnists. We're going to try it during the conventions, and depending on how it goes, maybe think about doing more during the campaign.

We've also tried something new called Topic A, in which we ask outside experts to send us short takes/first impressions when there's a big news event (most recently the Biden pick). I'd love to hear what you all think of that too.

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Chesapeake Beach, Md.:"What we've said is, if SS is easier to fix, let's at least do that, because the longer you wait, the harder it gets -- and if we can't do that, it doesn't bode well for fixing the more complicated ones." Isn't that a universally applicable argument in favor of dealing with more trivial problems before dealing with more substantive problems? Why should the next president burn a good deal of his political capital on a fight regarding Social Security that doesn't need to be fought for at least five years, when time's a-wastin' on climate change and health care costs?

Fred Hiatt: Look, if Congress would enact a serious cap and trade or carbon tax bill, that would make us happy too--as we've said probably more times than our readers care to recall. We don't argue to do the trivial first. What we do say is, to NOT do Social Security because Medicare is more serious is also a silly argument. SS needs fixing, the longer you wait the harder it gets, so why wait? (Plus, in a Washington that worked better, the outlines of a SS compromise would be pretty obvious to most.)

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Franconia, Va.: I suspect you are assuming that readers know the difference between Washington Post "editorials" and columnists' "opinion pieces." When there are accusations of inaccuracy, those accusations may apply to both, but more so to the columnists. If you re-read the question about inaccuracies and corrections, can you answer it in terms of the columnists? Or doesn't The Washington Post take responsibility for them, given that many are syndicated to different papers?

Fred Hiatt: Good point. Editorials are the unsigned pieces, in the newspaper's voice, written by me and our seven editorial writers. Columns are signed pieces on the oped page. When there are mistakes there, we insist on corrections, but if a columnist wants to do the correction within his or her own column (rather than in a corrections box on the page) we let that happen.

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Greenville, S.C.: What are your plans for paying off the national debt?

Fred Hiatt: Other than paying my taxes on time, you mean?

I think the most important element of that is entitlement reform, as we've discussed--Social Security, Medicare--and somehow slowing the rise of health care costs.

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Fairport, N.Y.: Many -- including Chris Matthews of "Hardball" and Polk Award-winning journalist Josh Marshall -- have characterized you and the Washington Post editorial page as "neoconservative." Do you agree with that characterization? If not, why not?

Fred Hiatt: No. I don't really know what the term means--I think it's become a caricature, used against anyone with whom one disagrees. (Joe Biden favored NATO expansion and US military action in Kosovo, and voted for the Iraq war resolution--is he a neoconservative?)

In general, the Post is--and always has been, long before I was editor--in favor of a strong defense and an America that is prudently engaged in the world, on behalf of stability, democratic values, the free flow of commerce. Is that neoconservative?

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St. Paul, Minn.: Have the Republicans forgotten which vice president they get to pick? The latest McCain ad stating that Obama should have picked Hilary just looks like a desperate attempt to foment dissension in the party. Is that their strategy this week?

Fred Hiatt: Yes, I'm sure fomenting, or at least exacerbating, dissent is part of their strategy. That latest ad didn't strike me as one of their more effective, but I'm no professional.

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Wokingham: I see that the purpose of the conventions is to appeal to voters, but are we in the outside world likely to get an indication of how post-Bush policy toward us will evolve?

Fred Hiatt: I think there will be a lot of discussion at both conventions about US relations with the world. Georgia-Russia has brought home once again how the US can never have an election only about domestic issues.

How much the campaign rhetoric presages the policy you will see is another question--the most obvious case being how far the current president moved after 9/11 from his campaign stance of a humble, relatively uninvolved foreign policy.

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Re: "paying off the debt": You write that the secret of paying off the debt is entitlement reform. Does that mean that you are comfortable with the Bush tax cuts and the massive deficit that we currently have in the non-entitlement portion?

Fred Hiatt: No, thanks for adding that. We vigorously opposed the Bush tax cuts, both for their effect on the deficit and because they have widened inequality in this country at a time when larger economic forces already are pushing in that direction. McCain's proposal to do even more I believe is foolhardy and wrong.

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Chicago: Don't call me shallow, but as we do live in a TV/Internet age ... doesn't there have to be some attempt by the Republicans to shore up the aesthetic balances between the tickets? Both Obama and Biden looked like a million bucks on Saturday. Don't we have past data that some people are swayed simply on good looks? Hello Romney?

Fred Hiatt: Well, of course people want their politicians to be appealing as people. But I don't think the election would come down to whether Biden is handsomer than whichever man or woman McCain picks.

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Anonymous: Do you think printed newspapers will be obsolete in fifty years ?

Fred Hiatt: I'm glad you're giving us fifty!

Seriously--I have no idea. What I do believe is that there will continue to be a market for really good, serious, readable, reliable reporting and really good, serious, readable, thoughtful, unpurchased, non-yelling opinion. It's up to us to continue doing our best to provide that, by whatever medium technology allows.

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Anonymous: In a fight between news and editorial -- say on running a particular piece -- who usually wins out ?

Fred Hiatt: There can never be a fight, because I have no say over what news (headed by executive editor Len Downie) is publishing, and he has no say over what I am publishing on the editorial or oped pages.

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Sewickley, Pa.: If Sen. Obama employed a national security adviser who was a paid agent for a foreign government, I can't imagine what the fallout from that would be. One shudders to think where his campaign would be if his chief economic adviser had engineered the Enron loophole and argued for policies that led to the subprime debacle. Will Sen. McCain end up being "Teflon John" on these and other substantive issues because of his former POW status? Do you see a shelf-life for this aspect of the McCain story? P.S. -- Our military family is squarely behind Sen. Obama, as is most of my husband's Army unit.

Fred Hiatt: I guess you're referring to the McCain foreign policy adviser who is a former paid lobbyist for the government of Georgia, among others?

The revolving door of congressional aides into the lobbying world in general can be pretty distasteful. It's also a reality, despite the clucking we editorial writers often do. In this case, I would be disturbed if (1) the adviser were still being paid--he's not or (2) there was any evidence that McCain had changed his position on Georgia in response to being lobbied by a former aide. But McCain has been consistently where he is now from the beginning of this being an issue.

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Reading, PA: Sir, the surge strategy involved partitioning off streets and neighborhoods in Iraq, and so a decrease in violence is really just an illusion, isn't it?

Fred Hiatt: No, the decrease in violence is very real, and daily life for Iraqis is a lot better now than in 2006.

But you're right that the ethnic cleansing that was happening in Baghdad neighborhoods at the worst has not been reversed--some people have gone back to their original homes, but not most.

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Reading, Pa,: I think maybe the problem with politics is that there are too many opinions out there and everyone has an agenda, so the facts get twisted until it's hard to know what to believe.

Fred Hiatt: I agree with you--it gets harder and harder to sort things out. One thing we try to do in our editorials is to test the candidates' statements against reality, hold them accountable for misleading ads, compare them to past positions when they change.

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Richmond, Va.: I loved your op-ed a few weeks back about the dangers of Democrats drinking their own Kool-Aid, and assuming that the only reason their previous presidential candidates have lost is because of Republican dirty tricks, etc. Do you see any evidence that this has changed in the convention?

Fred Hiatt: Thanks!

Too soon to say. I do expect Obama is going to use this convention, at least in part, to offer Americans a serious look at what he stands for and where he would take the country. But we'll have to watch and see.

I see time is up. Thanks so much for joining, please do let me know if you have thoughts about Post Partisan and Topic A,or anything else we're up to, and let's do this again soon.

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