U.S. News Crashed-and-Burned Watch (Michael Barone Edition)
I confess I never liked the Almanac of American Politics. It was useful for reporters trying to get up to speed before interviewing members of congress, but not for anybody else. Its ignorance of interest groups and policy substance and of the web of commitments of members of congress to each other that made it possible to pass or block items of legislation made it, I always thought, a basically wrong-footed enterprise.
Mark Schmitt says that Michael Barone has made the latest edition of his book even worse:
Michael's Poor Almanac | The American Prospect: The Almanac of American Politics... has always been what reporters scan before interviewing a member of Congress.... Since the very first Almanac, published in 1971 on the cusp of an ideological and generational shift in Congress, its preeminent voice has been that of Michael Barone, now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In credits that suggest a Hollywood agent's negotiation, Barone is the "Author" of the new 2008 edition, although he is also credited with the introduction and several other short sections, while a single "Co-Author" (Richard E. Cohen), an "Editor" (Charles Mahtesian), and various writers and researchers are credited as well....
[B]ehind the reams of data in the Almanac lies both a theory... to quote the 1974 preface, "much can hinge on the politics, the beliefs, and the idiosyncrasies of 535 people." The ground truths of American politics would be found in the complicated, pluralistic zone where congressional districts and states... intersected with individual political actors.... How much is omitted from such a definition of "American Politics"! The presidency.... State legislatures.... Interest groups... organized constituencies.... Even Congress' committees and caucuses....
The Almanac's focus on 535 individuals marks it as a product, much like C-SPAN, of the transformation of Congress in the early 1970s. Before 1970, most members of Congress were irrelevant as individuals, dutiful pawns in a game run by a few elderly committee chairs. But with the growth of government (enabling members to acquire clout by becoming experts or public advocates on technical subjects), the breakdown of the seniority system, and the challenge to executive power prompted by Vietnam and Watergate, the opportunity emerged for members of Congress to operate as legislative entrepreneurs, using political skill and brainpower to push their own ideas.
The early Almanac chronicled this opening up of the legislative branch.... Over the later 1970s and into the 1980s, the Almanac reflected the new appreciation... [of] old-style political machines, lavishly praising Tip O'Neill, Dan Rostenkowski, and others who came out of such machines to achieve work of national significance.... The Almanac's profiles of the early Republican revolutionaries -- Newt Gingrich, Bob Walker, Vin Weber -- were admiring and enlightening....
Barone's recognition of Gingrich's skills, and his own abrupt move to the political right, culminated in the most extravagant of all his introductions, bearing a title and crazy wrong brilliance worthy of Gingrich himself: "The Restoration of the Constitutional Order and the Return to Tocquevillian America." In 23 dense pages, Barone argued that the 1994 election had "settled the argument" between New Deal historians like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who believed that politics turned on economic questions, and those who believed it was a high-stakes "cultural war ... in which propagators of liberal values have used government to impose them in every segment of American life." Not only was the interpretive argument settled but so was the culture war itself: Americans had rejected once and for all the "educated elite" and their weak "culture of caregiving."...
Since the mid-1990s, three developments have challenged the Almanac's relevance. First, much of the information... is now a Google search away.... Second... [i]n an era of strong and ideological political parties and the restoration of the imperial presidency, the "beliefs and idiosyncrasies" of 535 people don't seem quite as important... little payoff in learning the precise differences in temperament and background... districts they represent are less likely to embody distinct communities.... [W]rite-ups in the current Almanac begin with a vivid rendering of, say, Jacksonville or Austin, only to admit a few sentences later that the actual district contains only parts of that city, plus a narrow strip of counties extending hundreds of miles out....
Third, Barone's political evolution didn't stop at Gingrich... a strange kind of conservatism... based largely on the conviction that liberals are soft and stupid. Barone also seems to be consciously rejecting everything about his younger self.... [H]e wrote that... "Richard Nixon, by obstructing investigation of the Watergate burglary, unwittingly colluded in the successful attempt to besmirch his administration." Thus the man who in the 1974 Almanac called Nixon "the politician who presided over the most lawless presidential campaign in American history," now sees Nixon simply as a victim, like Bush, of liberal vitriol and a long campaign to delegitimize conservative rule and the presidency itself....
Barone has come to embrace a strict dualist view of the world... incoherent distinction between "crunchy" and "soggy" policies and politicians.... The world of Theodore Dreiser's novels is admirably Hard, John Dewey's theories of education are Soft. Social Security: Soft. Rudy Giuliani: Hard. Intellectuals: Soft. Most baby boomers: Soft. But George W. Bush: "a consistent advocate of Hardness." And the ultimate in Hardness: "our amazing victories in Afghanistan and Iraq."... If everything is darkness or light, what's the use of an Almanac of American Politics? What do you really need besides an up-to-date Enemies List?...
Barone's... ideological journey made him an appropriate and sympathetic guide to the turns of both 1974 and 1994, so how has he handled the third great turn, the Democratic takeover of 2006? He doesn't even try.... I won't try to argue with his prediction that "there may be surprises to come," but is that an insight worth the Almanac's $75 price tag?...
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
