Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Why do I say that Tanenhaus has a substantial history of whitewashing wingnuts, and that it is in that context that we should read his calls for reporters to not cover what Donald Trump says and does, and said and did, but to whitewash him?

This is why:

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Sam Tanenhaus in the New Republic writes that Whittaker Chambers was in his last years a far-sighted and flexible intellectual:

[Whittaker] Chambers, unburdened by intellectual discipline... came to recognize the folly of the rigid dualism he had espoused so vividly. He was in fact among the first on the right to interpret the death of Stalin in 1953, and the subsequent rise of Khrushchev, as signaling a new phase in the "twilight struggle." In yet another of his volte-faces, the most unexpected of all, Chambers refashioned himself into a liberal in his last years. He became a defender of civil liberties (including Hiss's when he was denied a passport) and of the Keynesian policies promoted by John Kenneth Galbraith....

Is Tanenahus right?

First, on Tanenhaus recognizing upon the death of Stalin that "the rigid dualism he had espoused so vividly" was "folly", and that it was time for "a new phase", a sort of detente, in U.S.-Soviet relations--well, let's turn the microphone over to Chambers, writing in 1956:

From Life, April 30, 1956: What the new [post-Stalin] Communist strategy envisages is the mounting, on a world scale, of a vast "partisans of peace" movement.... [T]he tactical problem for Communism... [is] that of the wind and sun... competing to make a man take off his overcoat. To make the man--the West--take off his coat [his defenses against Communism], it was only necessary for Communism to let the sun shine....

[T]he ice is going out, the ice that froze and paralyzed the messianic spirit of Communism during the long but (in Communist terms) justifiable Stalinist nightmare. Communism is likely to become more, not less dangerous.... Communism has not changed.... Communist aggression against the West will not end... [but take] new, subtler, massive forms whose disintegrating energies are beamed first at specific soft spots around Communism's international frontiers and far across them...

A "new phase", yes. But by no means an abandonment of "rigid dualism". In fact, a hardening: "Communism is likely to become more, not less dangerous." Tanenhaus simply does not know what he is talking about.

Second, I grant Chambers's commitment to civil liberties. But, again, Tanenhaus does not know what he is talking about. Chamber's commitment to civil liberties was not a late-acquired commitment. He was a civil libertarian long before his last years. Tanenhaus tells us an untruth when he says that Chambers "became" rather than "remained" a defender of civil liberties.

Third, Chambers as the "refashioned... liberal... defender... of the Keynesian policies promoted by John Kenneth Galbraith". This is the most bizarre and remarkable of all.

It appears to be a howlingly bad misreading of a 1959 National Review article, "Foot in the Door".

What Chambers writes is:

Parents are not, apparently, presumed to be educated (or natively bright) enough to perceive that federal aid to education is their own tax-ravaged and inflated dollars fed into academic tills by other-directed and coercive means.... [T]his is the Total State that is dawning, more or less everywhere, through under various softening and dissembling names and forms, on various impressive pretexts or necessities. But it is not deemed expedient that we should grasp what age it really is.... So, perhaps, of necessity the State must soon be into the Business of Education, as the witty and bracingly arrogant Professor J.K. Galbraith assured us, only the other day, that it must. But must it?...

And then Chambers is off and running, writing on how TV will allow America's 1950s-scale universities to meet educational demands cheaply:

In television, a means to meet the need, at least in part, appears to be at hand; that it is comparatively inexpensive and need not involve the State...

That is the only mention of Galbraith in the "Foot in the Door" article by Chambers.

That "Foot in the Door" article is the only citation in Tanenhaus's Chambers biography supporting his statement that Chambers was "stimulated by the Keynesian heresies of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society". And that claim in the biography that Chambers was "stimulated" by Galbraith appears to be the root of Tanenhaus's claim in the New Republic.

So I must protest: I would not say Tanenhaus's "stimulated by the Keynesian heresies of John Kenneth Galbraith" is a fair or accurate summary of how Chambers is using Galbraith here. And I would say that "stimulated by the Keynesian heresies of John Kenneth Galbraith" is not at all the same thing as "defende[d]... the Keynesian policies promoted by John Kenneth Galbraith."

That Tanenhaus is untrustworthy in use of sources and summary of evidence is a rather important thing to know is something you can see elsewhere with ease. Consider, for example, his 2014 New York Times Magazine article about the "Reformicons":

In Tanenhaus's piece, Yuval Levin and April and Ramesh Ponnuru are mentioned 33 times. All other thinkers--living or dead, "Reformicon" or not--are mentioned only 22 times.

Would anyone but Sam Tanenhaus ever wish to or dare to claim that the "Reformicons" have such a strong Levin-Ponnuru axis?

Number of paragraphs in which various intellectuals are mentioned:

And it has consequences when Tanenhaus is an editor as well. Consider this review of a book review written under Tanenhaus's editorship by Matthew Yglesias:

I just hope The New York Times Book Review is as kind to my book when the time comes as they were to Jonah Goldberg....

Yet the title of his book aside, what distinguishes Goldberg from the Sean Hannitys and Michael Savages is a witty intelligence that deals in ideas as well as insults — no mean feat in the nasty world of the culture wars.

Yes, that's right, Liberal Fascism is a step away from the nastiness of the culture wars. The reviewer, David Oshinsky, does concede that Goldberg's main thesis is false but that didn't seem to bother him...

"Swordsmith" comments:

The ending of the review was puzzling and abruptly shifted tone in a way that was un-Oshinsky-like, though; I suspect it was clumsily edited to soften his ending...

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Thus concludes the throat-clearing.

So what do we think, substantively, of Sam Tanenhaus's calls for reporters to stop reporting on what Trump says and does, and said and did, out of fear that, unless the press corps goes easy on Trump, there will be some sort of payback or backlash--electoral, political, or rhetorical?:

MSM is making a big mistake in current pile-on Trump exposes, and a long term price will be paid. See Agnew/Nixon in 1969.

— sam tanenhaus (@samtanenhaus) August 20, 2016

One problem with evaluating this is that Tanenhaus has only a two word argument: "Nixon/Agnew".

For those who did not live through Nixon/Agnew, there are two things you really need to read to understand: Gary Wills's Nixon Agonistes, and Rick Perlstein's Nixonland. Read those, and I think you will come away believing seven relevant points:

1. Nixon had enemies--eggheads, hippies, feminist, peaceniks, communists, you get the drill: pretty much anyone who had had it soft and did not understand the harsh realities of life...

2. Nixon did not have friends--except possibly for Bebe Rebozo...

3. What Nixon had, instead, were people who he wanted to use--and who he kept a wary eye on, lest they try to use him...

4. And then there were the voters, whom Nixon wooed by making it very clear that he shared their enemies...

5. Bus to try to appeal to or assuage Nixon by going easy on him-- by trying to bring him into any sort of elite circle, and to do him favors in the hope of eliciting favors in return--would do nothing but convince Nixon that you did not understand the harsh realities of life, and that you had had it soft. It would reinforce Nixon's belief that you were among his enemies, and to be opposed... .

6. The press corps did go easy on Nixon--most infamously with Walter Lippman's false and mendacious claim that there was in some sense a "new Nixon'. The press's going easy on him really did not help. It convinced Nixon (and Safire, and Agnew, and Haldeman, and company) that the press could be bullied. Thus it motivated them to turn up the hear and step up their campaign...

7. There is the question of just what Tanenhaus is doing here. He purports to be an intellectual--whose role is to tell truth by making accurate and incisive analyses. Tanenhaus purports to be a journalist – whose role is to tell facts in context. Saying "go easy on Trump because: Nixon/Agnew!" is neither of those. It is, instead, something that belongs to the role of a player or a powerbroker--someone who writes neither to help you understand the world nor to help you think more clearly but, rather, to herd you, like sheep, to his desired conclusion

I think that takes care of Tanenhaus...

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Notes:

Whittaker Chambers, writing in 1956:

From Life, April 30, 1956: What the new [post-Stalin] Communist strategy envisages is the mounting, on a world scale, of a vast "partisans of peace" movement. Its formations will be the popular front... [but it will go] far beyond popular fronts, which however manipulable [by the Communists], have manifest limits.... [A]ll that is necessary to change the weather is for the Communist blizzard to stop freezing men's hopes.... [T]he tactical problem for Communism... [is] that of the wind and sun... competing to make a man take off his overcoat. To make the man--the West--take off his coat [his defenses against Communism], it was only necessary for Communism to let the sun shine.... [H]itherto, Communism could not let the sun shine [because of]... the person and official mythology of Josef Stalin. He personified those memories which... scarify the mind of the West with respect to Communism....

[T]he ice is going out, the ice that froze and paralyzed the messianic spirit of Communism during the long but (in Communist terms) justifiable Stalinist nightmare. Communism is likely to become more, not less dangerous....

Communism has not changed.... Communist aggression against the West will not end... [but take] new, subtler, massive forms whose disintegrating energies are beamed first at specific soft spots around Communism's international frontiers and far across them.... With the smashing of the dark idol of Stalin, Communism can hope to compete again for the allegiance of men's minds.... What [Khrushchev's] 20th [Communist Party] Congress [of 1956] meant to do, and may well succeed in doing, was to make Communism radioactive again...

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Tanenhaus in the New Republic:

In yet another of his volte-faces, the most unexpected of all, Chambers refashioned himself into a liberal in his last years. He became a defender of civil liberties (including Hiss's when he was denied a passport) and of the Keynesian policies promoted by John Kenneth Galbraith...."

This appears to be a rewrite and a substantial strengthening of Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers p. 506, the only mention in the book's index of what Chambers thought of Galbraith:

Chambers was stimulated by the Keynesian heresies of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society. "There will be no peace for the islands of relative plenty," Chambers wrote in NR, "until the continents of proliferating poverty have been lifted to something like the general material level of the islanders." This, though Chambers did not say it, had been the summary objective of the New Deal...

Note that Tanenhaus has gone from claiming that Chambers was "stimulated" by Galbraith and an unwitting fellow-traveler of the New Deal in his biography, to saying that Chambers "defended" Galbraith and was a liberal in the New Republic.

Chasing Tanenhaus's footnotes, we arrive at Chambers's 1959 National Review article "Foot in the Door" (reprinted in the Teachout-edited volume, Ghosts on the Roof):

Chambers starts the article by saying that he is going to talk about George Washington University's attempts to use television as an educational tool, as a way of thrusting "a formidable foot into the Closing College Door." What is this "closing college door"? It is this:

The voice is that of the Education Lobby.... Willie... in his high school graduation togs... is fated to go forever un-higher-educated. For--a Delphic voice warns us--by 1984... secondary school graduates will be besieging the gates of campuses, quite futilely, since college facilities will be totally inadequate....

It takes no great wits to guess what we are supposed to do next: shake out what is left of our lank wallets while we pressure our legislators... to syphon federal taxes into higher education. Parents are not, apparently, presumed to be educated (or natively bright) enough to perceive that federal aid to education is their own tax-ravaged and inflated dollars fed into academic tills by other-directed and coercive means.

Perhaps it shall come to this. But let us not delude ourselves.... [T]his is the Total State that is dawning, more or less everywhere, through under various softening and dissembling names and forms, on various impressive pretexts or necessities. But it is not deemed expedient that we should grasp what age it really is.... So, perhaps, of necessity the State must soon be into the Business of Education, as the witty and bracingly arrogant Professor J.K. Galbraith assured us, only the other day, that it must.

But must it?..."

That's the sole reference to Galbraith in the article. And then Chambers is off and running on how TV will allow America's 1950s-scale universities to meet educational demands. A couple of pages later Chambers pauses to summarize:

I am not suggesting, of course, that televised education can replace... Harvard.... I am not suggesting... that televised education is coming tomorrow; or that it is a cure-all.... I am only saying that the need is great... that, in television, a means to meet the need, at least in part, appears to be at hand; that it is comparatively inexpensive and need not involve the State....

One of the beneficent side-effects of the crisis of the twentieth century... is a dawning realization, not so much that the mass of mankind is degradingly poor, as that there will be no peace for the islands of prosperity until the continents of proliferating poverty have been lifted to something like the general material level of the islanders....

[T]he world is...degradingly ignorant--and by no means only in Africa. Unless the general level of mind is raised at the same time as the level of material well-being, and not too many steps behind, we shall all risk resembling those savages whom, within living memory, civilizers introduced to the splendor of top hats and tight shoes... leaving unredeemed the loin-cloth of their middle zones..."

This feels to me like a classic Inigo Montoya moment: if Tanenhaus thinks that this late Chambers piece is an example of mid-twentieth century "liberalism", then all I can say is this: that word--"liberalism"--I do not think it means what Tanenhaus thinks it means...

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Is this How the "Reformicon" Universe Looks to You? It Is How It Looks to Sam Tanenhaus...: Wednesday Visualization http://www.bradford-delong.com/2014/07/is-this-how-the-reformicon-universe-looks-to-you-it-is-how-it-looks-to-sam-tanenhaus-wednesday-visualization.html:

Methinks the New York Times Magazine needs more energy in its editorial office...

Number of paragraphs in which various intellectuals are mentioned:

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"Swordsmith" writes:

I TA'd for David Oshinsky while doing my grad work at Rutgers, so I may be a little biased (he and I were probably the only two Red Sox fans on campus at the time), but I think MY misses the point a little here. It's pretty standard in writing critiques to point out the things you like about the book first before proceeding on to the problems, and Oshinsky spanks the content of the book pretty thoroughly - basically he says that it's cleverly written and fun to read but completely worthless intellectually.

The ending of the review was puzzling and abruptly shifted tone in a way that was un-Oshinsky-like, though; I suspect it was clumsily edited to soften his ending a bit. Oshinsky himself was an interesting choice for the review, since he's an expert on McCarthyism, and has built a career on the study of people who use terror and bullshit to scare their way into power.