Sorry, I ducked out and took a little break after all the craziness of March and April. But back to it now.
What's been happening?
In early May, the "Kissinger taps" were back -- it turned out that Daniel Ellsberg had in fact been recorded, despite all previous denials. That was, finally, the last straw for Judge Byrne: he dismissed all charges against Ellsberg.
Vernon Walters, it turns out, wrote a series of memos about the White House approach to the CIA in the early days of the cover-up; now the prosecutors are preparing to interview him. The White House has the memos, which certainly implicate Haldeman and Ehrlichman; Walters, of course, doesn't know about the taped conversations in the Oval Office setting it in motion, and neither does Al Haig -- although it's not clear exactly what Haig knows and what he at least suspects. Haig and Nixon talk at great length about the Walters memos during the second week of May, with Nixon making the case for it all being innocent, and Haig at times joining in but at times admitting it's bad for Haldeman and Ehrlichman.
There's also, during that week, press stories alleging personal financial irregularities by Nixon. That's going to dog him all the way through; it's tangential to the real story of Watergate, but it's out there, too.
Elliot Richardson is up for confirmation as Attorney General. In doing so, he's stressing his independence -- which makes Nixon, and the White House, increasingly worried, especially with the special prosecutor not yet named. They scheme some to try to influence it, but as Haig says to Nixon on May 15, Richardson wants to be "Mr. Clean."
There's also continuing worries about loyalty from his now former men. John Ehrlichman, in particular, is a constant source of stress; there's a rumor, for example, at one point that Ehrlichman is going to go after Colson.
On the 16th, they learn that Dean has a copy of the Huston plan with Haldeman's approval -- and Haldeman's memo saying that Nixon approved it. That takes a day scrambling, with Nixon's new lawyer Fred Buzhardt eventually learning that Hoover had spike the Huston plan before it actually ever went into effect.
They're still working on the Huston plan on the 17th, but this is also the day that the Senate Watergate Committee begins its televised hearings. They don't know what they're in for:
--
Buzhardt: They will bore...He's our biggest asset. Ervin.
President Nixon: Why?
Buzhardt: He conducts terrible hearings, Mr. President.
President Nixon: Terrible person to preside?
Buzhardt: Yes. He stutters, he stammers -- you can't understand his questions. He garbles them up. It's -- he is not, you know [...] One of the next mistakes he's making is he's going to let the members of the committee only do the interrogation. He is not going to let his counsel interrogate --
President Nixon: Thank God.
Buzhardt: I breathed a sigh of relief when I found this out....
--
Later:
--
Ziegler: I just watched a few minutes of that committee. I'll tell you, it is going to be a farce.
President Nixon: Why?
Ziegler: Sam Ervin is just a pompous, fat...
--
And again in the afternoon:
--
Buzhardt: The Ervin Committee grinds on. They're down to the arresting officer now and going through the tedium of that.
President Nixon: Somebody told me it's a very dull show. I haven't looked at it.
Buzhardt: It is a very dull show.
--
It is not, it turns out, a dull show; Sam Ervin is not, it turns out, a buffoon.
(And here's a highlights reel from PBS)
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Friday Baseball Post
It wasn't enough to do a whole cranky blogging thing about, but the NYT Sunday Review thing of people doing a column hooked to their new book -- which has made for quite a few very useless Sunday Review items -- seems to have leaked over onto the sports pages. In this case, this past Sunday, Tom Clavin, who has a book coming out on the DiMaggio brothers, was given the opportunity to argue for Dom DiMaggio as a HOFer. It's full of the cherry picking you expect from this sort of thing:
Look, Dom DiMaggio was a pretty good player. And he lost his prime -- his age 26, 27, and 28 seasons -- to the war.
That said...there are certain players who get a reputation for being underrated, and there's nothing you can do to shake it. Dom DiMaggio is an excellent example.
Here's the thing: he's not the most deserving Red Sox CF to not be in the Hall. You would think he'd have to manage that, at least, to really merit consideration, no?
Let's try this with OPS+, best ten seasons -- something that works well for the guy with only 10 seasons:
Dom D 123 121 113 110 110 108 107 105 104 102
Reggie S 168 162 155 150 143 142 137 129 127 127
Fred L 176 162 142 137 133 132 130 129 118 117
Ellis B 163 149 139 137 132 128 128 122 114 113
DiMaggio does have a couple edges over the others. He was much healthier -- I used a fairly low PA cutoff to include seasons, and if I had used 500 then he loses the 110 season but the others lose more. And he was in CF for 1338 of his 1373 defensive games, while the others all moved to corner positions, and eventually to DH or 1B. Reggie Smith had a bit over 800 games in CF; Ellis Burks had 1061; Fred Lynn, however, had almost 1600.
Really, however, there's just no way that the defensive position adjustment is going to make up for the huge gap at the plate. I'll go ahead and give you baseball reference's one-number stat...I'd take small differences here with a huge grain of salt, but c'mon: DiMaggio 31.8, Smith 64.4, Lynn 49.9, Burks 49.5. Dom's best season scores out as a 5.1...he would have to average 6 wins a year for his three missing years, averaging a full game better than his actual best year, to get to where Lynn and Burks are. But it's worse: that 5 win season was 1942 -- a war year. Not the worst of it, but still, he's not competing against the best that year.
I mean, he's missing what could easily have been his prime years. Maybe he goes nuts and has a 9 win year if there's no war. Maybe this fielding system is shortchanging him. Maybe...but you just can't come anywhere close to a strong HOF case. I mean...I didn't even mention Red Sox CF Johnny Damon (56 WAR).
What I really would like to put together is a team of guys who don't rate the HOF, aren't in it, and yet have a significant cheering section for their candidacies.
1B Gil Hodges
2B ?
SS Marty Marion
3B Ken Keltner?
LF Tony Oliva (yeah, I'm moving him over)
CF Dom DiMaggio
RF Roger Maris
C Thurmond Munson
P Jack Morris
Does anyone really think that Keltner belongs? And I couldn't think of a 2B, or a proper LF, and Morris (alas) isn't going to last on this list for long. Beat my list!
During his 10 full seasons, he totaled 1,679 base hits, more than any other major leaguer in that time. The next four players — Enos Slaughter, Stan Musial, Ted Williams and Pee Wee Reese — are all in the Hall of Fame.If you need me to explain what's wrong with that, I'll instead tell you to pick up an old Baseball Abstract and learn from Bill James how to spot a phony argument. It goes on from there...testimony from teammates who thought he was great, more cherry picked stats.
Look, Dom DiMaggio was a pretty good player. And he lost his prime -- his age 26, 27, and 28 seasons -- to the war.
That said...there are certain players who get a reputation for being underrated, and there's nothing you can do to shake it. Dom DiMaggio is an excellent example.
Here's the thing: he's not the most deserving Red Sox CF to not be in the Hall. You would think he'd have to manage that, at least, to really merit consideration, no?
Let's try this with OPS+, best ten seasons -- something that works well for the guy with only 10 seasons:
Dom D 123 121 113 110 110 108 107 105 104 102
Reggie S 168 162 155 150 143 142 137 129 127 127
Fred L 176 162 142 137 133 132 130 129 118 117
Ellis B 163 149 139 137 132 128 128 122 114 113
DiMaggio does have a couple edges over the others. He was much healthier -- I used a fairly low PA cutoff to include seasons, and if I had used 500 then he loses the 110 season but the others lose more. And he was in CF for 1338 of his 1373 defensive games, while the others all moved to corner positions, and eventually to DH or 1B. Reggie Smith had a bit over 800 games in CF; Ellis Burks had 1061; Fred Lynn, however, had almost 1600.
Really, however, there's just no way that the defensive position adjustment is going to make up for the huge gap at the plate. I'll go ahead and give you baseball reference's one-number stat...I'd take small differences here with a huge grain of salt, but c'mon: DiMaggio 31.8, Smith 64.4, Lynn 49.9, Burks 49.5. Dom's best season scores out as a 5.1...he would have to average 6 wins a year for his three missing years, averaging a full game better than his actual best year, to get to where Lynn and Burks are. But it's worse: that 5 win season was 1942 -- a war year. Not the worst of it, but still, he's not competing against the best that year.
I mean, he's missing what could easily have been his prime years. Maybe he goes nuts and has a 9 win year if there's no war. Maybe this fielding system is shortchanging him. Maybe...but you just can't come anywhere close to a strong HOF case. I mean...I didn't even mention Red Sox CF Johnny Damon (56 WAR).
What I really would like to put together is a team of guys who don't rate the HOF, aren't in it, and yet have a significant cheering section for their candidacies.
1B Gil Hodges
2B ?
SS Marty Marion
3B Ken Keltner?
LF Tony Oliva (yeah, I'm moving him over)
CF Dom DiMaggio
RF Roger Maris
C Thurmond Munson
P Jack Morris
Does anyone really think that Keltner belongs? And I couldn't think of a 2B, or a proper LF, and Morris (alas) isn't going to last on this list for long. Beat my list!
Friday, May 17, 2013
Elsewhere: Campaign Finance, Leaks, More
I don't think I've done one of these all week...I was waiting for some columns to go live, but I guess I'll go ahead now with at least one of them up.
So: at TAP today, I make the case for floors, not ceilings, and strong disclosure. I used to think it had the added virtue of being a good compromise between the Democratic and Republican positions, but that's before Republicans flipped on disclosure (they're now mostly against). Not that it was ever all that likely to ever happen anyway.
The best thing I wrote all week, I think, is one at PP on the topic of leaks -- saying that presidents should stop worrying about leaks and start listening to them.
I also looked at the effects of the scandals on 2014; discussed why Barack Obama's popularity still matters; dismissed the Benghazi talking points as important; and sketched out the path for immigration.
So: at TAP today, I make the case for floors, not ceilings, and strong disclosure. I used to think it had the added virtue of being a good compromise between the Democratic and Republican positions, but that's before Republicans flipped on disclosure (they're now mostly against). Not that it was ever all that likely to ever happen anyway.
The best thing I wrote all week, I think, is one at PP on the topic of leaks -- saying that presidents should stop worrying about leaks and start listening to them.
I also looked at the effects of the scandals on 2014; discussed why Barack Obama's popularity still matters; dismissed the Benghazi talking points as important; and sketched out the path for immigration.
Time for Some Nominations. A Lot of Nominations
(UPDATED)
Today's news, outside of the continuing scandal stuff, is Greg Sargent's big scoop that Harry Reid is tentatively planning for July to be nominations month -- complete with the threat of majority-imposed reform. I already wrote about it as a chess move over at PP today (I think Reid did well), and I probably should write something at some point about what the substance of the threat in terms of Senate rules and procedures. But there's one more point that's important to get to:
If Harry Reid is willing to spend serious floor time on nominations, he needs more nominees. Lots more nominees.
In particular, he really needs those three DC Circuit Court selections that the president still -- still! -- hasn't sent up. Okay, there's some excuse on one spot because he had a nominee who was defeated by filibuster. But still, that cloture vote was ten weeks ago, and she withdrew her name almost two months ago (and it's not as if the cloture vote defeat was a big surprise, either).
But that's not all! Reid needs Obama to supply a full complement of executive branch nominees. Yes, as Greg points out, the high-visibility slots are the head of EPA, Secretary of Labor, and the nullification case of CFPB. There's also a Commerce Secretary nominee to confirm, and a full set of NLRB nominees. There should be, however, far more. With Reid signaling a window of available floor time, it sure would be nice to have as full a slate as possible of subcabinet executive branch nominations for the Senate to confirm.
And, yes, as many of the other 50-plus judicial nominees as possible.
To get all of those picks through committee and ready for the Senate floor in July, they really need to be selected very soon. C'mon, Mr. President: it's time for a fully functioning administration, and that takes executive branch nominees.
UPDATE: I should note that in the last couple of weeks the White House really has been starting to roll out more judicial picks -- one circuit court selection and three district court selections yesterday, on top of a few last week. That's good! But there's a lot more to go. And plenty of executive branch vacancies as well.
Today's news, outside of the continuing scandal stuff, is Greg Sargent's big scoop that Harry Reid is tentatively planning for July to be nominations month -- complete with the threat of majority-imposed reform. I already wrote about it as a chess move over at PP today (I think Reid did well), and I probably should write something at some point about what the substance of the threat in terms of Senate rules and procedures. But there's one more point that's important to get to:
If Harry Reid is willing to spend serious floor time on nominations, he needs more nominees. Lots more nominees.
In particular, he really needs those three DC Circuit Court selections that the president still -- still! -- hasn't sent up. Okay, there's some excuse on one spot because he had a nominee who was defeated by filibuster. But still, that cloture vote was ten weeks ago, and she withdrew her name almost two months ago (and it's not as if the cloture vote defeat was a big surprise, either).
But that's not all! Reid needs Obama to supply a full complement of executive branch nominees. Yes, as Greg points out, the high-visibility slots are the head of EPA, Secretary of Labor, and the nullification case of CFPB. There's also a Commerce Secretary nominee to confirm, and a full set of NLRB nominees. There should be, however, far more. With Reid signaling a window of available floor time, it sure would be nice to have as full a slate as possible of subcabinet executive branch nominations for the Senate to confirm.
And, yes, as many of the other 50-plus judicial nominees as possible.
To get all of those picks through committee and ready for the Senate floor in July, they really need to be selected very soon. C'mon, Mr. President: it's time for a fully functioning administration, and that takes executive branch nominees.
UPDATE: I should note that in the last couple of weeks the White House really has been starting to roll out more judicial picks -- one circuit court selection and three district court selections yesterday, on top of a few last week. That's good! But there's a lot more to go. And plenty of executive branch vacancies as well.
Attention Civics Teachers
I mentioned that we had local election in Texas this past weekend...here's one result I missed that may be of interest. One of the small-town school boards around here had a one-vote election. No, not a one-vote margin...well, that too. A one vote election.
It happened in the Lytle school district, in Lytle, Texas. It's a small town to begin with, population about 2400, although the school district must be bigger -- there are apparently 1700 students involved. Local elections normally include city council and tax measures as well as school board, but none of the council elections were contested, so they were canceled, and no tax measures were needed this time. So it was just the school board, with only two contested districts out of seven total. And in one of those, only one person bothered to vote.
The candidates? The rules say they don't need to live in their districts, and as it happens neither winner Christina Mercado or loser Patty Cortez did live there.
There wasn't a recount -- would have been fun! -- but there was some suspense in the form of one provisional ballot, which turned out to have been cast by someone outside of the district, and thus not allowed.
I suppose if you want to look at this from a elections policy angle, I'd probably question why these local elections can't be on the same day as the general election. On the other hand, since there's no account of either candidate actually campaigning, it's not as if a larger general election day electorate would have been making a more informed decision on what is (I'm pretty sure) a nonpartisan election.
But anyone who wants to tell stories about why one vote might make a difference: clip and save this one from Lytle.
It happened in the Lytle school district, in Lytle, Texas. It's a small town to begin with, population about 2400, although the school district must be bigger -- there are apparently 1700 students involved. Local elections normally include city council and tax measures as well as school board, but none of the council elections were contested, so they were canceled, and no tax measures were needed this time. So it was just the school board, with only two contested districts out of seven total. And in one of those, only one person bothered to vote.
The candidates? The rules say they don't need to live in their districts, and as it happens neither winner Christina Mercado or loser Patty Cortez did live there.
There wasn't a recount -- would have been fun! -- but there was some suspense in the form of one provisional ballot, which turned out to have been cast by someone outside of the district, and thus not allowed.
I suppose if you want to look at this from a elections policy angle, I'd probably question why these local elections can't be on the same day as the general election. On the other hand, since there's no account of either candidate actually campaigning, it's not as if a larger general election day electorate would have been making a more informed decision on what is (I'm pretty sure) a nonpartisan election.
But anyone who wants to tell stories about why one vote might make a difference: clip and save this one from Lytle.
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday to Peter Gerety, 73.
And the good stuff:
1. Sean Trende on House districts and the GOP advantage. No, not gerrymandering.
2. Good Ed Kilgore on "political correctness." As I've said: most of this is all about conflating politics and etiquette. Be polite, and most of the problem melts away.
3. An employer survey shows minimal planned changes in reaction to ACA kicking in -- very few intend to drop insurance or to fire or hire in order to game the system; the biggest planned change has to do with manipulating workers hours to keep them from qualifying, but even there it's not all that many employers. Jeffrey Young reports. The same caution applies here, however, that applied to less optimistic earlier reports: there could be big gaps between planning and doing (in either direction), and there could be huge gaps between changes attributed to ACA and changes actually caused by reform.
4. Nice update from Abby Rapoport about what's going on in the state legislatures on voting.
5. Brad DeLong on Kevin Williamson...well, actually Kevin Williamson on Kevin Williamson, via DeLong.
6. And I stepped out yesterday, and all of a sudden everyone was talking "Bulworth." I love Bulworth -- it's very, very, funny, and has other virtues as well. Anyway, Ezra Klein has the president Bulworthing. Okay, but if it doesn't rhyme, I'm not sure it counts.
And the good stuff:
1. Sean Trende on House districts and the GOP advantage. No, not gerrymandering.
2. Good Ed Kilgore on "political correctness." As I've said: most of this is all about conflating politics and etiquette. Be polite, and most of the problem melts away.
3. An employer survey shows minimal planned changes in reaction to ACA kicking in -- very few intend to drop insurance or to fire or hire in order to game the system; the biggest planned change has to do with manipulating workers hours to keep them from qualifying, but even there it's not all that many employers. Jeffrey Young reports. The same caution applies here, however, that applied to less optimistic earlier reports: there could be big gaps between planning and doing (in either direction), and there could be huge gaps between changes attributed to ACA and changes actually caused by reform.
4. Nice update from Abby Rapoport about what's going on in the state legislatures on voting.
5. Brad DeLong on Kevin Williamson...well, actually Kevin Williamson on Kevin Williamson, via DeLong.
6. And I stepped out yesterday, and all of a sudden everyone was talking "Bulworth." I love Bulworth -- it's very, very, funny, and has other virtues as well. Anyway, Ezra Klein has the president Bulworthing. Okay, but if it doesn't rhyme, I'm not sure it counts.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Ignore the Twitter News Cycle on Scandals
On Tuesday, they were measuring out the president's tomb. Today, with no big revelations on any of the current scandals (or "scandals" as the case may be), liberals at least, and I get the sense much of the neutral press, is almost ready to announce the whole thing a dud.
They were wrong on Tuesday; they're wrong today. The truth? We mostly don't know what will happen.
Look, the Benghazi thing remains, as far as I'm concerned, just as big a nothing as it's been all along; the talking points, which have been the GOP focus, just don't matter. That said, however, there's nothing that's happened which makes it likely that Republicans are going to give up on Benghazi. And if they keep pushing, they'll eventually have another day somewhere down the road where neutral reporters will get tempted to buy back in on the "where there's smoke" theory.
As far as the IRS mess ..well, it's absolutely possible that we know pretty much everything that will matter. On the other hand -- there's going to be a serious investigation on the IRS, and Congressional hearings. There's no way of knowing, at this point, whether there's anything else to find out or not. The IG report (as one conservative tweeted today; sorry, don't remember who) is not necessarily the final word; it's really not hard to imagine any number of fresh revelations that could emerge which could make the scandal much worse, without resorting to far-fetched scenarios. I'm not predicting it will; just saying that there's absolutely no reason to guess one way or the other what an investigation will show.
The same is basically true about the AP/DoJ story, although there it's less a case of discovering what happened in this particular case and whether it was kosher than of deep press interest in keeping the story alive. Still, a live story means reporters actively digging for something to justify it. They might find stuff!
Again: I'm not predicting very much here, other than that Republicans are almost certainly going to stick with Benghazi and IRS regardless of what they find, and that the press is likely to behave the way they always behave -- which includes love of scandals. But I didn't get around to writing a "calm down, relax, be patient" post about all this back on Monday and Tuesday when the press was freaking out, and that kind of thing is still just as worth saying to the extent that they're now ready to declare the whole thing over.
Real investigations don't conform to twitter news cycles. Or even the old 24-hour news cycles. Just remember, when you're consuming the news, that you're reading a lot of people who have massive incentives and norms that involve rushing to judgement on everything. Be aware of it, and be ready to fight it.
They were wrong on Tuesday; they're wrong today. The truth? We mostly don't know what will happen.
Look, the Benghazi thing remains, as far as I'm concerned, just as big a nothing as it's been all along; the talking points, which have been the GOP focus, just don't matter. That said, however, there's nothing that's happened which makes it likely that Republicans are going to give up on Benghazi. And if they keep pushing, they'll eventually have another day somewhere down the road where neutral reporters will get tempted to buy back in on the "where there's smoke" theory.
As far as the IRS mess ..well, it's absolutely possible that we know pretty much everything that will matter. On the other hand -- there's going to be a serious investigation on the IRS, and Congressional hearings. There's no way of knowing, at this point, whether there's anything else to find out or not. The IG report (as one conservative tweeted today; sorry, don't remember who) is not necessarily the final word; it's really not hard to imagine any number of fresh revelations that could emerge which could make the scandal much worse, without resorting to far-fetched scenarios. I'm not predicting it will; just saying that there's absolutely no reason to guess one way or the other what an investigation will show.
The same is basically true about the AP/DoJ story, although there it's less a case of discovering what happened in this particular case and whether it was kosher than of deep press interest in keeping the story alive. Still, a live story means reporters actively digging for something to justify it. They might find stuff!
Again: I'm not predicting very much here, other than that Republicans are almost certainly going to stick with Benghazi and IRS regardless of what they find, and that the press is likely to behave the way they always behave -- which includes love of scandals. But I didn't get around to writing a "calm down, relax, be patient" post about all this back on Monday and Tuesday when the press was freaking out, and that kind of thing is still just as worth saying to the extent that they're now ready to declare the whole thing over.
Real investigations don't conform to twitter news cycles. Or even the old 24-hour news cycles. Just remember, when you're consuming the news, that you're reading a lot of people who have massive incentives and norms that involve rushing to judgement on everything. Be aware of it, and be ready to fight it.
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