Brooks sees what he wants to see

I'm going to keep talking about this because pundits (in this case, NYT syndicated columnist David Brooks) keep getting it wrong.

Brooks' latest contends that Republicans can't run "traditional" (i.e. negative, destructive, bullshit-focused) campaigns against Democrats this fall. He believes the GOP brand is so damaged right now that such campaigning will cause voters to choose "Not You." Which might be true.

But here's where Brooks steps on the rake (again):

"The extended primary season has changed the profile of Obama supporters..."

"Obama has a much more liberal profile than he did several weeks ago..."

...and so on.  Brooks is yet another media pundit who is deriving absolute trends from sequential primaries and then generating causal outcomes from the notion that time is a primary factor in the differences we find in state-to-state polling.

Let's put this another way: If we vote in South Carolina one week and they vote in South Dakota next week, extrapolating much of a trend between the two would be pure idiocy.

Granted, if pictures of Hillary Clinton engaging in an immoral act with Rush Limbaugh appeared during the South Carolina primary, that could have an affect on the South Dakota vote. But none of that would account for the states' pre-existing differences in demographics, economics, history and culture. 

People who use differences between sequential primaries as evidence for some trend aren't reading statistics and illuminating the public. They're bullshitting.

Comments

[Agricola]

"People who use differences between sequential primaries as evidence for some trend aren't reading statistics and illuminating the public. They're bullshitting."

Sounds like 100% of the MSM is guilty of your charge.

But, more importantly, what an extended primary season (for any party) reveals is the extent to which those running for office will pander most grievously for any vote. You're right....the best way to size up a candidate is to focus on the long-term record and recognize the politician for what he/she is. Not a pretty picture.

[jmsloop]

Dan,

While in general terms, I think you're right in this analysis, I don't see that Brooks--in this instance and as you've cited him--is necessarily guitly. I mean, if the evidence is based on national polls of Obama supporters, I think you can say that, since primaries began, Obama supporters have changed. While they used to be slightly X, they are now a bit more X and a little bit less Y.

That is, a voting pattern in SC may tell us little about voters in SD, I agree, but profiles of Obama supporters in general probably do change between Primary X and Primary Y.

[Dewey Sasser]

I was with you up to the last sentence.

Statistics are difficult, and smart people who make statistics a primary focus often get it wrong.

Causality is a very common place for error.

"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."
Napoleon (allegedly -- I read it first in Heinlein)

I haven't read much NYTimes or Brooks lately but I don't follow the leap from "wrong and misleading" to "bullshitting" (the latter implies intention to me.)

[Daniel]

Addison is right -- this isn't an isolated example. The news media have been alarmingly guilty of over-ascribing "momentum" this year and claiming causality based on geography. This one just happened to be the one I noticed when I picked up my paper and had a few minutes yesterday morning.

And John is right that there are some national polls out there, and certainly these can enter the discussion. But I see most of the "momentum" talk being based on state-to-state results. I heard/read it again last night and I can't even remember where: "Hillary had the momentum after Pennsylvania, but Obama got it back after North Carolina!"

The more I've thought about it, the more convinced I am that this fallacy is getting so much air time because it's actually TRUE to a certain extent in truncated nominating processes. When Iowa-NH-SC and SuperDeeDuper Tuesday determine your nominee by the first week in February, then political reporters and operatives are RIGHT to focus on perceptions of trends, since what's happening isn't a true national election but a weird contest played out along set-piece rules. Why Iowa-NH? BECAUSE! But those are the rules of the game and all the players understand them.

Now that we've gotten past that superficial, high-speed campaign, the mainstream news-media doesn't have a functional group-think narrative. So maybe it makes sense that they're reaching back for sports analogies and "momentum."

Bullshitting may or may not imply intention. I dunno. Here's what I think: Most members of the pundit class owe their place on the punditry circuit to their willingness to reliably stick to a particular role/persona. So while these folks have some interest in being moderately responsible, their livelihoods depend on regularly playing their parts in the stage drama that we've created. Hence Brooks -- whose persona is "That bookish, establishment, reasonable conservative from the NYT," -- is required to come up with X number of arguments each week that fit his profile. I suspect there's a lot of bullshitting that comes with a role like that, don't you?

But you know, I really could be wrong about singling him out. He's certainly not the worst offender. Maybe I'm just still tingling with annoyance over that stupid piece he wrote back in November.

Does the media bullshit with nefarious intention? That's the great question, isn't it? Who is pulling the strings, and what is their agenda? Who controls THEM? I've been in the news biz for 20 years and I sure wish I knew.

My best interpretation, at this point, is simply that most news media tend to bullshit simply because bullshitters tend to get promoted and truth tellers and "difficult" employees don't. Bullshitters are reliable and adaptive. They do a better job of producing news as a commodity, rather than as an uncomfortable inquiry.