I've got your cognitive and will raise you a dissonance
Carla Axtman
If there were a Pulitzer Prize for cognitive dissonance, the Oregon media's general swoon over Gordon Smith would certainly warrant a nomination. Their capitulation to the "moderate" label is legendary in these parts--with the Oregonian editorial board constantly on the lookout for ways to lavish praise on Smith.
Unfortunately, the Oregonian Smith swoon isn't left to the pages of the Opinion section.
Today, the National League of Conservation Voters and the Oregon League of Conservation Voters announced their endorsement of Jeff Merkley for U.S. Senate:
The national League of Conservation Voters (LCV) and the Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV) announced a joint endorsement of the Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives, Jeff Merkley, for U.S. Senate. The people of Oregon have a clear choice this November: help Jeff Merkley pursue a clean energy future that creates jobs and curbs global warming, or let Gordon Smith continue the failed energy policies of the Bush Administration that put America on track for economic disaster and destroys the planet. The choice is clear. (emphasis Carla)“Jeff Merkley’s proven leadership on global warming and clean energy will help to break the Senate stalemate in Washington,” LCV President Gene Karpinski said. “Speaker Merkley’s plan to deal with global warming will simultaneously end America’s addiction to oil, protect the planet for future generations and bring clean energy jobs to Oregon. He knows that Oregon families deserve real energy choices.”
LCV goes on to gush about Merkley's environmental record, including his 96% lifetime score in the Oregon Legislature.
I'm wondering if this will warrant an update to Jeff Mapes blog post from February, swooning dramatically over Gordon Smith's LCV rating:
Flash forward to 2008. I'm perusing the League of Conservation Voters' annual scorecard that shows Smith receiving a 73 percent rating - which is twice as high as his lifetime rating of 32. It's as unexpected as Teddy Kennedy voting with the American Conservative Union three out of four times.Of course, critics will say this is just Smith preparing for a tough re-election race in Oregon, where environmentalist leanings run high. Smith's spokesman, R.C. Hammond, said he thought the higher rating was more a result of a different mixture of bills that came to the floor following the Democratic takeover of the Senate.
At any rate, Smith voted with the environmental community on 11 out of 15 votes.
Nevermind that Smith's consistent MO is to vote GOP lockstep up until an election cycle..and then flee to the left/middle in preparation to to campaign.
Even in isolation, Smith's LCV rating is a demonstration of that fact. Smith's lifetime rating is 32%. Hardly the record of a guy who gives a crap about the enviornment, much less an environmental champion.
And Mapes tends to be one of the good ones, by the way. The fact that he didn't bother to report Smith's whole record is frustrating.
For once, it would be nice to have the Oregon media really dissect Smith's voting record, report it widely and hold him accountable. Rather than run to the lazy "Smith is a moderate, independent..", give voters the real story. The LCV rating just scratches the surface.
Look at the chart below:
Smith has been a reliable Bush/GOP vote..up until its time to start putting together his reelection. Its all there.
This guys is right wing Bush wacko and a few votes on a cigarette tax and mental health can’t change that.
So what do you say, Oregon media? Who has the temerity to actually go balls-out and do real reporting on Gordon Smith?
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Jul 31, '08
Swooning?
If there were a Pulitzer Prize for cognitive dissonance, the Oregon and national media's general swoon over Barak Obama would certainly take the prize, hands down. Their capitulation to his iconship, Obama, is virtually unanimous with editorial boards constantly on the lookout for ways to lavish praise on Obama.
Gordon Smith on the other hand is a moderate. Of course it's not valid to have left wingers decide which Republicans are or are not moderates. Because they call every one who isn't liberal a right winger.
No doubt Ben Westlund was a moderate Republican just prior to his switching parties. :)
12:00 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Yeah, swooning.
Smith's voting record isn't moderate. The fact remains that nobody in the Oregon media seems up to reporting on his actually record--much less hold him accountable.
Cognitive dissonance.
Jul 31, '08
To answer the question you posed, the Oregonian's Jeff Mapes today is significantly downplaying the League of Conservation Voters' (both Oregon and National) endorsements of Merkley and their rejection of Smith despite the more extensive February post gushing over Smith that you cite. He's managed only four words today so far ('In short: no suprise') - here.
Weak. Given all the love Smith got for his one (election) year conversion, this choice from LCV would seem to justify a little more attention, as opposed to a yawn, from the fearless Oregonian staff. One of the starkest contrasts between Smith and the majority of the people of Oregon is his lack of an environmental ethic, and his willingness to bend over for industry whether its big oil, big timber, or big polluters, when push comes to shove. Smith is no moderate when it comes to protecting Oregon's environment - he's just willing to bend in the wind during the election cycle, particularly when his votes can be symbolic due to the larger Senate vote count and Bush's veto threats. He's proven that he'll say one thing in an election and do another when the chips are down. He pretends to be one thing in Portland, while painting a completely different picture in other parts of the state when it comes to the environment. There's a lot of material for reporters to work with.
I wonder whose going to be laying down the $2,500 and $10,000 checks for those priority seats and photo-ops at Smith's August fundraiser? Given the past, it will likely be a 'who's who' of timber company CEO's and corporate lobbyists who are dragging their feet on dealing with climate change and common-sense environmental protection at every turn, and who are trying to squeeze out as many bad environmental policies as possible during Bush's last six months.
Jul 31, '08
Evaluate Gordon Smith by the company he keeps. Or perhaps, more like the companies that keep him.
Vote Merkley '08
Jul 31, '08
Steve is correct about Obama and wrong about Smith.
Those who say that they are "anti-war", "pro-fair trade", "pro-single-payer", "pro-Constitution", etc., yet support either of McBama are seriously dissonant and risk mental impairment from it.
However, Smith a "moderate"? Wyden is his less-evil twin, and he's to the right of "moderate".
2:05 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Voteview is a website that produces a liberal/conservative placement based on all roll call votes cast in a particular session of Congress, places Gordon Smith as the 3rd most moderate / least conservative / most liberal (pick your label) Senator.
In the 109th and 108th Congresses, Smith was 7th most liberal in the GOP delegation.
Note that voteview reveals how truly conservative John McCain's voting record is--routinely among the fourth or fifth most conservative, right up there with Sessions, Kyl, and Nickles.
This does not mean that on particular subsets of issues or on a particular bill that Gordon Smith cannot be characterized as "conservative." However, considering all bills across the last three Congressional sessions, Gordon Smith's voting record is most closely aligned with Susan Collins, Dick Lugar, Olympia Snowe, Norm Coleman, and on the D side, Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu.
<hr/>I can tell folks more about how the voteview placements work if you like, but a brief summary: the technology makes a series of pairwise comparisons between roll call votes and between members. It then accumulates the number of times that a member votes with another member. For example, if John McCain votes either yea or nay on the same bills that Don Nickles votes yea on nay on, then the two of them would receive a similar score.
The content of the bills is not considered, just how members cluster together. By analyzing the content of the bills independently (you can rank order bills just like members), you can deduce the content of the underlying dimension.
It's quite apparent that the primary ordering dimension in the Congress is "liberal/conservative" understood as the level of government involvement in the economy.
The one alternative dimension that has helped order votes in the house and has not, at certain historical moments, been correlated with liberal/conservative, is race. Back in the 1830s, it was tariff policy.
2:42 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
In the 109th and 108th Congresses, Smith was 7th most liberal in the GOP delegation.
Given Smith's 85-90% voting record with Bush over that time period, I'd say that has to do more with how conservative the GOP members of the Senate are, as opposed to a "liberal" Gordon Smith.
Jul 31, '08
Paul's counter to Carla's post is intriguing. Of course, most of the disagreement stems from how we define "moderate". The dissonance occurs because the GOP has become more conservative over time and so a "moderate" member of the GOP today is still squarely "conservative" if we compare him to, say, the GOP of the 1970s. But I think it's safe to say that Smith is clearly moderate in comparison to the rest of his party.
Now, does that make him a true moderate? Well, are Democrats true progressives? I suspect Harry Kershner would say no.
Carla, I find the graph you used above both interesting and possibly misleading. It's interesting that there is such a significant change when approaching an election. Assuming the same scale is used every year, that's a story right there. But it's potentially misleading because it doesn't indicate on which bills Smith opposed Bush and the Republicans in prior years. If his opposition was on small items, it hardly matters. But what if his few votes were on big items, like the war, health care, the environment? Doesn't that make the impact of those few votes huge?
Smith is wrong on a lot of stuff, but he is more progressive than most Republicans. That's pretty faint praise, and certainly not enough to keep him in office. But the strategy of tying him to Bush probably doesn't sell well to most non-D Oregonians.
Jul 31, '08
In the 109th and 108th Congresses, Smith was 7th most liberal in the GOP delegation.
That means little considering just how right wing the GOP has become. When you have to say: "Gee he's not as bad as those guys", that's exceptionally weak praise when "those guys" are of absurdly poor quality.
Because they call every one who isn't liberal a right winger.
Ah, the right wing's perfected fall back: projection.
Tell me, Steve, what issue exactly is he moderate on (and not one- i.e.: iraq- where he changed positions for political popints)?
Jul 31, '08
But the strategy of tying him to Bush probably doesn't sell well to most non-D Oregonians.
Why?
3:02 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Carla is exactly right on the relationship between her data and Paul's. It reflects the destruction of the old "Rockefeller wing" of the Republican Party since 1980.
We should pay attention to Paul's data and point about McCain's placement, however, and think about how to use and publicize it.
Given the propensity of Republicans and conservative media types to label all Democrats "radical liberals" or "socialists" regardless of their actual ideas or votes (in which Smith himself has participated, of course), Steve's comments are a hoot and a half.
Regarding the O., Jeff Mapes, etc., this situation seems to be one calling for letters & blog comments, and ideally an OLCV op-ed.
In fairness to Mapes earlier iteration, he does mention the 32% lifetime rating -- he just doesn't ask which we should rate more heavily and why, e.g. what kinds of issues were up for votes over recent years, and what evidence if any there is that Smith's 2007 record represents a permanent shift or an opportunistic one -- just leaves it at the "conflicting partisan interpretations" meme.
Of course, as the late, great anthropologist Gail Kelly used to say, "Cognitive dissonance isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Anyway, thanks for the new evidence on that Carla :->.
3:04 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Carla, I find the graph you used above both interesting and possibly misleading. It's interesting that there is such a significant change when approaching an election. Assuming the same scale is used every year, that's a story right there. But it's potentially misleading because it doesn't indicate on which bills Smith opposed Bush and the Republicans in prior years. If his opposition was on small items, it hardly matters. But what if his few votes were on big items, like the war, health care, the environment? Doesn't that make the impact of those few votes huge?
Miles--given the exceptionally high percentage of times that Smith voted with the Bush Administration, the odds that most or all of those votes were on small/insignificant items is extremely low. However, if you'd like to do the breakdown, the source material came from Congressional Quarterly. And I believe that Congress.com also tracks votes--and goes back a number of years.
I don't see Smith as "more progressive" than most Republicans--and certainly much less progressive than the general electorate of Oregon.
3:22 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Stop italics?
Carla, I know you don't "see" Smith as "more progressive than most Republicans," but the data contradict you on that point.
Your latter point--Smith compared to most Oregonians--is a much more powerful campaign position. And your first point--that regardless of how he votes overall, on specific issues, he's made the wrong choices--is also a better campaign position.
But to me, at least, I think trying to paint Gordon Smith as a right wing wacko isn't going to sell. And it's not the media fawning over Smith, it's just what the votes show.
Chris, re: McCain, I keep waiting for this to intrude into the campaign. John McCain is really, really conservative. He has been incredibly successful in taking positions on a few high profile issues and thereby painting himself as a "maverick." But on the core issues, he is really conservative, no two ways about it.
3:25 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Paul --
Voteview is an interesting website (albeit horribly badly organized.)
I did find this fascinating page, oddly titled "Is John Kerry a liberal?", which ranks every member of Congress since 1937 on a liberal/conservative scale from -1 to +1.
Now, it's true that Gordon Smith is to the left of crazies like Jesse Helms (0.517), Dick Cheney (0.658), etc.
But he's solidly in the mainstream of conservativism - with a score of 0.190. Out of 3320 members of Congress ranked, he's the #2129th most conservative.
But here's a list of historical Republicans that are to the LEFT of Gordon Smith:
0.144 Alfonse D'Amato 0.156 Richard Nixon 0.139 Nancy Landon Kassebaum 0.131 John Danforth 0.041 Bob Packwood 0.033 Dave Durenberger 0.007 John Heinz -0.003 Arlen Specter -0.063 Mark Hatfield
By way of context, Ron Wyden scores a -0.304, Darlene Hooley a -0.277, John Kerry a -0.366, Ted Kennedy a -0.476
3:27 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Oh, and John McCain is 0.303.
3:28 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
In other words, Gordon Smith is closer to John McCain than he is to Mark Hatfield. Nevermind the Democrats.
Jul 31, '08
Gordon always wanted to be seen as Hatfield's successor. Hatfield was many things, but much more statesmanlike (at least until the 1990 re-election campaign) more substantive, more politically courageous (he helped organize the Reagan Inaugural in 1981, then fought Reagan on budget issues)and less slick than Gordon.
To which (apologies to Lloyd Bentsen), I knew about Mark Hatfield while in college, before moving to Oregon Many of us really admired Mark Hatfield. Gordon Smith is no Mark Hatfield (although he has managed to be slick without being as slippery as Steve Duin's description of our former Senator, "when you try to nail down Bob Packwood, you will find he is greasing the handle of your hammer")
Jul 31, '08
But he's solidly in the mainstream of conservativism - with a score of 0.190. Out of 3320 members of Congress ranked, he's the #2129th most conservative.
That's a misleading representation of the data, Kari. He's 2,129th out of ALL members of Congress, including Democrats. Starting from the mid-point of 0.0, he's 408th out of 1,599 that are on the + side of the ledger. And since roughly 160 of those to the right of 0.0 are Democrats (and much fewer to the left of 0.0 are Republicans), he's something like the 250th most liberal out of over 1,300 Republicans (it's hard to do exact numbers without the dataset).
Or just look at the bell curves up top. His score puts him clearly on the left side of the Republican bell curve. And as for linking him to Bush, the president is 2,971. So Smith is closer to Chafee than he is to Bush.
Jul 31, '08
But the strategy of tying him to Bush probably doesn't sell well to most non-D Oregonians.
Why?
Because most non-D Oregonians don't buy it. Most Democrats don't buy it either, even though it's an Official Merkley Campaign Talking Point.(tm) As Paul said, it's a great strategy to point to all of the specific issues where Smith was wrong, but painting him as a Bush acolyte just strikes most people as reaching. Voters aren't terribly sophisticated, but they know that Smith is not a right-wing zealot, and selling him as such comes across as insincere.
5:50 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Kari Hey, if you want to reorganize Keith's website, go for it!
I will email him to ask about comparing across time periods like that, but my memory is that this is problematic. The scale is fixed to vary from -1.0 to 1.0. Members are arrayed on the scale relative to one another and relative to the positions of the roll calls.
Thus, Nixon's "revealed preference" is ultimately a function of what legislation appeared on the floor of the chamber. I'm not sure we can make analogies between Nixon's score and Smith's score.
However, I can definitely find the answer to this. And I definitely don't think voteview is the last answer on this question, it is just an answer.
I was able to use voteview pretty effectively in an oped in 2004 to counter the claim that John Kerry was more liberal than Ted Kennedy simply because Kerry's ADA score was 2 points higher than Kennedy.
The problem with ADA is that they rank members using a small set of roll calls and their distributions are highly constrained--most Democrats rank above 80, most Republicans rank below 20. If you consider all votes, Kerry ranked just about in the middle of the Democratic Senate delegation, about where you'd expect the party nominee to rank.
6:12 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Interesting. To put what Miles has said another way, Smith is in the least conservative/ most liberal quartile of Republicans according to this measure, and just about defines the line between 1st and 2nd quartile from zero if we include the Demcrats to the right of zero.
Miles, I am not sure if we can compare the list of individuals to the curves above, which seem possibly to be based on total number of person-terms (?) & I am not sure how individual scores there are calculated but it seems to differ from the lifetime (?) scores on the list below.
On the individual list, we should note that Strom Thurmond, Phil Gramm and James O. Eastland are counted as Democrats and they likely are not the only post-Civil Rights switchers counted as Ds -- and I'll bet that others of the Ds to the right are older Southern Ds who today would be Rs. But even if we include them, it doesn't affect Miles' basic point too much.
On the other hand, there is a difference between saying Smith is a relatively moderate Republican, and Smith's claim to be Bipartisan in his ads.
On the individual list, while being a relatively moderate Republican, he apparently also is within one standard deviation of the Republican mean, which I suppose we could say means something like "both relatively moderate and within the Republican mainstream."
He is not much of a Democrat.
On the individual list, his relative moderation as Republican does not really put him in Democratic territory. There are 20 Democrats rated to the right of him (including Thurmond and Gramm). That compares almost certainly with at least 1500 Ds to the left of him, and probably with considerably more than that (out of 3320), given the long periods of D majorities in the period under question.
If Smith were a Democrat, he'd almost certainly be a technical statistical outlier on the individual list, and if not, he'd be darn close to it. (According to the figures accompanying the graph, he'd be greater than two standard deviations but less that three from the Democratic mean, which still would mean that over 96% of Democrats would be to the left of him).
There are only 40 "Democrats" to the right of 1.0 on the individual list (including James O. Eastland, who is to the left of Smith).
The "Bipartisan" claim is bunkum.
6:31 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Because most non-D Oregonians don't buy it. Most Democrats don't buy it either, even though it's an Official Merkley Campaign Talking Point.(tm) As Paul said, it's a great strategy to point to all of the specific issues where Smith was wrong, but painting him as a Bush acolyte just strikes most people as reaching.
Hmm...have you some sort of evidence for this claim, Miles? Cuz even if you think Smith is a "moderate", his votes are far and away with the Bush Administration. That's simply a fact.
Jul 31, '08
Can a willing propagandist experience cognitive dissonance?
Jul 31, '08
This argument is a tempest in a teapot. In the end, there can be only one candidate that is "bluer" than the other.So why not vote for a true blue rather than who tries to fool us.
Merkley in '08
9:47 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
There are many ways to parse the numbers on the Vote View site.
For example: there are 3320 names in the list. So the half-way point would be #1660. Sen. Hatfield is 82 persons to the Left of that point, whereas Sen. Smith is 469 persons to the Right of it.
The other thing about the list is how "conservative" is defined. Notice that Congressman Ron Paul is the single most "conservative" person to have been elected to either house of Congress since 1937. More conservative than Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Barry Goldwater and Dick Cheney.
I think that tying Smith to Bush is effective and worthwhile (and legit). But here in Oregon I would prefer to see Smith contrasted to Hatfield. That comparison underscores how un-moderate Smith is compared to Oregon.
Aug 1, '08
Endorsements are nice, but their value is suspect. If a NAV was waiting to see which way the LCV or OLCV was going to go, then I submit that NAV is being lazy. Sadly, that may be the case with a lot. If so, then the endorsement has value, but for those with more than a couple of brain cells to rub together, Smith’s performance and voting record by themselves should be enough to convince them to vote for Merkley.
10:22 a.m.
Aug 1, '08
Kari
I have a reply from the man himself. Sorry to geek out on this stuff, but I absolutely love voteview as a teaching and research tool.
Anyway, here's what Keith had to say about over time comparisons (which are valid, by the way) and his website:
Paul -- Yes, the regular DW-NOMINATE scores are comparable within chamber within stable party systems. I would be queasy going more than 50 years or so but they are comparable.
The "Common Space" DW-NOMINATE scores that we just posted a few months ago scale the House and Senate together using members that served in both. Note for these scores there is no time trend so that a legislator gets the same ideal point throughout his or her career in both chambers.
Yes, my website is very pedestrian.
Fortunately, my younger and smarter colleague, Dr. Lewis, is in the process of bringing up the old Voteview For Windows software on a server at UCLA.
Aug 1, '08