PARTISAN INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM, PART I

To begin this posting, a word in support of the Pew Research Center.  What a service for the American people.  It is a nonpartisan think tank or “fact tank” as it refers to itself.  Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it publishes information over various issue topics, i.e., social issues, public opinion, and demographic developments within the US and the world in general.  Also, it reports on media and its content and provides overviews of empirical studies from the various social sciences.

          It is organizationally funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and has been providing the general public with insightful and timely research reports since the 1990s.  For those unfamiliar with the Pew Charitable Trusts, it is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organizational arrangement that funds various nonprofit entities like the Pew Research Center.  The Center is also funded by the Templeton Foundation.  To illustrate its work, there has been a series of studies supported by the Center on the issue of polarization.  One such effort is highlighted in this posting.[1]

          Robert Faris, et al., looked into the 2016 presidential election, found various actions by rightwing actors that constituted what the study calls “right-wing ecosystem,” affecting the results of that election.  The ecosystem includes the Fox News setup but also has an array of other contributors as this posting indicates.  Most of that activity relative to the 2016 election revolved around what the Center study calls “two chief dynamics” and, as such, provides two lessons for future elections.

          The two dynamics targeted the Clinton Foundation.  The first dynamic aimed at setting an effective public agenda.  In part, this dynamic was nothing new; it consisted of opposition research.  That is, it consisted of tough partisan investigation, reporting, and messaging of information aimed at portraying Clinton and her campaign in the worst way.  What made it somewhat unique was how thorough or deep it was as well as how far back their research went.  Interestingly, this effort began before Trump became part of the story.

          This tale seems to have begun with the publication of the book, Clinton Cash, a scurrilous account of donations to the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees to the Clintons by moneyed interests in exchange for public policy enactments or proposals.  The book was written by Peter Schweizer and published in July 2016.  Here’s the Amazon’s advertising blurb for the book,

In 2000, Bill and Hillary Clinton owed millions of dollars in legal debt. Since then, they’ve earned over $130 million. Where did the money come from? Most people assume that the Clintons amassed their wealth through lucrative book deals and high-six figure fees for speaking gigs. Now, Peter Schweizer shows who is really behind those enormous payments.

… Schweizer [in a previous best-selling book] detailed patterns of official corruption in Washington that led to congressional resignations and new ethics laws. In Clinton Cash, he follows the Clinton money trail, revealing the connection between their personal fortune, their “close personal friends,” the Clinton Foundation, foreign nations, and some of the highest ranks of government.

Schweizer reveals the Clinton’s troubling dealings in Kazakhstan, Colombia, Haiti, and other places at the “wild west” fringe of the global economy. In this blockbuster exposé, Schweizer merely presents the troubling facts he’s uncovered. Meticulously researched and scrupulously sourced, filled with headline-making revelations, Clinton Cash raises serious questions of judgment, of possible indebtedness to an array of foreign interests, and ultimately, of fitness for high public office.[2]

Apparently, the book does bring up verified decisions by Hillary Clinton that did favor various sponsors of her husband’s speaking engagements – at hefty fees – but the evidence reveals only questionable timing.

          Here is how a Newsweek review of the book summarizes the book’s reportage of what actually happened,

The book contains many more lurid examples of Bill and Hillary doing things that look bad—from Bill taking juicy speaking fees from a major investor in the Keystone XL pipeline while Hillary's state department reviewed the pipeline deal, to the Clinton Foundation accepting donations from a Swedish mining investor who more or less financed a coup in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

None of these actions are illegal. And it's not even clear if they're related. The rooster doesn't cause the sun to rise, but this is the thrust of Schweizer's argument. He never proves any laws were broken—in fact, he practically begins the book by hedging his accusations: "I realize how shocking these allegations may appear. Are these activities illegal? That's not for me to say. I'm not a lawyer."

Indeed not. Nor are the vast majority of American voters. And this fact is what Schweizer is counting on, presumably, because, while he points out many instances of Hillary and Bill Clinton doing things that look bad, he doesn't include any instances that rise to lawbreaking.[3]

What added to the effect of this dynamic (including publishing the book), Steve Bannon and his publishing interest, Breitbart News, proceeded to produce and distribute a film version of the book.  But of interest, the book was released months before Trump became the Republican candidate. 

But more calibrated was the release of the film and calls for Congressional investigation of the entailed charges to coincide with the usual bump a party convention would receive after its conclusion.  All of this was further coordinated with a well-organized email release to highlight the film.  The rightwing media ecosystem held back the story from public release until the mainstream media took up the story.  Those in that broader media platform played an essential role in “spreading the word.”  They in effect legitimized the story and, in turn, it became part of the public discourse.

How can public or private policy address this disruptive development – a development that, in effect, spreads as truth information concerning unfounded, illegal behavior?  One challenge is:  any public policy must not be inconsistent with First Amendment rights of free speech.  The Center opines that such developments needs to be met by a “highly vigilant professional press.” 

Yes, the press today is being hacked (information the Center added to the report as relevant) and such overviews call for serious surveillance which, in turn, depends on time-consuming efforts on the part of editors.  But the republic’s future seems to depend on the press to inform its readers and viewers as to such efforts as exemplified by the Clinton Cash case.  Sure, if an editor receives what is called an “exclusive” from a source such as Schweitzer painting a public figure, such as Clinton (either one), negatively, that will deserve an editor’s attention.  But that is where the interchange begins.

The Center’s summary states, “Tracking down the funding and sponsorship of Schweitzer’s research, and developing an investigative story about who is behind this assault and why it is being launched, is harder. It is, nonetheless, the fundamental professional responsibility of the press if it is to retain its unique role.”[4]

So, this is the first dynamic that the Pew Research Center offers in its related study.  The next posting will look at the second dynamic, the role of propaganda and misinformation.

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[1] Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler, “Partisanship, Propaganda, & Disinformation: Online Media & the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Library (n.d.), accessed August 19, 2020, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/76a9/3eb0bed8ff032c44186678c5279f20cc5ff8.pdf?_ga=2.230250332.1151241653.1597869609-1463880478.1597869609 . 

[2] Amazon (online marketing statement), “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich” – book title, (n.d.), accessed August 20, 2020, https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296 .

[3] Taylor Wofford, “Everything You Need to Know about ‘Clinton Cash,’ Newsweek, May 1, 2015, accessed August 20, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/everything-you-need-know-about-clinton-cash-327694 .

[4] Robert Faris, et al., “Partisanship, Propaganda, & Disinformation,” 130.

VARIED AND NOT

 

This posting picks up on the notion that the current polarization bedeviling the nation’s politics is not felt the same across the political landscape.  That is to say, at least in one of its aspects, Democratic party members and Republicans view the functions of their respective parties differently and that is because their constituency arrangements vary.  One has a “57 variety” feel to it; the other has a monolithic feel to it.

          The Democratic Party has set upon itself the aim to represent the interests of a large array of groups.  These include liberal whites, African Americans, Latino/as, Asians, most labor groups, and in general, low income groups and their advocates.  They do have religious groups supporting them, but they are not from one religious’ tradition.  Their advocates include Christians, Jews, Muslims, even atheists and Buddhists and reflect the more liberal theological tradition.[1]

          But here the sorting becomes a bit complex.  Democrats are sorted, in part, among whites that are not psychologically bound to traditional religious values.  But in terms of non-white groups that they attract, they include traditionally oriented blacks and other immigrant groups, that attach themselves to fairly strong community-based allegiances. 

In general, many in this latter group hold conservative beliefs and often find it stressful to accept the liberal, Democratic agenda.  They stick to the Democrats because of their repulsion of the Republican Party and its policy positions. This includes positions regarding many issues that affect these minorities in negative ways, such as the Republican party’s aversion to public services, such as in education, or its immigration policies.[2]

The Republican Party represents the interests of one basic group – white voters as they define themselves as an identity group with a strong subgroup, fundamentalist Christians.  Within this group of people, in inordinate numbers, there are businesspeople, who are generally attracted to the party’s conservative, pro-business agenda.  For example, the party has consistently stood against business regulations and taxes.  It also has a strong aversion to social public policies and instead favors market solutions.

Due to these distinctions, two very different party makeups have emerged.  The Democratic Party is more of a coalition of various elements and the Republican Party equals sameness.  Ezra Klein reports,

It means [for Democrats] winning liberal whites in New Hampshire and traditionalist blacks in South Carolina.  It means talking to Irish Catholics in Boston and the karmically curious in California.  Democrats need to go broad to win over their party and … they need to reach into right-leaning territory to win power.  Republicans can afford to go deep.[3]

To support this distinction, Klein cites the contextual information that Americans generally consider themselves conservative instead of liberal (35% vs. 26%).  Yet, three-quarter of Republicans say they are conservative and only half of Democrats consider themselves as liberals.[4]  This betrays two important facts about American politics.  One it tends to be conservative and the polarization is better defined on the right.  It is the conservative voice that has the more targeted message in that it is less diluted by mixed motivations.

          How does this dissimilarity manifest itself in day-to-day politics?  Matt Grossman and David Hopkins in their book, Asymmetric Politics, study this question.  Generally, according to them, the Democratic Party, in that they are the more arrayed, factious party, finds commonality through a set of policy positions or goals.  The Republican Party, on the other hand, finds commonality in a binding ideology which is more abstract and generally phrased in their rhetoric.

          Republicans, consequently, have less interest groups expressing support for the party (about half as many as the Democratic Party has) and in their pronouncements, such as in debates, they tend to cite their ideology or principles at a much higher rate.  Democrats cite the various groups that support them, highlighting these groups’ interests and how the party’s policy positions support those interests.  Interestingly, this encourages them, the Democrats, to support compromise more readily than Republicans are but are more prone to expect results.[5]

          But an irony appears when it comes to the current state under a Trump administration.  While conservatives, as mentioned above, tend to be more ideological, they seemed malleable to the drifts of Trump’s rhetoric that aim to accommodate different audiences.  Klein reports that among conservatives, what was most important was not the offenses the president’s words have been to their ideology – or even Trump’s support of their ideology – but in how Trump defended them as an identity group or how the president defended their identity.

          To support this contention, Michael Barber and Jeremy C. Pope, in a recent academic article, provide evidence of how Trump supporters accept the diverse messaging the president espouses.  In their study, respondents who identified with Trump, were disposed to pick up on Trump’s cues to align their opinions to match his.[6]

          The Congressman, former Republican, Justin Amash, puts it well,

A lot of Trump Republicans have this mindset that they have to fight this all out war against the left.  And if they have to use big government to do it, they’re perfectly fine with that.  So when I go to Twitter and talk about over-spending or the size of the government, I get a lot of reactions now from Trump supporters saying, “Who cares how big the government is”, or “Who cares how much we’re spending as long as we’re fighting against illegal immigration and pushing back against the left.”[7]

The message relevant to the polarization issue is that its parameters have transcended its original motivating force among those of the right.  It now has become its own self-consuming end. 

A civics teacher who wishes to portray in his/her classroom the current political arena, therefore, needs to deal with certain complexities that do not promise to become easier anytime soon.  Probably no aspect of that grand contest is its emotional evolution that is still in the making and is changing as the day-to-day political aspects of the nation change. 

For example, the current coronavirus challenge has added a whole new layer to what is found divisive among Americans.  It has gotten down to whether to wear a mask or not has become political.  And this all-encompassing passion for Trump has its own media outlet, Fox News, which will be addressed in the next posting.

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[1] “Theological liberalism, a form of religious thought that establishes religious inquiry on the basis of a norm other than the authority of tradition.  It was an important influence in Protestantism from about the mid-17^th century through the 1920s.”  - - “Theological Liberalism,” Encycloaedia Britannica (n.d.), accessed August 17, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/theological-liberalism .

[2] Jonathan D. Weiler and Marc J. Hetherington, Prius or Pickup:  How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide (Boston, MA:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018).

[3] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York, NY:  Avid Reader Press, 2020), 231.  The general identification of issues in this posting can be attributed to this source.

[4] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized.

[5] Matt Grossman and David Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics:  Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 2016)

[6] Michael Barber and Jeremy C. Pope, “Does Party Trump Ideology?  Disentangling Party and Ideology in America,” American Political Science Review, 113 (1), February 2019, 38-54.

[7] Jane Coaston, “Justin Amash on Trump, Impeachment, and the Death of the Tea Party,” New York Magazine, July 3, 2019, accessed August 17, 2020, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/3/18759659/justin-amash-trump-impeachment-gop-tea-party-republicans .  This article is the reporting of an interview with Justin Amash conducted by Coaston of Vox.  In this article, Amash, a Tea Party product, offers a fine summary statement of the natural rights view:  “The purpose of government is to protect people’s rights.  And Congress should serve as a deliberative body that ultimately reflects the will of the people through their representatives.”  Yet, elsewhere he cites his allegiance to federalism but restrains that reference to the structural aspect of that construct, not its processes.