Manning the Mike in the Echo Chamber of Life

I don’t know how many years it’s been since I read Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt, but I’ve never forgotten the passages in which Lewis’ Midwestern Republicans talk politics. It was my first exposure to what we now call the echo chamber — the endless repetition of a political party’s talking points, with each speaker using his turn at the microphone to say exactly what everyone else has said, but to say it as if revealing deep and profound truths.

Here’s a passage from Chapter 3, in which Babbitt (the first speaker) talks to his more learned and erudite neighbor in their quiet neighborhood in Zenith, Ohio:

“Say, old man, what do you think about the Republican candidate? Who’ll they nominate for president? Don’t you think it’s about time we had a real business administration?”

“In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good, sound, business-like conduct of its affairs. What we need is — a business administration!” said Littlefield.

“I’m glad to hear you say that! I certainly am glad to hear you say that! I didn’t know how you’d feel about it, with all your associations with colleges and so on, and I’m glad you feel that way. What the country needs — just at this present juncture — is neither a college president nor a lot of monkeying with foreign affairs, but a good–sound–economical–business–administration, that will give us a chance to have something like a decent turnover.”

Since Babbitt was published in 1922, I assume they’re talking about the 1920 election. The Republican candidate, of course, was the ill-fated Warren Gamaliel Harding, who died two and a half years after taking office.

The election was a blowout, with the Democratic ticket (including vice-presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt) getting just 34 percent of the vote, and losing almost every state north and west of the old Confederacy. (The Dems took Maryland, but the Republicans got Tennessee, the first time the Republicans had gotten one of the 11 Confederate states since Reconstruction.) It’s also worth noting that the socialist candidate, Eugene Debs, got 3.4 percent of the vote.

So what did we get from Babbitt’s echo chamber? One of the worst presidents in U.S. history. (He was succeeded by his vice-president, Calvin Coolidge, who was ranked a middling 27th of 42 American presidents by historians.)

Which brings me to the guy may turn out to be the greatest beneficiary of the echo chamber since Harding. When Zogby did its annual Presidential Greatness Poll last year, George W. Bush was rated “great” or “near-great” by 39 percent of those taking the survey, while 35 percent ranked him “below average” or a “failure.” What accounts for that disparity? I think it comes down to the echo chamber: Those who stand inside it consider him a fine leader; those outside come to the opposite conclusion.

I suspect this year’s poll will have even worse numbers for Bush, whose policies and priorities are stunningly unpopular, considering he was re-elected less than a year ago.

But his place in history is the least of his problems right now.

How many shopping days until Fitzmas?

Sometime next week, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is expected to announce the results of his two-year investigation into what some are calling Plamegate and others are calling Treasongate. Since no one knows what Fitzgerald is going to do, we’re down to a series of guesses. Is it about the crime of leaking Valerie Plame’s name to journalists? Is it about covering up the leaks? Is it about lying to the FBI about the leaks or the cover-up of the leaks? Is it a combination of those charges, or is about something else altogether?

Like I said, no one knows. It looks a lot like Watergate to me — people in power acting secretly and nefariously to damage a political opponent.

But one subplot remains almost beyond belief to me as a journalist: How did a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter like Judith Miller end up taking the side of the White House against not only her own employer and her own profession, but against the people of her own country?

Here’s Maureen Dowd, Miller’s colleague, teeing up Miller’s head and driving it down the middle of the fairway:

Judy’s stories about W.M.D. fit too perfectly with the White House’s case for war. She was close to Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who was conning the neocons to knock out Saddam so he could get his hands on Iraq, and I worried that she was playing a leading role in the dangerous echo chamber that Senator Bob Graham, now retired, dubbed “incestuous amplification.” Using Iraqi defectors and exiles, Mr. Chalabi planted bogus stories with Judy and other credulous journalists.

Even last April, when I wrote a column critical of Mr. Chalabi, she fired off e-mail to me defending him.

So there was a famous and famously aggressive reporter, pouring the bogus case for war into the echo chamber, and bitterly defending her “sources” well past their sell-by date.

Which brings me back to Babbitt, and his calls for a “business administration.” G.W. Bush has been called the “CEO president,” which led to this line by investing guru Jim Cramer:

“He’s the CEO president, but it’s kind of like he’s the CEO of Enron and WorldCom.”

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