SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2010
KLMNO Sunday OPINION DANA MILBANK
Uncle Ted is laid to rest, but his legacy isn’t
Anchorage T
ed Stevens is dead. Long live Ted Stevens. As the legendary senator from Alaska was laid to rest last week, residents of
this city hung homemade banners from fences and overpasses with messages such as “Thank you, Uncle Ted.” The first sentence of the An- chorage Daily News’s account of the funeral de- scribed Stevens, who died this month in a plane crash, as “a master in delivering vast sums to the state.” And Vice President Biden eulogized that a “significant portion of the money that belongs in Delaware and New York and Georgia . . . resides right here.” Alaska, thanks largely to Stevens’s reign as the king of pork, is the ultimate welfare state, receiving from the federal treasury $1.84 for ev- ery dollar its residents pay in taxes. The hand- outs continued in President Obama’s economic stimulus legislation, which gave Alaska $3,145 per resident — $1,364 more per resident than the second-place state, according to a ProPubli- ca analysis, and nearly triple the national aver- age.
On Tuesday, six days after the Stevens funer- al, Alaska voters will hold what amounts to a referendum on the Stevens tradition when they cast their ballots in the state’s Republican Sen- ate primary. The question before the elector- ate: Will Alaska continue its long-term reliance on cash from Washington or will it join the Tea Party’s call for smaller government? The smart money is on the former. Upholding Uncle Ted’s legacy is incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whose father held the same seat for years before becoming governor and appointing his daughter to succeed him in the Senate. She calls Stevens her “hero,” and a phrase she spoke at the funeral — “Ted was Alaska” — became the banner headline in the next day’s paper. The list of accomplishments her campaign presents to voters is a compendi- um of pork, including $5 million for “Yukon River Chinook salmon disaster funding.” Opposing the Stevens tradition is Joe Miller, who, with the support of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, is attempting to defeat Murkowski. Miller argues that government is on “an unsustainable spending path” and ob- jects when “the government takes from one person’s hard work to give to another who has not worked for it.” Good points, both. The problem is that Mill-
er’s would-be constituents are the very ones who benefit from a too-large government transferring wealth to them from other Amer- icans.
Among Miller’s top priorities: attacking the
“earmarks” that funneled $4.8 billion of pork to Alaskans since 1991, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, including funds for Stevens pet projects such as “hibernation genomics,” “beluga whale research,” “alterna- tive salmon products” and “depressed Alaskan crab.” Miller also favors lower corporate taxes —this in a state addicted to oil company taxes for its revenue and for cash payments to resi- dents. Electing Miller would, in other words, be economic suicide in Alaska. This helps to ex- plain why Miller trails so badly in his challenge to Murkowski, who held a 2-to-1 lead in last month’s Alaska survey. Alaskans know where their bread is buttered. This, more broadly, is why I have little faith
that the Tea Party will succeed in its admirable pledge to fix the federal spending catastrophe. By and large, red states take far more than they give to the federal government, and once voters realize that “limited government” means less federal cash for them, they’ll change their minds about shrinking government. Might that sentiment be contributing to the surprising collection of losses in Republican primaries suffered by Palin-endorsed Tea Party candidates in recent weeks? Her picks have fallen in Washington, Wyoming, Kansas, Geor- gia, Colorado and Tennessee. Each race is different, of course. But it seems fairly clear that, here in her home state, Palin has seen the limits of a limited-government message. Palin and Miller say Murkowski is in- sufficiently conservative, but her 70 percent lifetime rating from the American Conserva- tive Union is higher than that of Stevens, who lost his seat in 2008 after a corruption-related conviction but regained his stature when the conviction was thrown out because of prosecu- torial misconduct. The real question is whether Alaskans, as Pa- lin and Miller believe, “are willing to tighten their belts a little bit” and receive less from the federal government. That would mean no more federal money for the wood technology center in Ketchikan, for the fight against the spruce bark beetle in Anchorage or for the lighthouse in Juneau. Gone would be funds for the botan- ical garden, the zoo, the aquarium, the adven- ture camp, the visitor center, the weather re- search facility and the countless harbor, airport and sewer projects. Alaskans have buried Stevens, but they are not about to bury his legacy.
danamilbank@washpost.com How we’re doing ahead of November by Darrell M. West and William Antholis P
olitical polarization has risen, the economy is shaky and some states are on the brink of fiscal collapse. In the fifth “How We’re Doing” Index, a team of scholars at the Brookings Institution has looked at the past five quarters to ascertain what factors might trigger a major shake-up in November.
It does not bode well for incumbents that as of mid-July, only 25 percent of Americans
say they are satisfied with the state of the country. Political polarization remains extreme- ly high: There is an astounding 69 percentage point difference between Republican and Democratic approval of President Obama’s performance. The president’s overall approv- al rating has dropped 15 percentage points over the past year, and Congress’s approval rating has dropped 14 points. This striking polarization and the shift in independents’
support could be major factors in the mid- term elections. The administration raised hopes broad- ly about ending partisanship, and support for Obama among Democrats, Repub- licans and independents was high in the first two quarters of 2009. Bipartisanship, of course, is a two-way street, and over the past five quarters, Republicans have mostly been unwilling to support the president’s initiatives. For his part, Oba- ma invoked bipartisanship a great deal, but the public saw little in action. His sig- nature effort at bipartisanship was a rare event: the Blair House summit on health- care reform. Perhaps more troubling for the White
House is its declining approval among in- dependents; their approval of the presi- dent’s performance has fallen 17 points over the past year. Factors for the decline include the flagging economy and failure to bridge the partisan divide. And while many have focused on the president’s de- cline in general popularity among white voters, his ratings among Hispanic voters have taken a comparative free-fall — de- spite the administration’s support for im- migration reform and its response to Ari- zona’s immigration law. Over the past year, Obama scored major
CAROLYN KASTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS 2009 General welfare
U.S. GDP growth annual percent change National unemployment rate Infl ation rate
Dow Jones industrial average Consumer spending annual percent change
States experiencing a decline in tax revenue (year-to-year) States experiencing increases in total employment
States experiencing increases in state/local government employment
States experiencing increases in unemployment rate
Payroll employment (percent change) in the D.C. metro area
in the Cleveland metro area in the Las Vegas metro area
Common defense U.S. troop casualties in Iraq
U.S. troop casualties in Afghanistan
Blessings of liberty Average approval rating of the president percent
Average approval rating of the president among percent Hispanics blacks whites
Average approval rating of the president by party percent Democrat Republican independent
Average approval rating of Congress percent Average percent of Americans “satisfi ed with the way things are”
Average diff erence between Democratic and Republican approval ratings of the presidency percent
-0.7 9.3 1.9
5.0 MARK RALSTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES 2010
Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 1.6
9.6 3.7
10.0 2.6
2.0 0.9 48 2
15 32
3.7 9.7 1.5
1.9
2.4 9.7
-0.7
8447 9712 10,428 10,857 9774 -1.6 49 2
1.6
41 14
26 49
-0.37 -0.35
28 28
0.16
34 n/a 37
17 32 1.14 -1.17 -0.12
44 25 7
n/a
-1.17 -0.62 0.26 1.08 n/a -1.97 -0.38
n/a 59 25 43 136
23 90
17 22 88 114 63
79 93 56
90 27 61 35 32
63 54 71
93 46
87 19 49 31 32
68 51
69 91 43
84 17 47 24 25
67 49
66 91 41
83 15 45 19 22
68 For analysis of these and other data, go to
www.brookings.edu/index. OMBUDSMAN ANDREW ALEXANDER From Kaplan to Buffett, The Post hides little E
arly this month, when stories started appear- ing about a government investigation that found fraud at 15 for-profit colleges, reader Bob
Visco searched The Post’s Web site. When he found nothing, he fired off a testy e-mail. The Post “would seem to have a duty to be on top of this story,” he wrote, since one of the schools named was Kaplan University, owned by TheWash- ington Post Co. Visco, a marketing consultant from the Richmond area who counts a Kaplan competitor among his cli- ents, was in error. The Post was competitive and has consistently disclosed the Kaplan connection. But his hair-trigger reaction was understandable
—and common — in this era of doubt about the in- tegrity of established media. I regularly hear from readers deeply suspicious that The Post has con- cealed a self-interest. If a story touches on the cable industry but fails to note that The Post’s parent com- pany has a cable division, they write. If a column mentions network TV affiliates but doesn’t say that The Post Co. owns a handful of stations, they call. The Post has newsroom policies to avoid conflicts
that could damage reader trust. For example, staffers who write about business and finance must pe- riodically disclose their holdings and investments so ranking editors can avert conflicts in coverage as- signments. In my random check of six of those re- porters and editors, all confirmed that they are reg- ularly required to disclose such information. And recently, The Post’s newsroom intranet added
a list of holdings by the parent Washington Post Co., along with the names and primary business affilia- tions of its directors. The instructions are clear: “When we write about something that could impact,
positively or negatively, one of those interests, we should be as transparent as possible about disclosing those relationships.” An example was the lead story in Thursday’s pa-
per about plans for a public stock offering by General Motors. It noted that last year the Obama adminis- tration had forced the resignation of GM chief exec- utive G. Richard “Rick” Wagoner Jr., “who is now a board member of The Washington Post Co.” “We went out of our way to mention him in the
story so that we could disclose that he’s on the board,” said deputy business editor Alan Sipress. The list of Washington Post Co. holdings and in- terests is extensive, and the relationships are com- plex. Whenever a news story discusses investment giant Berkshire Hathaway or its chief executive, Warren E. Buffett, it must note that he is a Post Co. board member. Likewise, stories about Facebook must mention that its board includes Post Co. chair- man and chief executive Donald E. Graham. Any story about LivingSocial, the consumer-oriented so- cial networking site run by Tim O’Shaughnessy, must disclose that he is Graham’s son-in-law. As a check, I reviewed Post stories for the previous
two years that prominently mentioned any of the parent company’s 11 directors. With few exceptions, their Post connection was disclosed. Similarly, the newsroom has been instructed to note the ownership link in stories about Slate Maga- zine and a variety of other Web sites run by The Post Co.’s online publishing division. The same goes for Post-owned publications such as Foreign Policy magazine, the free tabloid daily Express, the Span- ish-language newspaper El Tiempo Latino and a handful of community newspapers serving the
Washington area. But disclosure of The Post Co.’s ownership of Kap- lan is especially critical because of Kaplan’s outsize importance to the overall bottom line. The Kaplan division, which offers higher education, test prepara- tion and professional training services, accounted for 62 percent of The Post Co.’s total second-quarter revenues. Its higher education unit, the subject of government scrutiny and proposed regulations, will be in the news for months to come. Disclosure aside, a separate issue is The Post’s commitment to following the story. “We will give Kaplan the same level of scrutiny as we give the rest of the industry,” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, who runs the local news staff that handles education report- ing.
Business columnist Steven Pearlstein was admira-
bly transparent about Kaplan’s importance to The Post when he recently wrote about the for-profit col- lege controversy. Noting that Kaplan’s profits have helped offset the newspaper’s operating losses, he added that while “we in the Post newsroom have nothing to do with Kaplan, we’ve all benefited from its financial success.” Readers appreciate that kind of candor. I’ve often criticized The Post for insufficient trans-
parency on everything from news sources to refus- ing to share its ethics policies with readers. But on its commitment to disclose self-interest, praise is deserved.
Andrew Alexander can be reached at 202-334-7582 or at
ombudsman@washpost.com. For daily updates, read the Omblog at
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ ombudsman-blog/.
48
59 91 40
82 13 44 21 25
69
legislative victories on health care and fi- nancial reform. But polarization in Con- gress has stymied efforts to address such pressing problems as climate change, en- ergy conservation, immigration and cam- paign finance. High unemployment per- sists: Twenty states have unemployment rates greater than 9 percent, and the lev- els are higher in some key metropolitan areas. Big portions of the country are still experiencing recession-like conditions, which limit states’ ability to deal with housing, education and transportation is- sues. U.S. real gross domestic product in- creased at an annual rate of only 2.4 per- cent in the second quarter. This weak re- covery in growth makes it difficult to substantially reduce unemployment. With 37 gubernatorial races this year, more than two-thirds of the states could have new leadership. In the face of federal inaction, states and metro areas have be- come the real innovators in U.S. politics. Officials in the Kansas City metro area, the Bay Area, the Puget Sound region of Washington, and Greater Chicago, for example, have developed collaborative plans for maximizing their Recovery Act funds and state spending on energy effi- ciency, foreclosure responses and “green” jobs. Many gubernatorial candidates are emphasizing job creation, particularly through boosting exports. Almost all states and municipalities are required to balance their budgets, which forces them to make pragmatic decisions on taxes and spending. The situation abroad is mixed. The president seems committed to reducing the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, though violence there persists. And the Afghani- stan conflict continues to trouble many Americans and had been exacerbated by troubles in Pakistan even before the re- cent flooding. It is unclear whether the governments of those nations have the in- stitutional will and capacity to deliver se- curity and services to their people. Overseas conflicts, the shaky U.S. econ-
omy and low trust in government make this a challenging election season for in- cumbents, particularly Democrats. The extremely high “partisan gap” makes it imperative for those elected to work across party lines if they hope to make big policy changes.
The authors are, respectively, vice president and managing director of the Brookings Institution.
R
A13
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160