Capitol Edeas / Good Writer Greider
Bethell, Tom
not work very well in Russia. We do know that a few days later President Brezhnev looked very haggard during meetings in West Germany. According to the p r e s s , he consumed a bottle and a...
...That is why Greider is a "good writer...
...He is widely known as the "good writer" of the Washington press corps...
...This criticism is in no way intended to exonerate Stockman from the folly of exposing himself to such tried-andfalse, award-winning journalistic tactics...
...He has learned how to disguise his essentially left-wing ideology, as have many other journalists in Washington, who, to a remarkable degree, share this ideology...
...Phil Gramm is someone he can deal with...
...Someone else close to Stockman described it as "dishonest...
...I don't know...
...Does one scribe bring up the name of Greider at a gathering of scribblers...
...The logic of Greider's position is that honest politicians should prefer no loaf to half a loaf...
...Not AI Hunt of the Wall Street Journal, I thought...
...He wanted a compromise on the tax bill which would substantially reduce its drain on the federal treasury and thus moderate the fiscal damage of Reaganomics...
...He is himself known in the VYashington Post newsroom as a kind of clergyman manque, someone who in earlier decades might have comfortably occupied a pulpit...
...The problem with the article is that its overall effect is to magnify greatly such differences of opinion as exist between Stockman and other members of the Administration...
...The tiny October 1981 rate reduction has been more than offset by social security tax increases and bracket creep, giving us a fairly hefty tax increase in 1981...
...If that sub was indeed gathering intelligence information, let us recall that Russia has been invaded many times...
...Greider is clever at keeping his ideology under rhetorical cover: sometimes dressed up as impartial pragmatism ("Nothing but us budget-balancers h e r e . . . " ) , at other times wrapping it in sarcasm and contumely...
...side theory...
...Phew...
...I am guessing here, with only a few hints to go by...
...Et tu Brute...
...The point is that someone in Stockman's position, in his dealings with Congress and the Administration, is bound to deal with the "moving parts" at the margins of the system...
...No, Greider does...
...He is a master of sneer tactics...
...AI Hunt...
...For some time now Greider has been an interesting figure in Washington journalism...
...6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1982...
...he gives us "the fiscal damage of Reaganomics...
...Having said all that, let me add that one day I was enjoying brie and chablis with some of Washington's clerks, scribes and pharisees, when, having gone through the "William Greider--Good Writer" ritual, with appropriate genuflections, someone said: "You know who's another good writer...
...According to the p r e s s , he consumed a bottle and a half of vodka...
...But that is too boring, like being a Western Union teletype operator, so the thing is to find a way of shaping it unobtrusively, without having people yell "Lefty" at you as you walk down the street...
...He gives us "supply-side theology," with "supply-side apostles zealously defending their creed...
...Supply-side theory, of course, has not yet been put to the test, inasmuch as the famous income tax rate reductions on which it is based still have not gone into effect, and still will not have by the end of 1981...
...Yes," he said mildly (loyal to the verities), "but he's a good writer...
...This had prompted some terrible Greiderian rage in the IVasb...
...Greider's article is also misleading because it implies (a) that supplyside economics has been tried and found wanting, and (b) that Stockman is opportunistically abandoning the sinking supply-side ship in consequence...
...My impression here is that some sort of a "deal" may have been struck between Stockman and his Hay-Adams friend...
...What exactly did Stockman say here, one wonders...
...It is difficult to believe that Stockman sat through 18 sessions with a tape recorder running on the table without unequivocally establishing whether or not he would be quoted...
...What should have been borne in mind by everyone last month is the point Kennan recently made in the New Yorker, to wit: The USSR is essentially a defensive power...
...Another will say "good writer" as one might mutter a Pater Noster at the sound of the Angelus bell...
...At another point Greider stirs up, an absurd little tempest with Stockman's admission in April that the policy needed "some calibration"-i.e., more spending cuts...
...I t is not clear either from this article or anything else he has written that Greider himself understands supply...
...The Russians have legitimate defense interests in the Baltic, as this frightening display of Swedish chauvinism makes clear...
...Note the conflation of THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1982 5 Stockman's and Greider's thoughts, Does Stockman think that "Reaganomics" is something that does "fiscal damage...
...A 27-page article that presents these marginal conflicts as the Stockmanian Universe is t h e r e f o r e misleading...
...Stockman may, I suspect, have agreed to p r e s e r v e a chastened silence about the article...
...Reagan actually "appeared on network TV to rally the nation in support of the Gramm-Latta resolution...
...George Gilder, a friend of Stockman's, says he is convinced that it does not...
...Reagan's policy-makers knew that their plan was wrong," says Rev...
...Then one day I saw what everyone was talking about...
...If you (mentally) half close your eyes and absorb the mood and tone of a Greider article, what comes through unmistakably is a sense of disgust and indeed rage directed at this unregenerate nation: still defending conservatism and traditional values, sti// anti-Communist, still capitalist, sti//mired in all these old-fashioned notions which should have been swept away by now, to be replaced by the New Collectivist Dawn, with all wealth and power in the hands of the state, whence it will be distributed fairly, equitably, compassionately...
...If it's coercion he doesn't like, maybe Greider should attack busing, affirmative action.., on the other hand, if it's patriotism he doesn't like . . . . ) "Old Greider came on a bit strong, didn't he...
...It fooled Stockman, that's for sure...
...He writes always of "tax cuts," not of "tax rate reductions," nor of the marginal changes that that phrase implies...
...O'Neill remains unbudgeably opposed to everything that he stands for...
...For a highly cerebral response to this editorTal, see "Current Wisdom" on page 42...
...This magnification became even more distorted, of course, in the television c a m e r a ' s lens, where, curiously enough, the great ballyhoo about the article seems to have begun...
...GOOD WRITER GREIDER by Tom B e t h e l l I have my doubts as to whether William Greider's article on David Stockman, published in the Atlantic Monthly, gives readers a particularly accurate impression of the budget director's thinking...
...I t is difficult to make the argument that an article is distorted if the victim of that distortion himself maintains a discreet silence on the subject...
...In the course of months of conversation, then, it is not surprising if Stockman Tom Bethell, The American Spectat o r ' s Washington correspondent, holds the De Witt Wallace Chair in Communications at the American Enterprise Institute...
...In turn, Greider may well be suppressing further isolated quotes Which could be more damaging to Stockman...
...I puzzled over this good-writer business for many a Greider column, trying to see the good writing in it...
...The only quote that halfway supports the latter idea is: " I ' v e never believed that just cutting taxes alone will cause output and employment to expand...
...I well remember one quiche-and-Chablis gathering after Charlie Peters of the Washington Month~y, in attendance, had written about the need for "national service" as an opportunity to instill patriotism...
...But none of this is said openly or directly...
...The theory of 'expectations' wasn't working," Greider writes...
...ington Post...
...Is this another Watergate we have on our hands...
...Greider has mastered, and indeed played a role in promulgating, the quiet, unobtrusive language of covert collectivism: "new realities," "a complex world," "simplistic solutions," "can't turn the clock back," "aspirations," "compassion," "equity," "sensitive," and so on...
...Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts, on the other hand, wrote about 18 months ago that postponing income tax cuts forces people to postpone their income-producing behavior and advance their tax-deduction behavior, which in turn reduces current GNP...
...When he was growing up in rural Ohio, Greider was strongly influenced by one of his grandfathers who delivered "heavy sermons" to the assembled company and who "thunders ominously" in Greider's memory...
...This is an entirely orthodox position for a budget director, who can hardly be expected to argue that tax rate reductions will solve all problems and thus undermine the principal task and challenge of his job, which is to cut spending...
...Notice, incidentally, the oddity of Stockman's very muted complaint that there was an "honest misunders t a n d i n g " between them on the important m a t t e r of whether he would be quoted directly...
...H e r e ' s an example: "Stockman's interest was made clear to the others...
...The distortion is analogous to that created by bar graphs that fail to depict all p e r c e n t a g e points below a certain level, thus magnifying the differential...
...despite repeated messages left at the Washington Post, Greider declined to come to the phone to confirm or deny...
...Not that it's so bad--merely indistinguishable from that of a score of left-of-center presscorps missionaries...
...Perhaps Greider does...
...At several points in the article, Greider skillfully .makes his (not Stockman's) points by means of welldisguised editorials inserted between the Stockman quotes...
...again he gives us "theology," with Stockman "beginning to leave the church" since the supply-side "purists" were beginning to direct their "nasty barbs" at him...
...He lets us know what he thinks of the McCarthy Era by calling Communists "Commies...
...is occasionally impatient with Gramm, with whom he is working, but says not a word about O'Neill, who remains outside his orbit of negotiation...
...It's not the writing so much as the camouflage...
...Greider's method is to ridicule rather than explain...
...It is perhaps revealing that Greider mocks with a religious metaphor...
...See the article "Media and Business Elites" by Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, in the October/November issue of Public Opinion, for dramatic confirmation of this...
...Who has said that tax rate reductions will "work" before they take effect...
...Swedish armies have fallen upon the Russians as recently as 193 years ago...
...Greider, climbing up into his pulpit with a transparendy inappropriate display of sanctimony, "or at least inadequate to its promised effects, but the President went ahead and conveyed the opposite impression to the American public...
...I asked Charlie Peters...
...I am only sorry that he had to find out in such a painful way that Greider was not his "friend" after all...
...It is not clear whose "theory" this is...
...Good writer...
...Patriotic calls seem about as welcome to him as holy water to the devil: "Why is Peters pushing this vicious.., a rotten idea pushing my children into involuntary servitude...
...R,eagan, of course, would have been only too glad to rally the nation in support of a bill that cut even more than Gramm-Latta--which is what Stockman knew was needed--but of course Reagan had to fake what (minuscule) spending cuts he could get...
...People in sensitive news media positions can't afford to seem too ideological: They are supposed to transmit the news, not shape it...
Vol. 15 • January 1982 • No. 1
