No Union Busting Here, Folks....

In an unsigned editorial, the Washington Post prevaricates,

Ms. Rhee has been accused of trying to break the union when, in truth, she rejected a plan to bring in a firm adept at union-busting in favor of working one-on-one with local labor officials whom she believed shared her philosophy that children come first.

A more realistic interpretation is that she was told by the union busting firm, "It's not going to work here."

It tells you something about Rhee that, before opening negotiations, she even considered hiring a "firm adept at union-busting" to attack the teacher's union. It tells you something else about Rhee (and the Washington Post) that the dream plan she has for teachers - the plan the Post gushes over every week or two - is a highly classified secret, and isn't available anywhere for people, be they curious outsiders like me or teachers who are told how wonderful it is, to read. Rhee's not interested in union busting? Perhaps Fred Hiatt and his editorial writers should, you know, read their own paper.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee are discussing a dramatic expansion of their effort to remove ineffective teachers by restoring the District's power to create nonunionized charter schools and seeking federal legislation declaring the school system in a "state of emergency," a move that would eliminate the need to bargain with the Washington Teachers' Union.

Nope... not even a slight interest in union busting there....

I'm prepared to believe that Rhee's proposal is the best thing since sliced bread. But if it truly is such a wonderful plan, and is sustainable, why isn't she focusing her energies on publicizing the plan rather than keeping it under wraps?

How Can Obama Help Rhee?

Today, Fred Hiatt asks if Obama can help Michelle Rhee reform the D.C. schools. Although he doesn't say so, it seems implicit that the help he wants Obama to offer is assistance in breaking the teacher's union. Hiatt remains the leading advocate of Rhee's "mystery meat" compensation system for teachers - yes, aspects of the proposal are intriguing, but why are the details being kept secret.

For example, given that only short-term funding is available for the new compensation program, a valid question is what happens when the money runs out? Does Rhee expect increased public funding? substantial corporate contributions that continue even after her program is old news? Or will it be "back to the old compensation scheme" but with no tenure? I'm not affected by the proposal and I want to know, so why cant the teachers who are being asked to get behind the proposal?

Hiatt serves up a couple of anecdotes, the first of which is a pretty typical story about Rhee, and I think it highlights why she inspires such support.

A principal recently was defending a teacher whom D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee had observed in the classroom and found wanting.

"Would you put your grandchild in that class?" Rhee asked the principal.

"If that's the standard, we don't have any effective teachers in my school," the principal replied.

Recalling that comment a few days later, Rhee is still steaming. "I said, 'That is the standard,' " Rhee says, and you think: Whew, glad I'm not that principal

That story also highlights why she wants to be able to do something about D.C.'s teachers - clean house of perhaps entire schools full of underperforming teachers, and pay enough that good teachers who wouldn't otherwise consider D.C. may consider signing up.

I'm personally skeptical that good teachers can be transplanted into classrooms where the kids don't behave and don't want to learn while retaining their efficacy - achieving and maintaining classroom order, particularly in a difficult school environment, is a separate skill from being a great, inspirational teacher. But other than through high compensation, I'm not sure how else D.C. even has a shot at attracting quality teachers.

On the other hand, this anecdote about Rhee gives me pause:

Recently, she recounted at the Aspen Institute forum, a man approached her, spitting mad about her experiment to pay some middle school students for good behavior and good grades. "It is a sad day," he said, "when we are paying kids to be doing something they should be doing anyway."

"No," Rhee replied, "yesterday was a sad day, when only 8 percent of our eighth-graders were at grade level for math, and we weren't really doing anything about it."

This reminds me of the arguments I have heard for cutting music and art programs while maintaining football - despite its very high cost, it's "necessary" to have football teams because otherwise a body of marginal students would lose their principal incentive to go to school and pass tests. Now they get "paid" as well, to do what every other student is expected to do for free? While the services and amenities that make school a nicer place for diligent and well-behaved students continue to get cut? And what's the lesson? That the only way Rhee wants to throw money at you is if you're a good teacher or a crappy student?

No, really, the idea of throwing money at mediocrity isn't what bothers me. Nor is the funding of school programs for marginal or disinterested students at the expense of the diligent and gifted. Even in a school district that's supposed to be reinventing itself as an example of excellence, what else can you really expect? But dare I ask, is there any evidence that paying students does more than inspire a few more kids to show up in class, if that? Is that truly the best use of the money? And what after the money runs out or a student receives the maximum payment? Even a child can tell you that - literally.

Betts is talking about kids like Daamantae Brown, 14, a tall and lanky eighth grader. He's also a borderline C student and star athlete with a temper that can get him into trouble.

Brown is more afraid of being banned from playing football because of bad behavior or grades than missing out on the cash incentives for good academic and social performance.

Still, the boy says most students will behave as long as the money lasts.

"If the bad students, if they was acting up before this, then after it's done [the program], they're going to act the same," Brown says.

The evidence that this works? Let's ask the principal advocate of this idea, Harvard economist Roland Fryer:

"We don't have any data yet," says Fryer.

To me, "pay for performance" sounds like a gimmick. But you know, I'm willing to wait to see the data. The program is underway, so we'll have a pretty good idea of whether or not it works at the end of the school year. But here's a thought - what if it doesn't work? Will this experiment leave its subjects less motivated to show up in class when they're no longer being paid?

Fred Hiatt's Last Minute Potshot

Remember Fred Hiatt's execrable column on how everything's coming up roses in Iraq? His editorial page mindlessly regurgitates his views today, in a last minute potshot at Obama. But apparently, this time around nobody wanted to sign the thing.

Bad War Coverage

Fred Hiatt personifies a lot of the problems with the mainstream media, not the least of which is its coverage of the Iraq war. Throughout the conflict, the media focus has been on military action and violence. There's been scant coverage of the political situation in Iraq, or how inter- and even intra-sectarian conflicts continues to pose an impediment to peace and the withdrawal of forces. Hiatt, a reliable cheerleader for the war, now brings us this:

It's easy to forget the utter hopelessness that had settled on Washington with regard to Iraq less than two years ago.

Sure, it's easy to forget because without high levels of violence, the mainstream media sees little need to even cover the war. Britney's public meltdown? Lipstick on a pig? Those are stories.

And it's easy to forget the nearly universal skepticism that greeted President Bush's announcement of a new strategy in January 2007.

It's easy to forget how well-grounded that skepticism was, given the abject incompetence of the Bush Administration's conduct of the war to that point. A lot of the skepticism wasn't directed at the idea that more troops could reduce violence - it was a question of, "Is this too little, too late." As it turns out, the Anbar Awakening had a profound effect on levels of violence, as has the effective ethnic segregation of formerly integrated neighborhoods of Baghdad. Those aren't effects of "the surge", though, and it isn't even clear to what degree the surge has helped with recent successes in Iraq. Don't take my word for it - take the word of General Petraeus:¹

So would the Sunni Awakening have succeeded without the surge? Possibly, he concedes, but the surge came at that time and helped empower Sunni leaders, paying their fighters and backing them up on the streets. This is where Seneca the Younger comes in: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

It would be reasonable to credit the Bush Administration for letting its military leaders (finally) move away from its bad strategies of the preceding five years, so as to create the opportunity. But instead, people like Hiatt consistently ignore the positions of people who are aware of the facts on the ground in order to spin the fiction that everything is about the surge, and only the surge. My suspicion is that Hiatt is acting deliberately, as this fiction allows him to support McCain and attack Obama (consistent with Hiatt's own preferred interventionist foreign policy), whereas telling the truth would hamper him in his political goals.

Hiatt also elides from history the overstated success and impact of the surge, which resulted in stories like this:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, told the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees today that the surge in Iraq is showing progress, and that he believes troop reductions to pre-surge levels could begin by summer 2008 without jeopardizing gains made.

How well did that turn out, again?

Hiatt reinvents the success of the surge, consistent with the mainstream media's principal interest in covering acts of violence, as being about the violence, not about political progress. Although he is cautious enough to refer to the surge as creating only "a chance of success", Hiatt fails to describe any of the benchmarks of success described by the Bush Administration or how they have been met. Earlier this year we had columnists like Charles Krauthammer pretending that significant progress had been made on at least some of those criteria. But despite the amount of progress we were promises by the end of 2007, we're still waiting for even one of Bush's benchmarks to be fulfilled. So yes, changes of strategy combined with the surge created a significant window of opportunity - one Hiatt would be correct to celebrate - but it appears that under Bush's "leadership" that opportunity is (again) being squandered.

While Hiatt praises national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley for quietly lobbying for the surge, consistent with the rest of his piece he omits mention of others who played a role (and perhaps a more important role) in bringing about the policy changes that created the groundwork for the surge's contribution to holding down violence.² Hiatt observes,

Out of that success, in fact, a new conventional wisdom seems to be settling on Washington - that the U.S. job in Iraq is nearing completion, and the time has come to move on to Afghanistan and other challenges.

Okay, let's call that the consensus. Has it arisen because of good media coverage and commentary about the realities in Iraq, or has it arisen due to the absence of good coverage and commentary? Hiatt's implicit answer: the latter:

If, as seems likely, the celebration is premature and U.S. troops will be needed in Iraq for some time to come, we can hope that the next national security adviser again has the strength to resist the crowd and the deftness to steer the country in the right direction.

If that's what Hiatt believes, why did he devote 98% of his column to suggesting the opposite - that the surge has been a great success, and vindicates Bush to the degree that historians will assess the surge "as an act of remarkable courage"? And how is it "an act of remarkable courage" to advance a policy when virtually everybody in your party has your back?
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1. It's coincidence, but should we find some amusement in the fact that Petraeus likes to use the "lipstick on a pig" metaphor? And that his doing so was deemed "media-savvy"?

2. I'm content to assume that the surge has played a role in the reduction of violence, even a substantial role, but given the difficulty that even General Petraeus has in quantifying its contribution I'm not going to try to state a figure, save for observing that Hiatt's implied "100%" is both overconfident and overstated.

The Answer To Everything? A Series of Sound Bite Showdowns!

Today Fred Hiatt actually signs his name to a column on the presidential race. Looking at Obama's remark,

"So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky. That's essentially the argument they're making."

Hyatt claims,

I was more struck by the preamble to that comment: by Obama's statements that McCain and the Republican Party are so bankrupt in policies that they can win only by spreading fear.

Except that Obama didn't say anything about the Republican Party - he identified policies associated with the President and the Presidential nominee. Isn't that the same thing, you ask? Perhaps Hiatt has forgotten the scathing attacks on Bush from within his own party, the efforts congressional candidates are making to distance themselves from Bush and his policies, various right-wing pundits trying to claim that he's really a "liberal", his 20% approval rating.... And perhaps he's forgotten the similar attacks on John McCain that preceded his winning the nomination. Only through an astonishing case of amnesia could you believe that the Republican Party as a whole marches in lockstep with Bush and McCain.

Really, Hiatt's assertion could be seen as an attack on McCain. Did you hear that, John? Fred Hiatt thinks there's not a whit of difference between what you stand for and the policies of G.W. Bush. Well, it would be an attack if Hiatt weren't so confident that the entire Republican Party shares those same views.... I suspect that what's really going on is that Hiatt largely shares those views, so he takes it personally that Obama (and most of the nation) see the Bush/McCain platform as having failed.

Hiatt proposes an interesting cure for Obama's dip in the polls, something he says "political practitioners" (but not himself?) "seemed to agree" resulted from McCain's "negative ads and petty misrepresentations" - a zillion or so "town hall" encounters with McCain.

The forums would return attention to the issues, where Obama believes he has a clear advantage. And if McCain sought to use them for personal attacks, he would at least have to bear full personal responsibility for doing so.

Really? I think the lesson of the zillion or so debates during the Democratic primary process is that fatigue sets in quickly - that voters lose interest - at which point the contest becomes "what sound bite can be best misrepresented" or "how can the moderator spice things up". If Obama wants to take the high road to McCain's low road, as a result of voter fatigue, media sensationalism aimed at breaking through that fatigue, and the media's preference for covering claims in what they later concede to be "negative ads and petty misrepresentations" as if they're the gospel truth, the zillion "town halls" create risk.

Take, for example, one of Hiatt's paper's star reporters, Dana Milbank, his happy repetition of one of the McCain campaign's favorite themes (Obama's being "presumptuous") and his misrepresentation of Obama's recent remarks. I understand why Hiatt wants Obama to feed that dysfunctional media machine, but since the primaries ended it seems to primarily serve McCain. Really - where's the upside for Obama?¹
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1. I do not intend to suggest that these two examples are representative of Milbank's work as a whole.
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Update: As if I needed another example of the media's irresponsibly helping to perpetuate a McCain campaign misrepresentation/smear, we now have insipid coverage of comments on tire pressure.

Hold On A Second There, Fred....

Fred Hiatt, apparenlty being unable to construct an honest defense of his own support for the Iraq war or his paper's editorializing in favor of the war, gives us a scathing attack on... bumper stickers.

Search the Internet for "Bush Lied" products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic "Bush Lied, People Died" bumper sticker is only the beginning.

He say's it's only the beginning, but for him it's also the end - he provides no further analysis of the anti-war movement, and pretends that if it cannot be proved that Bush intentionally lied or that he had absolutely no intelligence to back up even his most outlandish claim, his case for war must be seen as fully supported by the available evidence.

In choosing not to look past the "beginning" reflected in a bumper sticker slogan, Hiatt personifies the type of dishonesty we're discussing. Focusing on the most extreme case, representing it as typical, and failing to mention overwhelming contrary data? Some people, quite reasonably, would deem that "lying by omission".

After introducing Rockefeller's conclusion,

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," [Rockefeller] said.

Hyatt proceeds to pretend that Rockefeller's own report doesn't support his own description of his own findings. From Hyatt's self-serving synopsis - and yes, his editorial is at least as much about salvaging his own reputation as it is about Bush's - you might think that Rockefeller's report found support in the intelligence for Bush's claims about an Iraq-al-Qaeda partnership, Iraq's supposedly having trained al-Qaeda fighters, or secret meetings between Iraqi intelligence and Muhammad Atta. You might think that the report found that there was support for the Bush Administration's representations about Iraq's chemical weapons production capacity, or underground manufacturing plants. You might believe that the report substantiated Bush's insinuations about an easy, cheap post-war period. To the contrary, the report found that Bush's representations were either unsupported by the available intelligence or did not reflect the uncertainty of the intelligence. And what of the suggestion that Saddam Hussein was prepared to hand WMD's over to terrorists? That was contradicted by the available intelligence. (But supported, contradicted, what's the difference, right?) The report did not explore the work of Bush's White House Iraq Group, which was devoted to spinning intelligence and propagandizing in favor of war.

This degree of deception goes well beyond what Hyatt excuses as speaking "with too much certainty" or failing "to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq". Anybody who paid the slightest bit of attention to the build-up of the war could easily see the Bush Administration cherry-picking intelligence in favor of a war that it wanted to launch, whatever the facts or intelligence. They directly attacked anybody who questioned their spin, and dispatched a slate of retired generals to propagandize in favor of war.

Hyatt wants us to pity Bush, whom he paints as having had to decide "when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security". The problem is, that's not what Bush did, and Hyatt knows it. Bush didn't weigh the intelligence to decide what response to make - he decided what he was going to do, disregarded anything that did not weigh in favor of war on Iraq, stymied efforts to complete weapons inspections and get better evidence, and employed scorched earth tactics against many who dared oppose him.

This was not a contest of good intelligence versus bad - the good intelligence never had a chance. This was a contest of good judgment versus bad, and at the end of the day Hyatt's finger-pointing at the intelligence community cannot overcome the fact that neither he nor President Bush showed good judgment on Iraq.