I am just back from my weekend in Montana's Paradise Valley (see the photo I snapped to the right to prove what I said Friday about the fact that if you haven't been there, you haven't lived). Unfortunately, my mental vacation ended before I got home. Over breakfast in pristine Pray, Montana (you Montana readers likely know where I was lucky enough to be), I read this story which is running statewide in Montana and was reminded how quick reporters writing on deadline are to blame Democrats for the downfall of the world anytime Democrats actually behave in a way that contradicts the media's false archetypes of the two parties. This may be an update to my Montana-specific story earlier this week, but there's no doubt anyone who reads anything about politics in their own state knows this kind of ramrodding of stories into a set, inaccurate frame happens all the time everywhere - and it must be exposed whenever it occurs.
The story by Mike Dennison - who is usually a really solid, accurate reporter - reviews how the Montana legislature closed up shop without a budget, thus forcing an emergency special session sometime in the coming weeks in order to avoid a Gingrich-Clinton-style government shutdown. Dennison's piece is the typical, hackneyed review of any legislative crisis, offering up the mind-numbing "pox on both their houses" media harrumphing and stereotypical attacks on Democrats known as "High Broderism," thanks to Washington Post pundit David Broder's mastery of the deceptive craft. Such stories are so tired and so scripted they almost write themselves these days - even as the actual reporting contradicts the narrative itself. And I'll tell you from my firsthand experience this morning, few things spur indigestion quicker than happily being thousands of miles away from the Beltway and nonetheless finding a local outbreak of High Broderism.
The first example of High Broderism from Dennison comes in the discussion of taxes and compromise. In the 11th and 12th paragraphs, Dennison correctly notes that Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) and Senate Democrats pushed, among other things, "a $400-per-household tax rebate for Montana homeowners" and that "they upped the ante on the rebate to $600 in the closing days in response to Republican calls for more tax relief." But then in the 13th paragraph, he blames Democrats for having supposedly "tried to shove Republicans' requests aside and expect them to roll over."
Somewhere between the 12th and 13th paragraph, Dennison forgot/decided to ignore that he just wrote that Democrats "respond[ed] to Republican calls for more tax relief" by expanding their progressive property tax cut plan. Instead, he went and trampled his own reporting to manufacture the "Democrats are big, bad, bullies abusing power" storyline emanating not only from the whiners at the Montana Republican Party but lately from the whiners at the Republican National Committee, in the face of increased congressional oversight. And, of course, there's not even a single mention in the entire story about what Republicans are really upset about: Democrats plans to make the tax code more progressive and increase tax enforcement on out-of-state corporations - two things that lobbyists are making sure Republicans will do anything to stop - even stand up in front of cameras to claim that their moves to force a taxpayer-funded, $38,000-per-day special session is all about protecting taxpayer money.
Then there's the treating of Republican extremism as barely an afterthought - as if it's just sort of what we should all expect and accept. Specifically, Dennison correctly bemoans the "monumental failure" of the legislature refusing to pass a budget and thus forcing a special session - but only at the very end of the story does he happen to mention that "the key spending and tax bills, which had to pass if a final resolution was to occur, were in the hands of the Republican-controlled House two weeks ago" but Republican House Speaker Scott Sales "refused even to allow these bills to go a House-Senate conference committee, where work on a compromise could begin." He also waits until the very end of the story to casually mention that after agreeing to a compromise with Democrats, House Republican Majority Leader Michael Lange held a televised press event to curse off the governor. That's right, folks - we are expected to believe that the chief Republican negotiator making himself a national embarrassment by pulling a televised Andrew Dice Clay Live! impression in the basement of the Capitol at the 11h hour is worthy of barely a bottom-of-the-story footnote, as is Dennison's throwaway line that the Republican antics "simply wasted valuable time."
Yet the real story is obvious. These antics didn't just "waste valuable time" - they are the whole key to understanding exactly what happened. A Democratic governor submitted his budget, House Republicans gutted that budget and sent it to the Senate, the Senate sent it back to the House with its changes for final ratification - but the lunatic Republican leadership refused to allow a vote on it, thus forcing a budget crisis. But because the press simply accepts as mundane and non-newsworthy that Republican leaders are fringe lunatics the media comes up with intricate storylines portraying failures as "bipartisan" - all put forward under the guise of "objectivity." It's fine that Republicans started out the entire session saying they wanted to create a "war" with Democrats. It's fine that their leader spazzed out and cursed off the state's top official in front of a room full of press and 16-year-old pages. That's what Republicans are supposed to do - and they shouldn't be blamed for that, Democrats should be blamed for trying to stop it.
You can bet we'll be seeing this exact thing (or probably worse) this coming week when the President vetoes the Iraq war spending bill, even though polls show the Democratic language calling for a timetable is supported by the vast majority of the American pubic. You watch - every single story will be written in a way that simply accepts Republican lunacy as normal and not noteworthy, while subtly questioning why Democrats - or the public - should expect anything different.
But the most telling part of this whole story is the "Democrats should be expected to be weak" thread. Dennison tells us that Governor Schweitzer "indulged in what Republicans saw as cheap political stunts." Wow. Sounds bad. What were these "cheap political stunts?" According to Dennison, the major "cheap political stunt" was Schweitzer "using an amendatory veto to stuff his stream-access proposal into a Republican's bill" which, Dennison says, is "not exactly the way to win friends or votes."
Now, it may not be "exactly the way to win friends or votes" among, say, lobbyists, millionaire private landowners and the Republican legislators they buy off who all want to prevent Montana hunters and anglers from accessing public streams, but a reporter making the claim that a Democratic governor using his constitutional authority to fulfill a campaign promise to protect hunters and anglers is somehow a "cheap political stunt" exposes what's really going on here. Democrats - especially those in so-called "red states" - are expected to be wimps. They are expected to simply take orders from lobbyists and Big Money interests - and when they have the nerve to reject such weak behavior and instead stand up for regular folks (in this case, hunters and anglers), they are berated by the media for engaging in "cheap political stunts." Again, we see this not only in Montana, but at the national congressional level. Anytime Democrats behave boldly and move forward with fulfilling any campaign pledges to challenge the Establishment on basic middle-class issues like trade, the David Broders of the world melt down into apoplectic fits of rage.
Amazingly, flipping a few Billings Gazette pages past Dennison's piece over breakfast this morning, I found this lead editorial from the paper's staunchly conservative editorial board, which notes that "a dissection of this failed session shows that the last clear chance to avoid the train wreck belonged to the House GOP leadership." Unlike Dennison's obligatory and manufactured "pox on both their houses" story, the Gazette accurately points out that Republicans "refused for 10 days to take any action on any of the major spending bills approved by the Senate," ignored "the way the system is supposed to work" and instead held the entire budget hostage in an act of lobbyist-backed brinksmanship all designed to get Democrats to back off their progressive tax cut and tax enforcement plans. How Dennison could write this piece having recently written a major story about how powerful lobbyists are in the Montana legislature is puzzling. How his story and the Gazette editorial could run in the same paper is, to say the least, hard to fathom.
I want to reiterate, Mike Dennison is a good reporter doing one hell of a hard job. Covering a legislature that moves as fast as a 90-days-every-two-years legislature is forced to move is not easy. But the flaws in this one particular (and particularly important) story are very real - and very indicative of broader inaccurate themes that course through all levels of political journalism. The media almost instinctively looks to past archetypes to explain the present and future. That very recent past has been one where Republican extremism and Democratic weakness was the accepted and unquestioned norm - and where whatever epithets the GOP spin machine threw out there (in this case, the "bully" nonsense) was digested and regurgitated as factual news. But especially in politics, the past is not automatically the prelude. Democrats here and throughout the country are breaking the old archetype - and journalists would be wise to consider breaking their stereotyping habits if they have any interest in keeping their readers informed of what's really going on.