Republican New Jersey Gov.  Chris Christie isn't running for president after all. This is bad news for the journalists who seemed so eager to promote his candidacy, but also for establishment pundits like New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who thought a Christie/Obama contest would have been a victory for.... wait for it... centrism!

He writes today (10/5/11):

Had Christie--a moderate on gun control, climate change and immigration who has also backed Simpson/Bowles--run and won significant support, he would have forced Obama back to the center.

Then, instead of a race between the Democratic left and the Republican right--in which the whole country would lose because the winner would not have had a mandate for the real change we need--we would have had a race between the Democratic center, independents and the Republican center. Then the whole country would win.

Apparently Barack Obama has been veering too far to the left, mostly because he rejected some sort of  Simpson/Bowles "Grand Bargain" fiscal reform plan. Friedman quotes economist Tyler Cowen saying that the plan Obama has proposed "seems to be an extreme Democratic response" because it "is moving away from entitlement reform and embracing multiple tax increases on the wealthy."

Friedman agrees--Obama decided to "shift back to his base with a weak fiscal plan." What he should have  proposed was something that "shares the burden of cutbacks fairly--takes from defense programs and entitlements and asks the wealthy to pay more but everyone to pay something."

This criticism is bizarre.  Most people should know that the Affordable Care Act included significant Medicare savings--contrary to the media messages about the failure to rein in spending. (Those cost controls are in large part what gave us a Republican House of Representatives in 2010.) And as Friedman's paper reported, Obama's new fiscal plan includes another round of rather serious cuts to Medicare and Medicaid:

Obama Proposes $320 Billion in Medicare and Medicaid Cuts Over 10 Years

Perhaps Friedman wants deeper cuts, or cuts to Social Security. To him, that is "centrism." But most people in the country don't support these policies--making it strange to call them "centrist."

Friedman has been making a habit of late of wishing that Obama would propose some economic policies that he's already proposed--some mix of cuts and tax increases. This is exactly what Obama has been offering--and none of it resembles what the "Democratic left" is calling for.

The discussion on the economy in the media and among political elites is basically between the far-right Republicans and Obama--whose policy ideas might be considered center or center-right. Tom Friedman wants that debate to move even further to the right.

The New York Times had a headline on Saturday that read, "Imagining a Christie Campaign for President."

That seems appropriate--if we're talking about how it's the corporate media doing the imagining.

On ABC's This Week (10/2/11), Jonathan Karl announced that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's speech at the Reagan Library "was  the most electrifying event of the campaign so far."

That speech was treated like a big event on the NBC Nightly News (9/28/11), with anchor Brian Williams saying up front that Christie is  "the man whose every word is being watched and listened to so very carefully." Reporter Chuck Todd--you know, the voice of the voiceless--explains that there is a "twist" in the presidential race:  "Chris Christie opened the door a crack to running for president."

What does that mean? Apparently he didn't say he's not running:

It's what New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did not say at the Reagan Library Tuesday night that froze the Republican presidential race in place. He didn't say no.

In the NBC segment, Christie tells people to go check out a Politico story--which is a compilation of all the times he's said he's not running for president. Which kind of sounds like he doesn't think he's running for president, right?

And if that doesn't convince you, surely this will:

TODD: But when an audience member pleaded with him:

Offscreen Voice #2: I mean this with all my heart. We can't wait another four years to 2016. We need you. Your country needs you to run for president.

TODD: Christie stopped joking and left an opening.

Gov. CHRISTIE: I thank you for what you're saying and I take it in and I'm listening to every word of it and feeling it, too.

TODD: Everything about Christie's speech screamed national campaign.

Everything except, you know, the part where he says he's running for president.

ABC This Week (9/25/11):

CHRISTINE AMANPOUR: And coming up, Rick Perry on the ropes.

PERRY: Yep, there may be slicker candidates and there may be smoother debaters, but I know what I believe in, and I'm going to stand on that belief every day. I will guide this country with a deep, deep rudder.

AMANPOUR: Can the new frontrunner come back from a shaky debate performance? Or is Chris Christie waiting in the wings to steal his thunder?

New York Times (9/26/11):

After Perry's Debate Showing, Eyes Turn Toward Christie

Washington Post (9/26/11):

Texas Gov. Rick Perry's recent stumbles--his rambling attempt at last week's GOP presidential debate to attack former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's flip-flopping is a prime example--have renewed speculation that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie might rethink his "no go" decision on the 2012 race.

Gabriel Sherman's new piece in New York magazine (5/22/11) about Roger Ailes and Fox News Channel offers more indications that what goes on behind the scenes at Fox is more or less what you'd expect, given the channel's obvious on-air slant.

The person hired to run the news division has some peculiar ideas about news:

Bill Sammon, a former Washington Times correspondent, angered Fox's political reporters, who saw him pushing coverage further to the right than they were comfortable with. Days after Obama’s inauguration, an ice storm caused major damage throughout the Midwest. At an editorial meeting in the D.C. bureau, Sammon told producers that Fox should compare Obama's response to Bush's handling of Katrina. "Bush got grief for Katrina," Sammon said.

"It's too early; give him some time to respond," a producer shot back. "This ice storm isn't Katrina."

The piece is mostly about presidential politics. We learn that Ailes is disappointed by the current Republican field, and wants to do something about it.  He's given airtime to several contenders--Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum--but also works behind the scenes:

A few months ago, Ailes called Chris Christie and encouraged him to jump into the race. Last summer, he'd invited Christie to dinner at his upstate compound along with Rush Limbaugh, and like much of the GOP Establishment, he fell hard for Christie, who nevertheless politely turned down Ailes' calls to run.

He doesn't just try to encourage Republicans to run. He also protects Republican candidates from various threats--like, say, Fox reporters:

In September 2008, he secretly met Palin during her swing through New York, when she toured the UN and had her photo op with Henry Kissinger. That afternoon, Shushannah Walshe, a young Fox producer who was covering Palin's campaign for the network, had gone on-air and criticized McCain's staff, who had prevented reporters from asking Palin questions during her UN visit. "There's not one chance that Governor Palin would have to answer a question," Walshe said on-camera. "They're eliminating even the chance of any kind of interaction with the candidate--it’s just unprecedented."

Ailes didn’t know Walshe, but he was furious when he heard her comments. Liberal media outlets like the Huffington Post were seizing on her statement and made it appear that Fox was turning on Palin. Ailes called Refet Kaplan, a senior Fox executive, and demanded Walshe be taken off the air. "It's not fair-and-­balanced coverage," Kaplan later told Walshe. Walshe was allowed to continue covering Palin but was barred from future on-air appearances. She later quit Fox to co-write a book about Palin.

Protecting Palin wasn't enough--Ailes needed to gear up for the Obama era:

By October 2008, Ailes recognized that Obama was likely to beat McCain. He needed to give his audience a reason to stay in the stands and watch his team. And so he went on a hiring spree. By the time Obama defeated McCain, Ailes had hired former Bush aide Karl Rove and Mike Huckabee and went on to assemble a whole lineup of prospective 2012 contenders: Palin, Gingrich, Santorum, and John Bolton.

For the record, CNN seemed to be trying to do the same:

Fox also had to compete with CNN for pundits. In early 2008, then–CNN-U.S. president Jon Klein invited Mike Huckabee to breakfast at the Time Warner Center. Klein sold Huckabee on the benefits of CNN. "If you believe what you’re saying, you should try and convince the middle," Klein told him. It was the same pitch he made later to Karl Rove and to Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes. All three turned down Klein and signed with Fox.

You can't say Ailes doesn't have a somewhat ironic sense of humor.  At one point, he reportedly worried that one Fox executive might have a conflict of interest:

Then, three weeks after the election, David Rhodes, Fox's vice-­president for news, quit to work for Bloomberg. Rhodes had started at Fox as a 22-year-old production assistant and risen through the ranks to become No. 2 in charge of news. His brother was a senior foreign-policy aide to Obama, and Rhodes told staffers that Ailes had expressed concern about this closeness to the White House.

You see, that kind of thing is not tolerated at Fox News Channel. It might leave people with the impression that things aren't on the up and up.

"Teachers Wonder, Why the Heapings of Scorn?" is the headline of a front-page New York Times piece today (3/3/11). The article by Trip Gabriel reports, "Education experts say teachers have rarely been the targets of such scorn from politicians and voters."

Politicians, sure, but what's the evidence that voters--i.e., the public--have been heaping scorn on teachers? Gabriel offers nothing to substantiate this claim other than references to "online comments and placards of counterdemonstrators"--quoting blog commenters as evidence of the national mood has got to stop, guys--and the assertion that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's teacher-bashing has made him a "national star." (I can't find any national polling on Christie, which in itself calls into question how much of a national star he is, but his poll numbers in his own state are unremarkably average.)

Apparently it's hard to find evidence of this anti-teacher wave because it's already receding. In the 14th paragraph, Gabriel writes:

There are signs of a backlash in favor of teachers. A New York Times poll taken last week found that by nearly two to one--60 to 33 percent--Americans opposed restricting collective bargaining for public employees. A similar majority--including more than half of Republicans--said the salaries and benefits of most public employees were "about right" or "too low."

Is that a "backlash in favor of teachers," though, or is that the way people have felt about teachers all along?

And those polls probably understate the support for teachers, since they're more popular than "public employees" in general. When CBS asked last year (1/6-10/10) about public school teachers' salaries, fully 66 percent said they were paid "too little"--while only 4 percent said they were paid "too much." And this is a long-held public attitude; when Gallup (8/24-26/99) asked in 1999 about public teacher salaries, 56 percent thought they were too low and 7 percent too high.

The New York Times piece is not unsympathetic to teachers, but by buying into the notion that there is a wave of anti-teacher sentiment sweeping the public, it only emboldens teacher-scapegoating politicians. The next time a journalist wants to write a piece about the scorn heaped on teachers, they might take a look at a Gallup poll (11/19-21/10) that asked how people viewed the "honesty and ethical standards" of various professions. Elementary school teachers' ethics were rated "very high" or "high" by 67 percent; for newspaper reporters, it's 22 percent.

As we noted here, there weren't many labor voices booked on the Sunday morning chat shows. One, actually--Richard Trumka from the AFL-CIO.

ABC's This Week featured four governors (two Democrats, two Republicans) talking about their fiscal problems. CBS's Face the Nation had a soft interview with New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie. Host Bob Schieffer asked him one question that began, "You have a reputation as a straight talker, I think...." Schieffer went on to play a clip of Christie bravely calling for Social Security cuts. Instead of questioning Christie's totally inaccurate premise--that you "have to raise the retirement age"--Schieffer asked him, "Should other people be saying that?"

Over at NBC, Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker could at least be challenged by another guest  on the same show. They weren't on at the same time, but NBC viewers could hear Trumka say this:

Well, first of all, this isn't about the budget crisis. Let's look at how this--his arguments migrated.  First he said it was--the budget crisis was caused because workers were paid too much in Wisconsin.  We now have studies that show they're not overpaid, they're underpaid.  In fact, people with a degree in Wisconsin get 25 percent less than their private sector things. 

Then he said it was about the pension.  Now we find out that his pension plan, unlike a lot in the country, is almost fully funded.  The assets match the liabilities. 

And then the employees said, or the members out there said, his workers said, "We'll accept your cuts." And he said: "No.  We won't accept your accepting our cuts." And the most outrageous thing that he did, and he talked about this, was he's now saying to them, "You either have to accept a loss of your rights or I'm going to lay you off." Now, no person should have to face the right of their loss of their job or the loss of their rights.  I know Governor Barbour would never say to his employees, his people down there, "You either have to give up your rights or you have to give up your job."

So there isn't much of a pension crisis in Wisconsin. State workers  aren't overpaid. And those same workers have agreed to many of the concessions Walker is demanding. If this were part of every discussion about Wisconsin, we'd be having a far more sensible discussion.

NBC host David Gregory followed with a popular right-wing argument about public workers' unions--that their political campaign contributions mean that elected officials owe them favors:

You raise a lot of money from public employees.  That goes, goes to finance campaigns to try to get somebody in office that you can do business with.  And ultimately you're supporting someone, in some cases, that you're ultimately negotiating with.  They also know that political employees, rather, public employees are politically active because they're organized by the unions.  And so they make concessions on things like pensions, on healthcare, knowing that the promises don't come due to well down the road.  Isn't this the cycle that we've gotten into that public unions have to take some responsibility for?

In other words, aren't politicians doing favors for you because you help them get elected? How often have CEOs and corporate trade associations--who have far more money than labor to give to politicians--been asked that kind of question?

New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie is the object of intense devotion among some on the right (Glenn Beck in particular). No surprise, then, that he'd get a lot of attention for going to Washington and delivering a stern lecture about how to fix the deficit. And no surprise that he'd talk about Social Security. It has nothing to do with the deficit, but that's another matter.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was on hand to cheer on Christie's message (2/16/11). Christie pokes fun at his weight, which apparently makes his truth-telling even more appealing:

But his physique also works to his advantage by reinforcing Christie's appeal as something other than the blow-dried politician who says whatever the voters want to hear. Christie isn't pretty, and he tells ugly truths.

And what was this ugly truth? The need to cut Social Security benefits. As Milbank put it, Christie is brave enough to "to scold both parties in Washington for their failure to talk about what must be done to solve the debt crisis. " He writes:

Christie, however, is talking about it. "You're going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security," he said. "Whoa-ho! I just said it, and I'm still standing here. I did not vaporize into the carpeting, and I said it."

Now for this to be any kind of truth--ugly or not--it has to be, well, true. As Matthew Yglesias pointed out:

Closing the projected actuarial gap in Social Security requires some combination of more immigration, higher taxes and lower benefits. Relative to higher taxes, lower benefits tend to be preferred by richer people. And of all the different ways to reduce benefits, raising the retirement age is the one that does the most to punish the poor and demands the least sacrifice from the rich.

Robert Reich, who was once a Social Security trustee, wrote a column laying out a much easier fix--raising the cap on income subject to the Social Security tax, which in 1983 was designed to hit 90 percent of income. It no longer does that, because rich people have gotten substantially richer. Reich writes:

If we want to go back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax would need to be raised to $180,000.

Presto. Social Security's long-term (beyond 26 years from now) problem would be solved.

So there's no reason even to consider reducing Social Security benefits or raising the age of eligibility. The logical response to the increasing concentration of income at the top is simply to raise the ceiling.

If Christie's "ugly truth" isn't true, why does Milbank think it is? It might be because he has a record of Social Security scaremongering, writing a column in 2007 warning that Social Security was going to be "insolvent" due to the retirement of the Baby Boomers.  His response to FAIR's criticism was that he was writing about the combined effects of Social Security and Medicare--which is problematic on an entirely different level.

Chris Christie wasn't speaking the truth. But he was sending the same kind of message that people like Milbank want to hear: that workers should get benefit cuts in order to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy. It's ugly, but it's not the truth.

There's been a spate of reporting and commentary attacking public workers for having lavish pensions that are bankrupting various states. CBS's 60 Minutes got into the act in December with a report (12/19/10) that was criticized for lionizing Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (obviously this came before his snow troubles) for his attacks on public workers (particularly school teachers).

The New York Times featured an article by Michael Powell on January 2 headlined "Public Workers Face Outrage as Budget Crises Grow." The piece focused primarily on these pension plans, some of which "dangle perilously close to bankruptcy." The article doesn't adequately explain why this is so, but from the headline and focus of the piece readers are left with the impression that unionized workers are getting cushy benefits. This is somewhat undercut later in the article, when it is noted, "A raft of recent studies found that public salaries, even with benefits included, are equivalent to or lag slightly behind those of private sector workers." That left one Times letter writer puzzled about why the focus was on workers' supposed perks.

One of the main criticisms of this kind of reporting, from CEPR's Dean Baker, is that it fails to account for the impact of the recession. Pension funds are invested in the stock market; a major downturn in the stock market would obviously affect the health of those funds.

When Baker made this point about the Times article, Powell wrote a response on his Times blog, chiding Baker for making an "easy" argument:

The economist Dean Baker of the liberal Center for Policy and Economic Research takes greater issue with my report. He argues that the financial crisis was the original sin, as it caused the stock market to plunge, which in turn upended public pension finance. This, he argues, is the "major cause" of the pension problem.

Mr. Baker is a careful follower of the economy, but this argument may be too easy. In New Jersey, California and Illinois, to name three states, Democratic and Republican legislatures and governors repeatedly ignored their obligation to pay into the pension systems.

Which brings us to today's papers. The Washington Post and the New York Times both have articles based on a new Census report showing that pension funds experienced huge losses due to the stock market downturn.  The Post explains that states' revenue drops "resulted largely from the big investment losses experienced by state pension funds during the worst period of the downturn."  The Times says much the same, in a piece headlined "Pension Fund Losses Hit States Hard, Data Show."

Which is another way of saying that critics like Dean Baker were right.

Meet the Press announced that its show this Sunday will feature two conservative Republican guests, Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.). Well, that's only natural, because the GOP did so well on Tuesday, winning back the House.... Right?

Oh wait.... Here's Meet the Press's then-host Tim Russert on November 12, 2006:

Our issues this Sunday: The voters send a loud and clear message to the White House, and give the Democrats control of the House and the Senate for the first time in 12 years. What now for the Republicans? We'll ask a man who is positioned to seek the GOP nomination for president in 2008: Sen. John McCain of Arizona. What now for the Democrats? We'll ask a man who lost a Democratic primary, but was just re-elected as an independent: Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.