Questions of Character - New York Times
The New York Times

October 14, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist

Questions of Character
By
PAUL KRUGMAN

George W. Bush, I once wrote, "values loyalty above expertise" and may have
"a preference for advisers whose personal fortunes are almost entirely bound
up with his own." And he likes to surround himself with "obsequious
courtiers."

Lots of people are saying things like that these days. But those quotes are
from a column published on Nov. 19, 2000.

I don't believe that I'm any better than the average person at judging other
people's character. I got it right because I said those things in the
context
of a discussion of Mr. Bush's choice of economic advisers, a subject in
which I do have some expertise.

But many people in the news media do claim, at least implicitly, to be
experts at discerning character - and their judgments play a large,
sometimes decisive
role in our political life. The 2000 election would have ended in a
chad-proof victory for Al Gore if many reporters hadn't taken a dislike to
Mr. Gore,
while portraying Mr. Bush as an honest, likable guy. The 2004 election was
largely decided by the image of Mr. Bush as a strong, effective leader.

So it's important to ask why those judgments are often so wrong.

Right now, with the Bush administration in meltdown on multiple issues,
we're hearing a lot about President Bush's personal failings. But what
happened
to the commanding figure of yore, the heroic leader in the war on terror?
The answer, of course, is that the commanding figure never existed: Mr. Bush
is the same man he always was. All the character flaws that are now fodder
for late-night humor were fully visible, for those willing to see them,
during
the 2000 campaign.

And President Bush the great leader is far from the only fictional
character, bearing no resemblance to the real man, created by media images.

Read the speeches Howard Dean gave before the Iraq war, and compare them
with Colin Powell's pro-war presentation to the U.N. Knowing what we know
now,
it's clear that one man was judicious and realistic, while the other was
spinning crazy conspiracy theories. But somehow their labels got switched in
the
way they were presented to the public by the news media.

Why does this happen? A large part of the answer is that the news business
places great weight on "up close and personal" interviews with important
people,
largely because they're hard to get but also because they play well with the
public. But such interviews are rarely revealing. The fact is that most
people
- myself included - are pretty bad at using personal impressions to judge
character. Psychologists find, for example, that most people do little
better
than chance in distinguishing liars from truth-tellers.

More broadly, the big problem with political reporting based on character
portraits is that there are no rules, no way for a reporter to be proved
wrong.
If a reporter tells you about the steely resolve of a politician who turns
out to be ineffectual and unwilling to make hard choices, you've been
misled,
but not in a way that requires a formal correction.

And that makes it all too easy for coverage to be shaped by what reporters
feel they can safely say, rather than what they actually think or know. Now
that
Mr. Bush's approval ratings are in the 30's, we're hearing about his
coldness and bad temper, about how aides are afraid to tell him bad news.
Does anyone
think that journalists have only just discovered these personal
characteristics?

Let's be frank: the Bush administration has made brilliant use of
journalistic careerism. Those who wrote puff pieces about Mr. Bush and those
around him
have been rewarded with career-boosting access. Those who raised questions
about his character found themselves under personal attack from the
administration's
proxies. (Yes, I'm speaking in part from experience.) Only now, with Mr.
Bush in desperate trouble, has the structure of rewards shifted.

So what's the answer? Journalists who are better at judging character?
Unfortunately, that's not a practical plan. After all, who judges their
judgment?

What we really need is political journalism based less on perceptions of
personalities and more on actual facts. Schadenfreude aside, we should not
be happy
that stories about Mr. Bush's boldness have given way to stories analyzing
his facial tics. Think, instead, about how different the world would be
today
if, during the 2000 campaign, reporting had focused on the candidates'
fiscal policies instead of their wardrobes.

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. Copyright 2005
The New York Times Company

Posted by Miriam V.