Never Mind the 50 Most Influential Pundits—Here Are 10 of the Best

After the success of its “Top 100 Liberals” and “Top 100 Conservatives,” the UK’s Telegraph has now unveiled its “Top 50 Political Pundits.” All three lists have had many in the media buzzing (like flies around a fresh, steaming cow patty.)

Before you check the lists out, a warning: they’re broken down into mini-lists of 10 or 20, so that to peruse them all, you’ll wind up clicking on 17 separate web pages—a cynical ploy aimed at maximizing the Telegraph’s web traffic to drive up advertising rates.

So never mind the Telegraph’s gimmicky lists, which confuse popularity with influence. Influence is a poor measure in the first place, especially when the news media have become more oriented towards entertainment than analysis. By what criteria are comics like Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh, or a superficial confrontationalist like Hack Hannity, or Glenn Beck, considered alongside the best journalists and political pundits of our time?

For what it’s worth, here are Newsprism’s Ten of the Best Political Pundits in America, all on the same page and commercialism free:

10. Michael Kinsley—while he occasionally veers off into liberal la-la land, Kinsley is thoughtful, lucid, and incisive. He’s the most reasonable voice from the far left, idealistic yet practical in a Pat Moynihan sort of way.

9. Charles Krauthammer—a solid bedrock conservative with unmatched acumen in foreign policy, Krauthammer’s analysis of the Middle East is spot-on. He’s as hard-nosed as Bush is hard-headed, staunchly nationalistic without succombing to the naive idealism of the neocons.

8.  Christopher Hitchens—an exceptional writer, Hitchens is also stubbornly independent. He defies categorization in an era marked by polarization; he’s loyal only to his own judgment, never taking sides or pulling his punches, lefts or rights.

7. Dick Morris—he’s as sleazy as the Clintons, and as brilliant, a Karl Rove without the charm (or loyalty.) His cynicism is matched by his insightfulness. A mean streak and his hatred for his former employers make him fun to follow.

6. David Brooks—while the market rewards extremism, especially on the right, Brooks is a moderate conservative devoted to what’s best for the country rather than winning an argument. Brooks is highly intelligent and knowledgeable, and his columns range across critical social and political issues.

5. Frank Rich—a writer on par with Hitchens, Rich anchors the New York Times opinion pages and has the ear of journalists left and right. His background as a critic of culture adds depth and dimension to his political analysis.

4. Karl Rove—the man got George Bush elected. Twice. George Bush. He’s been demonized by the left and stained by his association with the policies of his most famous client, but Rove understands American politics as well as anyone. He’s been outthinking the pack for nearly thirty years.

3. Peggy Noonan—both the woman and her writing are graceful and wise. Never pretentious, she has a way of making profound points effortlessly. Her wit is elegant, simple but never simplistic. Noonan may seem as soft as a feather, but that feather cuts like a scalpel. Her criticisms of George Bush, for example, go right to the heart of a presidency with no moral or philosophical foundation.

2. Pat Buchanan—with the best grasp of history in the business, Buchanan puts contemporary issues into a sweeping historical context. His perspective spans the breadth of Western civilization in an era whose memory barely reaches beyond the 24-hour news cycle. To “get” Buchanan, you should read his books and columns; his appearances on MSNBC don’t do him justice.

1. George Will—nobody connects the dots like Will. His commentary reflects attention to the highest principles while at the same time being grounded firmly in contemporary American culture and history. Will compares favorably with William F. Buckley and Walter Lippmann. His wit isn’t dry, it’s arid, a droll sarcasm befitting his bemusement at our increasingly uncivil society. A collection of his columns like The Leveling Wind transcends punditry; he’s a philosopher who happens to write columns.

Newsprism

New Twist on an Old Joke: What Do You Call a Liberal Who’s Been Mugged?

The old joke goes like this: What do you call a liberal who’s been mugged?

A conservative.

After seven years of big-spending government and eroding civil liberties under allegedly conservative Republicans, the joke needs an update: What do you call a conservative who’s been mugged by government?

A libertarian.

Independent voters tend to decide national elections, and the largest bloc of independents are libertarian in outlook: fiscally conservative and socially liberal, in effect straddling the two major parties—which leaves them vulnerable to getting kicked in the crotch no matter whom they vote for.

This country was founded on libertarian principles—limited government, property rights, civil liberties, individual responsibility—that have been significantly eroded under both Democratic and Republican administrations. The designers of our democracy wouldn’t recognize what’s become of their experiment today; somehow a design intended to limit government has been twisted into a government with no intention of limiting its designs.

Up until the turn of the millenium, it was Democrats who considered the Constitution a “quaint document.” Now the Republican Party has betrayed its most fundamental animating principle. It is no longer a conservative party.

PJ O’Rourke puts it like this: “It’s going to be hard to do a worse job running America than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it’s the Democrats.”

With a socialist Hillary Clinton or a very liberal Barack Obama set to face off against a big government Republican like John McCain, McCain would seem to be the lesser of two evils. Maybe the late great Molly Ivans had it right: for the third presidential election in a row, we’re faced with “the evil of two lessers.” The only genuine libertarian in the race is Ron Paul, and he’s way too principled, too shrill, too rough around the edges, and too ugly to win the American Idol contest we call a presidential election.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of nation had been created. His answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Newsprism

Laugh While You Cry—It’s Tax Freedom Day!

According to the Tax Foundation, the average working American pays 31% of his or her income in direct federal, state, and local taxes. That’s more than is spent on food, clothing, and shelter combined.

If that tax burden visualized as a percentage of one year, the average working American spends the first 113 days of the year to pay direct taxes.

According to the Foundation, that means today, April 23, is Tax Freedom Day—the day of the year on which the average working American has finally worked enough to pay his or her taxes.

Congratulations!

As you celebrate the end of this year’s servitude to government, you should ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I get for my 113 days of labor? (You probably don’t want to know the answer, but if you do, check out this, this, and this.)

2. Who are the non-working Americans I’m supporting, and why the hell aren’t they working? (Some are retired or disabled—God bless them—but then there are the millions of parasites, scammers, lazybones, bureaucrats, corporations and assorted criminals we support thanks to misguided government largesse.)

To ease the burden and help you laugh through the tears, watch this witty Tax Freedom Day video courtesy of YouTube.

Newsprism

Contestants in Cable News Race Run in Opposite Directions, Voters Lose

As three major cable news networks—CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews—compete for shares of the cable news audience, the result may be further polarization of the American voter. So says a new study by University of Georgia Professor Barry Hollander.

Hollander studied the news consumption of self-identified Democrats and Republicans using data from the non-partisan Pew Research Center. His findings: people gravitate towards news sources that reinforce their existing beliefs—liberals to CNN and MSNBC, and conservatives to FoxNews.

While this result is no surprise, combined with other trends in voting and media consumption it may portend further polarization among a less informed electorate.

For example, the more voters are exposed exclusively to opinions they already agree with, the more extreme their views are likely to become. In addition, the less news people watch, the less likely they are to vote. Voters who don’t identify strongly with either party are increasingly less likely to consume news, and therefore, to vote.

The trend is towards polarization and extremism in both red and blue states, while moderates give up on the political process and vote in fewer and fewer numbers.

Our democracy risks significant erosion of participation in, and faith in, the electoral process among voters in the center as two polarized, vacuous ideological camps face off over an ever-widening and increasingly empty ideological schism.

Like Nature, politics abhors a vacuum. What will fill the vacuum resulting from these trends is anybody’s guess.

Newsprism

Why Some Democrats and Republicans Should Be Barred from Voting

Have you ever wondered why some people seem impossible to reason with when conversations turn to politics?

A study conducted at Atlanta’s Emory University used sophisticated brain scans to analyze the political reasoning—or lack thereof—of voters strongly attached to one political party or the other.

The results: when faced with information that threatens their pre-existing beliefs, both staunch Democrats and Republicans turn off the rational centers in the brain and turn on the emotional ones.

According to LiveScience.com,

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making … Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.

Emory University’s Director of Clinical Psychology, Drew Weston, put it this way:

The result (of the study) is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data.

The study might go far in explaining the popularity of conservative talk radio and the liberal blogosphere, where reason and evidence are as rare as an honest politician.

The old admonition may hold true that some people—the party faithful, as it turns out—just shouldn’t discuss politics.

Maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to vote, either.

Newsprism

Which Philosophy Generates More Generosity—Liberalism or Conservatism?

Dr. Arthur Brooks, a political independent and esteemed economist specializing in public affairs, set out several years ago to figure out who are the more generous Americans—liberals, or conservatives.

His book, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, published in November of 2006, has been thrust back into the limelight by a recent column in which George Will, the nation’s preeminent intellectual conservative, exposes the hypocrisy of the outspoken left in Austin, Texas, and by extension, of the left in general. Austin is the South’s version of Berkeley, California and Madison, Wisconsin—a hotbed of liberalism, and, it seems, sanctimony.

The presumption is that liberals, the champions of the poor and downtrodden, are more generous while cold-hearted, individualistic conservatives are less so. Brooks’ thoroughly reseached book proves just the opposite: conservatives give a greater percentage of their incomes to charity, are more likely to volunteer in their communities, and even donate more of their blood than liberals.

The least charitable Americans? Welfare recipients. The working poor, who are little better off than their fellow citizens who live on the public dole, are among the most generous Americans, giving more as a percentage of their incomes than those in the middle class.

At the time of its release, the results of Brooks’ research were popularized by libertarian ABC investigative reporter John Stossel and detailed in the The Chronicle of Philanthropy and at beliefnet.com.

Why is Will bringing Brooks’ work up sixteen months after its release? For one thing, its findings have stood the test of time despite a strong desire by liberal academics to discredit it. For another, we’re in the middle of a presidential race highlighting the differences between the two philosophies that dominate American politics.

The fact of the matter is that liberals as a group are more generous with other people’s money than with their own. Their rhetoric isn’t always backed with action, with sacrifice. Their philosophy is sometimes, in practice at least, shallow and hollow. They too often pander to the welfare class that helps put and keep them in power, taking from others through taxation what they are less inclined to give of their own accord.

Conservatives, on the other hand, submit to high taxation that goes against their philosophy, and yet they tend to give more of what remains of their income and wealth than those responsible for that taxation.

On the whole, Americans, both left and right, are exceptionally generous people. The differences Brooks demonstrates don’t run that deep, but they do reveal a stubborn misconception.

Liberals in the media have succeeded in unfairly characterizing conservatives as cold and uncaring. That’s a stereotype that should be put to rest once and for all.

Newsprism

Dueling Victims—Identity Politics Taken to Its (Il)logical Conclusion

In America today, is it worse to be black, or female? That’s the absurd question many in the Democratic Party and in the mainstream media are pondering.

The victim mentality that has sustained so much of liberal ideology over the last four decades has been starkly displayed of late after pack journalists swarmed around two ill-conceived and incendiary statements by Geraldine Ferraro and George McGovern, both of whom are Hillary Clinton supporters.

According to Ferraro,

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.

And according to McGovern,

I have a feeling that in this country where we’re at today in our thinking, it’s going to be harder to elect a woman than to elect a black man.

To (white) Clinton supporters, it’s better to be black than female. This is a question without an answer, of course, though we know two things for sure: 1.) discrimination of any kind is damaging to the health of both individual bodies and the body politic, and 2.) the roots of racism and sexism, while both run deep, are comparable at only the most shallow levels.

If only the media weren’t, like the academy and liberalism in general, still dominated by people with a stake in keeping racism and sexism alive in the national psyche, maybe more healing could be taking place. For Hillary Clinton and her operatives to be trotting out the ugly side of identity politics is shameful and damaging to their party and our nation. The only beneficiaries of this infighting are John McCain and the Republicans.

No matter how hard he tries, Barack Obama can’t rise above the issue of his blackness, which his blue-state Democratic rival has turned into red meat for yellow journalists.

Newsprism

Conservative Icon Pat Buchanan Gives Little George Bush a History Lesson

Imagine, if you will, a grizzled grandfather of intellectual conservatism sitting in front of a handsome colonial hearth with a child on his knee. The grandfather is Pat Buchanan, and he’s giving little George Bush a history lesson … if little George is “teachable.”

Now, read this column by Pat “Pops” Buchanan, or at least the excerpts below, and keep that image in mind.

Buchanan’s column begins,

On reading George Bush’s discourse to the New York Economic Club last week, Cicero’s insight came to mind: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”

With Iraq entering its sixth year, the dollar sinking to peso levels, the economy careening into recession, and 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens roosting here, Bush alerted us to what really worries him:

“I’m troubled by isolationism and protectionism … (and) another ‘ism,’ and that’s nativism…”

Buchanan proceeds to lay out the real history of what Bush calls isolationism, protectionism, and nativism and the dynamic global power that history produced. This is followed by a litany of Bush’s failures and this incisive summation of Bush’s philosophy:

In smearing as nativists, protectionists and isolationists those who wish to stop the invasion, halt the export of factories and jobs to Asia, and stop the unnecessary wars, Bush is attacking the last true conservatives in his party.

Which is understandable. For after the judges and tax cuts, what is there about Bush that is conservative? His foreign policy is Wilsonian. His trade policy is pure FDR. His spending is LBJ all the way. His amnesty for illegals is Teddy Kennedy’s policy.

Somewhere along the way, George Bush’s education was miserably neglected. Maybe an MBA characterized by a lackluster academic performance, backed up by two decades watching popular entertainers distort and pervert conservatism, doesn’t make for a qualified chief executive. The proof is in the pudding, as the American people seem to understand well. 

Now Pops Buchanan lifts little George off his lap, and the boy scurries off to play with his toys: a Monopoly board, six trillion dollars’ worth of Monopoly money, GI Joe, and models of a fighter jet and the USS Lincoln.

Newsprism

William F. Buckley—The Greatest of a Generation

American conservatism has lost its most brilliant and stalwart public intellectual. William F. Buckley died this morning at his home, following his wife, who died last year, and his dear friend Van Galbraith, who died last month.

Mr. Buckley’s National Review had this to say this morning about the legacy of its founder and editor:

If ever an institution were the lengthened shadow of one man, this publication is his. So we hope it will not be thought immodest for us to say that Buckley has had more of an impact on the political life of this country — and a better one — than some of our presidents. He created modern conservatism as an intellectual and then a political movement.

Celebrating Mr. Buckley’s unwavering opposition to an ascendent liberalism, NR notes:

When Buckley started National Review — in 1955, at the age of 29 — it was not at all obvious that anti-Communists, traditionalists, constitutionalists, and enthusiasts for free markets would all be able to take shelter under the same tent. Nor was it obvious that all of these groups, even gathered together, would be able to prevail over what seemed at the time to be an inexorable collectivist tide.

Though ruthless and relentless in his advocacy of conservative principles, Mr. Buckley was by temperament a true gentleman. I can think of no better tribute to this man than to point you to the gracious eulogies he published for two of his most bitter ideological (though not personal) enemies, Arthur Schlesinger and Norman Mailer, both of whom passed away last year.

Bon voyage, Bill. Happy sailing up there.

William F. Buckley’s archive at National Review

I Am Rubber, You’re a Fascist

It’s common to read leftist bloggers accusing conservatives (like Ann “Paris Hitler” Coulter) of being fascists. To call that accusation an overstatement would be an understatement.

But now a provocatively-titled new book by conservative Jonah Goldberg of National Review has turned the tables. Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning is giving liberals fits of anger, and conservatives fits of laughter. Goldberg’s book traces a number of similarities, and a few affinities, between American progressivism and fascism. He insists, not too convincingly, that he’s not equating the two, but merely pointing out those similarities and affinities.

Thomas Sowell of townhall.com and Vox Day of WorldNetDaily.com both rise to the bait and swallow Goldberg’s thesis hook, line and sinker: of course, they say, liberals are fascists (especially “Hitlery” Clinton!) It’s hard to blame them, considering that the accusation of fascism has been almost exclusively launched by liberals towards conservatives. Not surprisingly, reactions on the left have been less than generous, combining scorn with ridicule, as in this response by Alternet’s Brad Reed. Goldberg, meanwhile, is laughing all the way to the bank.

The bigger point has nothing to do with whether liberals or conservatives are more fascist. Fascists in our government or media, assuming there are any, are exceedingly rare and deep undercover. Besides, there are certain elements of fascism evident on both sides–liberals tend toward statist control of corporations, for example, and conservatives toward nationalism and militarism.

The bigger point has to do with how low our political discourse has sunk, and how profitable it can be to get down there in the gutter.

Benito and Barnum would both be proud.

Newsprism.com