Today’s Washington Post has an article by reporter Carol Leonnig, “Obama’s Team Rankles the Right: To Some Conservatives, Advisers Are Alarmingly Liberal,” that gives prominent and unchallenged voice to arguments that should rankle anyone who believes the news pages of the mainstream media have an obligation to be at least somewhat fair and balanced in their presentation of political disagreements.
The article describes the concerns of some conservatives about the heavy presence of left wing views on the Obama transition teams for some departments. “Conservatives,” Leonnig writes, “fear that some of these Obama transition advisers are too far left on the political spectrum and are a sign of radical policies to come.”
Typical of these concerns were those voiced by Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity and a leading critic of race preferences, referring in part to the prominent transition role being played by Bill Lann Lee, a Clinton civil rights appointee who was vigorously opposed by conservatives.
“It is disturbing,” said Roger Clegg, a conservative opponent of Lee’s appointment who is now watching the Obama advisers at the Justice Department. “The transition team as described to me was made up of nothing but people on the far left. Though Obama is more moderate, that makes you wonder what kind of advice the president is given, and what range of choices he’ll be given when it comes time to make appointments.”
….
Clegg said he has some fears about a return to racial quotas, in part because Lee and Theodore M. Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, serve on the Obama transition team reviewing civil rights.
Also typical is the way the article prominently highlighted responses to Clegg’s criticism, and others like it, blending together unnamed experts, the Washington Post’s own favored expert, and partisan liberal replies:
But some government experts argue that in this particular transition, a wider-than-usual ideological gap separates the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama team and that both sides are likely to view the other as extreme.
“The incoming Bush people were all about stopping regulation. The Obama people will do their best to accelerate regulation that they think protects the environment, workers, airline safety, et cetera,” said Paul Light, a New York University professor of government who has served as a consultant on the transition to The Washington Post. “That’s not barbarians at the gate. It’s a difference of philosophy.”
…. Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor who was blocked for the same job before Lee’s nomination, said she thinks the complaints of an ultra-left takeover by Obama advisers and nominees are manufactured hyperbole.
“The Bush administration people were often fighting against the very mission of the agencies they were supposed to be running,” she said. “And their advocates were masters at name-calling and finger-pointing. No one involved in this work really thinks Bill Lee is on the radical fringe.”
The overall effect is to mischaracterize, belittle, and reject an argument that Clegg (and others) never made. The Washington Post’s “consultant on the transition” notwithstanding, Clegg never even implied that Bill Lann Lee and Theodore Shaw are “barbarians at the gate,” nor did he describe them, Lani Guinier to the contrary notwithstanding, as the “radical fringe.” Indeed, if they were the “radical fringe” they could be marginalized. The problem is not that they are the “radical fringe” but typical liberal Democrats. In short, all Clegg is doing is pointing out what the Washington Post‘s consultant implies that he doesn’t understand: that the incoming Democrats do indeed represent a “difference of philosophy,” i.e., a commitment to expanding rather than eliminating racial preferences.
Clegg does not engage in “hyperbole” or “finger-pointing.” He makes a calm argument that if Obama follows the guidance he will no doubt be getting from his civil rights transition team we will see an expansion of race preference policies. Now, everyone knows that Republicans are evil (they oppose race preferences) and/or stupid, but even if he is a stupid Republican Clegg has been debating Theodore Shaw and Bill Lann Lee long enough to have a pretty good idea what they believe.
And how do Guinier et. al. respond to Clegg’s argument? Do they argue that he is mistaken to point out the transition team’s longstanding devotion to race preferences? Of course not. They simply sputter with the very “name-calling” and “finger-pointing” and “manufactured hyperbole” they profess to object to in conservatives. And the Post itself, through its reporter, never deigns to notice the asymmetrical nature of the arguments it reports (argument on one side; disdainful, ad-hominem, hyperbolic dismissal on the other).
