The Smoke Machine
nytimes.com
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In a way, it's a shame that so much of David
Brock's "Blinded by the Right: The conscience
of an ex-conservative" is about the private lives of
our self-appointed moral guardians. Those tales will
sell books, but they may obscure the important
message: that the "vast right-wing conspiracy" is not
an overheated metaphor but a straightforward
reality, and that it works a lot like a special-interest
lobby.
Modern political economy teaches us that small,
well-organized groups often prevail over the
broader public interest. The steel industry got the
tariff it wanted, even though the losses to
consumers will greatly exceed the gains of producers, because the typical steel consumer doesn't understand
what's happening.
"Blinded by the Right" shows that the same logic applies to non-economic issues. The scandal machine that
employed Mr. Brock was, in effect, a special-interest group financed by a handful of wealthy fanatics — men
like the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose cultlike Unification Church owns The Washington Times, and Richard
Mellon Scaife, who bankrolled the scandal-mongering American Spectator and many other right-wing
enterprises. It was effective because the typical news consumer didn't realize what was going on.
The group's efforts managed to turn Whitewater — a $200,000
money-losing investment — into a byword for scandal, even though an
eight-year, $73 million investigation never did find any evidence of
wrongdoing by the Clintons. Just imagine what the scandal machine could
have done with more promising raw material — such as the decidedly
unusual business transactions of the young George W. Bush.
But there is, of course, no comparable scandal machine on the left. Why not?
One answer is that for some reason there is a level of anger and hatred on the
right that has at best a faint echo in the anti-globalization left, and none at all
in mainstream liberalism. Indeed, the liberals I know generally seem unwilling
to face up to the nastiness of contemporary politics.
It's also true that in the nature of things, billionaires are more likely to be
right-wing than left-wing fanatics. When billionaires do support more or less
liberal causes, they usually try to help the world, not take over the U.S.
political system. Not to put too fine a point on it: While George Soros was
spending lavishly to promote democracy abroad, Mr. Scaife was spending
lavishly to undermine it at home.
And his achievement is impressive; key figures from the Scaife empire are
now senior officials in the Bush administration. (And Mr. Moon's newspaper is now in effect the
administration's house organ.) Clearly, scandalmongering works: the public and, less excusably, the legitimate
media all too readily assume that where there's smoke there must be fire — when in reality it's just some angry
rich guys who have bought themselves a smoke machine.
And the media are still amazingly easy to sucker. Just look at the way the press fell for the fraudulent tale of
vandalism by departing Clinton staffers, or the more recent spread of the bogus story that Ken Lay stayed at
the Clinton White House.
Regular readers of this column know that not long ago I found myself the target of a minor-league smear
campaign. The pattern was typical: right-wing sources insisting that a normal business transaction (in my case
consulting for Enron, back when I was a college professor, not an Op-Ed columnist, and in no position to do
the company any favors) was somehow corrupt; then legitimate media picking up on the story, assuming that
given all the fuss there must be something to the allegations; and no doubt a lingering impression, even though
no favors were given or received, that the target must have done something wrong ("Isn't it hypocritical for
him to criticize crony capitalism when he himself was on the take?"). Now that I've read Mr. Brock's book I
understand what happened.
Slate's Tim Noah, whom I normally agree with, says that Mr. Brock tells us nothing new: "We know . . . that
an appallingly well-financed hard right was obsessed with smearing Clinton." But who are "we"? Most people
don't know that — and anyway, he shouldn't speak in the past tense; an appallingly well-financed hard right is
still in the business of smearing anyone who disagrees with its agenda, and too many journalists still allow
themselves to be used.
I found "Blinded by the Right" distasteful, but revelatory. So, I suspect, will many others.
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