Hitting Zachary Roth over his revelation that National Review editor Rich Lowry offered to help the Bush administration spin the U.S. attorney scandal, Ramesh Ponnuru writes:
Since I'm a conservative, and work for a conservative publication, and know a lot of conservatives, very often the story casts a right-leaning figure (or policy initiative) in a negative light and I suspect or know that there is more to the story. In these instances I will often contact the person (or person behind the initiative) and offer to help them get the other side of the story out. Sometimes the figure in question, grateful for the chance to respond to negative publicity, then cooperates with my work. I fill copy and get to think I've done a good deed, and sometimes the people I've defended give me a little scoop in the future. Shocking, all of this, I know.
It's one thing to write opinionated journalism that favors specific policy initiatives -- for example, Ponnuru writing that Social Security reform is a good idea -- or to defend a conservative policy against what he sees as inaccurate coverage in the press.That just plainly isn't the same thing as offering to help an administration cover up bad behavior. Just because Tim Fernholz likes some of the Obama administration's plans for tougher financial regulation doesn't mean he's going to shoot off an e-mail to the White House offering to say Tim Geithner paid his taxes. The Bush administration was firing U.S. attorneys based on their willingness to pursue charges against political targets. This is what Ponnuru calls a "right-leaning policy initiative"? I mean it's hardly flattering to conservatism, but if the party is willing to add political corruption to its platform along with torture, who are liberals to stand in the way?
Ponnuru calls Lowry's offering to shill for Bush a "non-story." In a way he's right. But the only reason this isn't a big deal is that no one, including apparently Ponnuru, seems to think much of his own publication's integrity. I just can't understand why that doesn't bother him.
-- A. Serwer
