Process stories and Rx-gate

Last updated on: October 21, 2004 at 6:56 pm by Fred Clark

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Process stories and Rx-gate 2004-10-21T18:56:33-04:00 Fred Clark

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I'm looking forward to reading this paper tomorrow for the next installment of a remarkable series on Sen. Joe Biden's critique of President Bush's Medicare prescription drug plan. (Here's part one and here's part two.)

I find these articles remarkable because, while based on Biden's critique of Bush's plan, they never actually discuss:

A. Bush's plan; or

B. Biden's critique of it.

I read these stories after reading David Grann's "Inside Dope," a perceptive profile of The Note's Mark Halperin in this week's New Yorker.

Yet, as is the case with many publications today, The Note's principal allegiance is not to ideas but to the cult of the scoop and to the notion that success trumps all other values. And those who treat politics too seriously, who do not see the world with the cool detachment of the pros, are suspect. Earlier this year, The Note expressed bewilderment at those in "the goo-goo establishment" — including David Broder, a longtime political reporter at the Washington Post — who were naïve enough to try to fix the campaign-finance system. To do more than keep score is to be seen as a sucker. Indeed, The Note recently mocked the Times' editorial board for being "super excited about the substance of the VP debate."

One person who has worked on The Note told me, "The process of politics is seen as an end in itself." … And The Note doesn’t hype just the campaigns that channel the process; it does the same with reporters who write about it. One magazine reporter told me, "I always try to get my stuff cited in The Note, but it's policy stuff, so they'll almost never include it."

The process of politics, of course, is not "an end in itself." And it's dismaying to see this pointless process-obsession infecting even local newsrooms far removed from the elite circle-jerk of Halperin's "Gang of 500." Grann, in his own way, is saying to the folks at The Note the same thing that Jon Stewart was saying to the hosts of Crossfire: "… It's not so much that it's bad, as it's hurting America. … Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America."

Joe Biden's use of the phrase "brain dead" is not, in any meaningful sense, news. Nor is the entirely predictable back-and-forth amongst political hacks that followed. Hacks practicing hackery is strictly in the province of dog-bites-man.

But the substance of Biden's dispute with the president should be news. It matters. It has a direct and meaningful impact on the lives of millions of seniors, on every American who has a stake in their lives, on everyone affected by the vast and growing national debt, and on the thousands who work for and profit from investing in the pharmaceutical industry.

The prescription drug bill makes it illegal for Medicare to use its considerable power as a huge, bulk customer to negotiate for lower prices for prescription drugs. I am not aware of anyone, anywhere, who has even attempted to defend this aspect of the bill. It is horrible policy and the direct and obvious result is higher costs for seniors and higher costs for taxpayers.

This point is not complicated. Americans understand what it means to buy in bulk to get a better deal. They wouldn't buy peanut butter by the gross at Sam's Club if doing so meant paying more than retail.

If the Kerry campaign were to hire me for "oppo" debates — to make proxy arguments as a devil's advocate for President Bush — I would know how to go about stating the strongest case for many of his positions. But on this issue I'm at a loss. Someone please explain to me why it's good policy to prohibit Medicare from taking advantage of its obvious economies of scale. This indefensible policy should be the focus of intense media scrutiny. It is deserving of the suffix "gate" and all the investigative frenzy that entails.

Yet even when a veteran legislator raises this issue it's not considered news. The senator's anger is considered newsworthy, but not the thing he's angry about.

"Brain dead" seems precisely the right term to describe all of this. So to the Gang of 500 and to those imitating their all-process, no-content style, let me second Jon Stewart: "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America."

UPDATE: No follow-up article in Friday's paper, but Biden's anger was the subject of the paper's lead editorial, "Sen. Biden's remark about the president was rude and wrong." The editorial mentions that "[Biden's] broader point about President Bush's drug plan was well taken," but like the articles before it, does not bother to explain what that broader point may have been. (Or to say "well taken" by whom.)

This all reminded me of the Buddhist riddle about the finger pointing at the moon that Edward mentioned earlier in comments. The paper just spent the whole week talking about the finger — in this case, Biden's middle finger — but it never even occurred to them to look to see where it was pointing.

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