Soft Balls (for Clarence Thomas); Mud Balls (for Babies)

If you missed yesterday's Washington Post , you missed a fine example of a super-soft-ball interview. The op-ed page published excerpts of a Q&A Lally Weymouth conducted with Clarence Thomas. There was not one tough question posed to the Supreme Court justice now engaged in a massive PR blitz to sell his new book. In that book, Thomas bashes Anita Hill and calls her a liar. He does not address the evidence and testimony (from others) that supported her claims about his improper conduct. Two weeks ago, Ruth Marcus, a Post editorial writer, penned an op-ed laying out much of this evidence.

But in her published interview with Thomas, Weymouth does not ask him about this evidence and testimony. She just lets him play the victim one more time:

Along the road from Pin Point, Ga., to the Supreme Court, why did you not give up during difficult times?

I wanted to give up a hundred times. The thing that was so hurtful to me was after the end of that long journey to be beaten like that.

You mean at the hearings?

Yes, throughout the hearings, the summer, everything....I asked my wife, "Why? I just disagree with them. I don't even know if I disagree with them on specific issues." [But] I cannot carry around bitterness and at the same time carry around a positive message for young kids and for people who still need help. My goal is I will never treat anybody the way I was treated in this city. I also will never do my job as poorly as people did their jobs when I was at their mercy.

The op-ed page of the Post is indeed supposed to give voice to a diversity of views. Still, this interview was striking in its obsequiousness. But Weymouth, a onetime leftist who turned rightward years ago, is a regular contributor to the Post op-ed page. For some reason, she's allowed to use the Post as a platform. By the way, she was born Elizabeth Morris Graham and is the only daughter of Philip Graham and Katharine Graham, the late (and great) publisher of The Washington Post . Her brother is Donald Graham, the CEO of the Post.

BABY POLITICS. Tired of the usual cheap-shot political discourse that's more concerned with scoring points than debating policy? Yeah, I know you are. So take a look at my pal Reid Cramer's piece on the so-called baby bonds. A few weeks back, Hillary Clinton referred positively to the idea of awarding a chunk of money to each newborn American--funds that could later be used for education, home-buying or retirement. She mentioned a figure of $5000, though a similar proposal in Congress only called for $500. She probably slipped up on the number, since she had previously called for a $500 endowment. But her campaign, true to form, would not admit she had made a mistake.

Of course, Clinton was immediately pummeled by her foes on the right for championing a big-spending social program. Rudy Giuliani, in particular, pounced on her. Clinton turned tail and threw the baby bonds into the bathwater. So much for informed discussion about social policy. Defending baby bonds, Cramer, research director at the New America Foundation, writes,

Access to even a modest pool of assets can provide an essential element of economic security, helping people weather income shocks and take advantage of strategic opportunities.

Much of this simply can't be achieved through social insurance that is geared toward specific risks like unemployment or very low pay, or specific services such as health care. Assets provide the flexibility families need to navigate a volatile economy.

And there are a number of benefits to starting this savings process at birth. Not only do you get to maximize the advantage of compound interest, but these accounts can become a teaching tool to deliver the fundamentals of financial education - a primary skill for navigating our 21st-century economy.

This is actually the approach that they are using in the United Kingdom, which is already implementing a similar accounts-at-birth proposal with support from both the Labor and Tory parties.

If we engage in a dialogue that goes beyond headlines, the merits of baby bonds could garner support from progressives and social conservatives alike. That's because, at its core, this policy is about ownership and opportunity, offering a little something for everyone.

Gee, social policy that combines the values of progressives and social conservatives? We don't want any of that. Instead, we get mud balls and calculating and self-serving politicians. The babies of America ought to be really angry.

Posted by David Corn at October 16, 2007 10:44 AM