January 07, 2005

Armstrong Williams and Breeding Cynicism

Armstrong Williams hasn't been in my reading mix for years because he was pretty dull. Now, we find out the Education Department was paying him to talk about No Child Left Behind. It would have been nice of him to tell his audience he was a paid talking head. Even Williams thinks he acted poorly:

Even though I'm not a journalist — I'm a commentator — I feel I should be held to the media ethics standard. My judgment was not the best. I wouldn't do it again, and I learned from it.

If you take this Williams incident along with the news that John Thune paid webloggers to bash Tom Daschle there's now a bit of a pattern of GOP media manipulation. It's not healthy for the body politic for one party to breed such cynicism. I understand that nothing the GOP will ever do will satisfy Deaniacs or the wackos lurking at Daily Kos. At the minimum, a party doesn't want to induce cynicism with their own base. These tactics may be good short-term politics, but real policy change is a long-term effort. In a divided nation, alienation can lead to electoral defeat.

"U.S. Pays Commentator to Tout School Law"

"Education Dept. Paid Commentator to Promote Law"

UPDATE: James Joyner writes,

The ability to go directly to the public by "jawboning" is perhaps the most important power of the presidency with respect to domestic policy. I'm not exactly [sure] where the line should be drawn here, given the power of the so-called "New Media."