Jennifer Rubin: "Bush Is Back"

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters For America

Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin is seizing on a recent poll showing that George W. Bush's approval numbers are up to declare "Bush is back," arguing that America is starting to appreciate Bush's policies in the light of what she calls the "rotten" Obama presidency. To make her case, Rubin neatly excises from Bush's record every single massive failure and disaster that resulted in Bush leaving office as one of the least popular presidents in history.

Rubin managed to cram so much misinformation and nonsense into seven short paragraphs that it's tough to pick a place to start, but this one is worthy of special attention:

Why the shift? Aside from the "memories fade" point, many of his supposed failures are mild compared to the current president (e.g. spending, debt). Unlike Obama's tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11. People do remember the big stuff -- rallying the country after the Twin Towers attack, 7 1/2 years of job growth and prosperity, millions of people saved from AIDS in Africa, a good faith try for immigration reform, education reform and a clear moral compass.

"Aside from the 'memories fade' point, many of his supposed failures are mild compared to the current president (e.g. spending, debt)." Funny thing about those "spending" and "debt" failures of Obama's that make Bush's supposedly seem so mild: Bush-era policies are responsible for the lion's share of the current public debt and will continue exacerbating the debt situation long after President Obama has left office.

"Unlike Obama's tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11." This is false. There were a number of successful terrorist attacks between 9-11 and the end of the Bush presidency, most prominently the DC-area sniper attacks of 2002. But I'm dodging the real problem, which is the phrase "after 9/11." Her argument -- an argument she's made before -- is that the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, despite happening on Bush's watch, doesn't count against Bush. Why? She doesn't say. Rubin doesn't allow Obama any terrorism Mulligans, calling his record "spotty at best with Benghazi, Libya, Boston and Fort Hood."

"People do remember the big stuff." It's possible that Bush's failed (but "good faith") push for immigration reform features more prominently in the American consciousness than, say, Hurricane Katrina (which Rubin doesn't mention), but that seems unlikely. As for the "7 1/2 years of job growth and prosperity," that might not be as well remembered as the devastating global financial crisis that concluded Bush's time in office.

And what of the Iraq war, that generation-defining foreign policy disaster for which Bush will ultimately be remembered (the poll Rubin cites says 57 percent disapprove of the decision to invade)? It merits brief mention: "Unlike the current president, who's played politics with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, President Bush took huge political risks to back the surge in Iraq, which worked." How about the fact that Bush was personally responsible for launching a war based on bad intelligence? "Other supposed sins are in retrospect less attributable to him personally. (Many Western governments believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.)"

So if you look back at Bush's legacy and leave out 9-11, the thousands of dead and wounded in Iraq, the tragic failures of pre-Iraq intelligence gathering, the massive and ongoing debt and deficits, and Hurricane Katrina, you're left with a pretty rosy picture. Bush is back!

Jennifer Rubin's Scathing, Accidental Indictment Of Jennifer Rubin

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters For America:

Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, ever the astute observer of modern liberalism, is lashing out at the left for its reaction to the passing of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Identifying what she claims are the "ten liberal rules for deceased conservative giants," Rubin's indictment lacks coherence, and actually ends up impugning conservatives -- including herself.

Breaking down just a few of these rules shows how far off-base her criticisms are.

Rubin Rule #1: "The only good conservative is a dead one, primarily because they can be used to diminish contemporary conservatives. ('Unlike Reagan, that miserable X never...' is the surefire argument for leftists who never had a nice word to say about Ronald Reagan while he was alive.)"

Trying to diminish a current politician by comparing them unfavorably to a celebrated past politician isn't a "liberal" trick. It's "politics." One can hardly switch on cable news without hearing some wistful pundit damn the current lack of bipartisanship by bringing up Ronald Reagan's and Tip O'Neill's famously chummy relationship. (Looking at you, Morning Joe.)

The past politician doesn't even have to be dead! During the 2012 campaign conservatives tried to attack Barack Obama leading up to the Democratic National Convention by unfavorably comparing him to Bill Clinton.

On a personal level, Clinton was a deal-maker, a compromiser, a welfare reform signer, a budget balancer and never, ever remote or haughty. To the contrary, he perfected the affectation that he was one of us. Clinton is the un-Obama, the guy who worked with a Republican Congress and didn't alienate or demonize business. The Republicans are going to be in hog heaven splicing Clinton's language and accomplishments together with Obama's language and record.

Who wrote that? Jennifer Rubin. Clinton, being alive, was able to put to rest any talk of tension between himself and Obama when he spoke at the convention, at which point Rubin went back to calling Clinton a liar and a braggart.

Rubin Rule #5: "The deceased's greatness is only attributed to identity (woman, grocer's daughter, actor) and personal characteristics (good humor, rhetoric, tenacity). Indeed the more these are built up, the more unique becomes their greatness and the less chance there is for another conservative giant."

It's not readily apparent -- and Rubin doesn't explain -- how highlighting the personal characteristics of a political figure's life diminishes that figure's significance. It's also unclear how pointing out Ronald Reagan's acting career lessens the chance for "another conservative giant" to appear.

But let's assume Rubin is right and that framing Thatcher's identity as "the grocer's daughter" is somehow an assault on Thatcher's legacy. What sort of dastardly liberal would do that? Sarah Palin, for one, whose Thatcher obituary in the National Review is headlined "The Grocer's Daughter." Palin also wrote about Thatcher being a woman ("the first woman to hold the title Leader of the Opposition, and the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom"); her rhetoric ("Anyone witnessing her brilliant debating skills in the House of Commons..."); and her tenacity ("she was an underestimated underdog and political outsider.")

Rubin Rule #6: "Per No. 5, the personal qualities they now laud (courage, tenacity) are the very things the left despised during the deceased's lifetime, although they were given different labels (recklessness, pig-headedness)."

So the idea here is that liberals will take contrary positions on a conservative's life and legacy as it suits their needs. Well, Jennifer Rubin was no fan of Ted Kennedy. She called him "the man who defamed a legal scholar and good public servant while lowering the tone of politics and the stature of the country," referring to the late Massachusetts senator's now famous reaction to the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.

And yet, when Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was wending his way through the nomination process -- a nomination Rubin bitterly, and ineffectually, opposed -- Rubin actually lamented the fact that the Republicans lacked "nervy firebrands like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy" to attack Hagel in a manner similar to the broadside against Bork.

You can read the rest of the "rules" if you like, but the gist of them is that liberals don't treat conservative icons with the level of respect conservative feel those icons are owed, which seems obvious and certainly doesn't require ten Buzzfeed-style bullet points to get across. Absent from the "rules" are any links to or examples of liberals actually engaging in this behavior, so the result is Rubin taking wild swipes at phantom adversaries and ending up hitting herself.

Jennifer Rubin's Lies Upon Lies About Benghazi

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters for America

We're not yet a month into Barack Obama's second term, and alreadyWashington Post political blogger Jennifer Rubin can see the president's "second-term curse" taking shape. At its core, according to Rubin, is last year's terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya -- or rather, several audacious and blatant falsehoods about Benghazi that Rubin is trying to hang around Obama's neck.

Rubin wrote in a February 7 blog post [emphasis in original]:

We are barely out of January and all this has occurred: We learned the economy contracted in the 4th quarter of 2012. President Obama is trying to wriggle out of a sequester, which he insisted upon in the 2011 budget negotiations. The Congressional Budget Office says our debt is dangerously increasing. Obama was forced to push Susan Rice aside and should have pushed Chuck Hagel off the boat. Jack Lew is now under scrutiny for ignoring federal law regarding Medicare insolvency warnings. And Benghazi -- you remember the story the mainstream media would not cover? -- has turned into a debacle. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta testified today that the president was absent during the Benghazi, Libya, attack(s) and neither he nor Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke to anyone in the White House after briefly telling the president an attack was underway. What?!?

None of this is particularly compelling, as far as "curses" go. The Q4 GDP contraction was due to decreases in government spending (mainly defense spending), and other leading economic indicators actually showed some good news. "Personal consumption, fixed investment, and equipment/software all grew nicely. This is the real economy humming along," wrote Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal. And as for Obama "trying to wriggle out of the sequester" that he "insisted upon in the 2011 budget negotiations," that's only half the story. The sequester was a compromise agreed to by both parties after the GOP took the debt limit hostage and demanded spending cuts in order to raise it. And it's true that Susan Rice is not Secretary of State, primarily due to the fact that she was never nominated. Instead Obama nominated John Kerry, who sailed through confirmation, and Hagel is looking like he'll be confirmed as well. That's some curse!

Then there's Benghazi  -- "the story the mainstream media would not cover," as Rubin absurdly put it. It isn't necessary to document the exhaustive degree to which Benghazi was and is covered by the mainstream press. Rubin's real issue is that the media coverage does not comport to the conclusion she and other conservatives arrived at regarding Benghazi: that the administration engaged in some sort of election season cover-up of the attack. It's easier and more self-serving, however, simply to allege that the media ignored Benghazi, as it allows right wingers like Rubin to pretend that they're fighting institutional corruption, and not merely on a witch hunt.

"Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta testified today that the president was absent during the Benghazi, Libya, attack(s)" wrote Rubin. That's completely false. The Associated Press article Rubin links to -- remember, the mainstream media refuses to cover Benghazi -- reported that Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs were meeting with Obama when they learned of the attack, and "the president told them to deploy forces as quickly as possible." Per the AP: "Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., questioned whether Panetta spoke again to Obama after that first meeting. The Pentagon chief said no but that the White House was in touch with military officials and aware of what was happening."

But Rubin won't be deterred: "It is one thing to say that the president's appointees missed cables or got their talking points mixed up," she wrote. "It is quite another to say the president was AWOL during the entire episode and then went to Las Vegas the next day for a campaign event." That's not what Panetta said. Not even close. But why should we expect anything different from Rubin? She lies. A lot. And her lies about Benghazi are egregious to the point that her own paper is cleaning up after her.

WaPo's Problem Isn't Rubin's Partisanship, It's Her Dishonesty

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters For America:

A teapot tempest erupted today after Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) citedWashington Post political blogger Jennifer Rubin by name today at Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel's Senate confirmation hearing. Postassociate editor and senior correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran tweeted, "I hate it when senators refer to WP opinion blogger posts as articles. [Rubin] is NOT a WaPo reporter," which prompted Buzzfeed to proclaimthat a "civil war" had broken out at the Post over "the newspaper's reputation for fairness and neutrality." This misses the point of what makes Rubin so problematic for the Post: it's not that she's conservative, or even that she's opinionated. She's dishonest, often flagrantly so, and that dishonesty tarnishes Washington Post's reputation.

Rubin, who essentially served as the Romney campaign's in-house blogger for the Washington Post during the 2012 presidential campaign, has recently led the charge against Hagel's nomination.

Here's a not-at-all exhaustive list of outright lies, misrepresentations, and self-contradictions Rubin has spun while speaking or writing on the Post's behalf:

Rubin invented the idea that State Department personnel in Washington, D.C., watched real-time video of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, a claim later debunked by Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple.

Rubin claimed in September 2012 that President Obama had not released a corporate tax plan. Obama released his corporate tax plan in February of that year, and Rubin criticized it at the time.

Rubin lied about President Obama's remarks in the Rose Garden the day after the Benghazi attack, saying the president did not use the term "acts of terror" in "the same paragraph with Benghazi." Obama's next sentence after saying "acts of terror" was about the four Americans killed in the attack.

Rubin wrote that the Tax Policy Center's critique of Mitt Romney's tax plan couldn't be trusted because the group is "left-leaning" and "very partisan." Ten months earlier she'd hyped the group as "independent" when it critiqued one of Romney's primary opponents.

Rubin claimed that the 2009 stimulus package contained no funding for "shovel-ready defense jobs." The stimulus allocated several billion dollars for military "construction" projects and "operations and maintenance."

She invented criticisms of Obama's second-term Cabinet nominees. She cleaned up George W. Bush's terrorism record by saying 9-11 didn't count. She alternated between describing Romney's tax proposals ashighly detailed and lacking detail, depending on which would better allow her to flack for them. And, of course, there's Rubin's post-election tacit admission that pretty much everything she'd written during the 2012 campaign about Mitt Romney's campaign was misleading spin.

Rubin discredits herself and the Washington Post not by leaning to the right, but by lying, over and over, again and again.

UPDATE: Mother Jones' Adam Serwer highlights another Rubin whopper. During the campaign she railed against Obama for not having an immigration plan: "Where is Obama's solution?" That plan was readily available on the White House website.

Who Started The Benghazi "Real-Time" Video Falsehood?

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters for America

Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple has been working doggedly to correct one of Sean Hannity's favorite false claims about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi: that State Department officials watched "real-time" video of the assault from an office in Washington, DC. Wemple's efforts got an assist from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on January 23: "There was no monitor, there was no real time." As Wemple's debunking of the falsehood makes clear, Hannity has been the primary driver of this claim by repeating on a near-daily basis. But the "real-time" video falsehood did not start with the Fox News host. In fact, one of the first mentions -- perhaps the first -- of the spurious Benghazi video was on Jennifer Rubin'sWashington Post blog.

The whole story starts with an October 10, 2012, hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At that hearing, Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary of state for international programs, had this exchange with Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), describing how she followed via telephone the developments in the Benghazi attack as they were happening:

LANKFORD: Mrs. Lamb, can you clarify for me, where -- where were you working September 11? Were you in the Washington area -- were -- in the main facility there?

LAMB: Yes sir. I was in the D.S. Command center on the evening of the event.

LANKFORD: You -- you -- you note that in your testimony that you were in the Diplomatic Security Command Center and then you make this statement, "I could follow what was happening almost in real time."

LAMB: That's correct.

LANKFORD: So once they hit the button in Benghazi, you're alerted, it says you could have.Did you follow what was happening in real time at that point?

LAMB: Sir, what was happening is they were making multiple phone calls and it was very important that they communicate with the annex in Tripoli because this is where additional resources were coming from. So they would hang up on us and then call back.

LANKFORD: But you're -- but you're tracking it back and forth what's going on.

LAMB: Yes absolutely. [Transcript via Nexis, emphasis added]

That night on Fox News' Hannity, Liz Cheney seized on Lamb's testimony, but characterized it correctly:

CHENEY: Today, we learned from Charlene Lamb under oath that she followed, you know, the diplomatic security official, that she followed what was going on, minute by minute. She was following it in real time. So the administration knew in real time, there wasn't a mob, they knew in real time that this was a well-coordinated attack. They knew in real time that it involved heavy weaponry, this was clearly a terrorist attack and the American people have clearly, as you've said, been lied to.

The following morning, October 11, Jennifer Rubin posted a video of Cheney's Hannity appearance in a postheadlined "Real-time Libya: Who knew what, when?" In that post, Rubin claimed (citing no other sources) that Lamb had watched a "real-time video" of the attack -- something neither Lamb nor Cheney had said:

Seriously, something doesn't make sense. Do we think no one else ever got the benefit of that information that mid-level bureaucrat Charlene Lamb had? This was the most urgent issue of the moment in which everyone (the White House, the public, the media) wanted to know what happened in Benghazi. So why not look at the real-time video? Why not ask Lamb what she saw and heard?

That next day, October 12, CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow wrote in his syndicated column that "State Department officials saw the Benghazi attack in real time." [emphasis in original] Later that night on Fox News, Hannity made his first reference to "real time video" of the attack: "The president knew within 24 hours what the truth was, and what I am told, they actually saw this in real-time. There is a video, real-time, of everything that went down in Benghazi."

From that point forward, Hannity flogged away at the State Department for "watching" the attack unfold "real time," repeating it almost every day as it spread to other corners of the conservative media. Wemple debunked the allegation in November, citing a State Department official's denial that anyone at State "had the ability to watch either of the attacks in real time." According to an administration official quoted in Wemple's report, the Benghazi compound had closed-circuit video surveillance that could not be monitored from outside the facility. 

From the October 15 edition of Hannity (via Nexis):

HANNITY: Also, this is the problem they have with their story. It's falling apart because they said that this was spontaneous, a mob uprising, but we had somebody at the State Department watching in real time.

October 16 (via Nexis):

FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE GOV. JOHN SUNUNU: The White House has to hear their embassy had a breech in security. I don't know this it was a separate report to the president or just in his president's daily brief. But I cannot imagine that that was not sent to the president.

HANNITY: Governor, they were watching this from the State Department in real time.

SUNUNU: Yes.

HANNITY: Yes. They knew that night. Libyan president told us the next day.

October 18 (via Nexis):

FOX NEWS HOST DANA PERINO: Not only that, but an American citizen for a probation violation about a video. They blamed him for deaths of four Americans. They blamed a video-maker that turns out not to be true, and turns out they knew it wasn't true.

HANNITY: Wait a minute. There's a 50-minute tape of this -- what happened this night. It's available. The State Department watched it in real time. I've confirmed tonight, I can say 100 percent that tape exists and a transcript of them is available.

As Wemple documented, Hannity is still repeating this false claim despite receiving "definitive, on-the-record refutation" from Secretary Clinton.

WaPo's Jennifer Rubin Admits She Misled Her Readers

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters for America

Jennifer Rubin has endured no shortage of criticism for using herWashington Post blog to blatantly and counterfactually shill for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. And in the aftermath of Romney's electoral defeat, she's tacitly acknowledging as much. Today Rubin offers her post-mortem of the Romney campaign, casting it as ineffectual and unequal to the task of removing an incumbent from the White House -- an assessment that flatly contradicts her aggressively pro-Romney pre-election writing.

Here's Rubin's November 7 take on the Romney-Ryan campaign:

Until October it was the Perils of Pauline campaign. It moved in fits and starts on foreign policy. The message was rarely consistent from day to day. Gobs of ads were aired to no apparent effect. The convention speech was a huge missed opportunity. Romney made a lunge now and then in the direction of immigration reform and an alternative health-care plan without giving those topics the attention they deserved. The communications team was the worst of any presidential campaign I have ever seen -- slow and plodding, never able to capitalize on openings. It was hostile, indifferent and unhelpful to media, conservative and mainstream alike.

Matters did improve once Ed Gillespie moved forward to take charge of the message. A message at least became discernible. The ads certainly were simpler, more direct and more attuned to making a case for Romney's agenda. But if not for a stunning series of performances in the debates and unexpected eloquence on the stump in the last month, Romney almost surely would have done worse than he did. A presidential race needs more than a good month to be successful.

Let's take what she's written here, in the cold reality of a Romney loss, and compare it to what she wrote when the Romney campaign was still in full swing.

Rubin now: "The convention speech was a huge missed opportunity."

Rubin then: "Mitt Romney accepted the nomination of his party for president with a speech that showed he can rise to an occasion, and let us see a side of him that was compelling and heartbreaking." [Right Turn, 8/30]

Rubin now: "Romney made a lunge now and then in the direction of immigration reform and an alternative health-care plan without giving those topics the attention they deserved."

Rubin then: "The media are doing their best to disguise the unpleasant fact that Mitt Romney has been more forthcoming on immigration than the president has in more than three years in office." [Right Turn, 6/24] "This isn't that hard: Romney will repeal Obamacare. He has always favored protection for people with preexisting conditions who move from one employer-provided plan to another or from an individual-purchased to an employer-provided plan." [Right Turn, 9/10]

Rubin now: "The communications team was the worst of any presidential campaign I have ever seen -- slow and plodding, never able to capitalize on openings."

Rubin then: "The Romney team, to a greater degree than most campaigns, has been criticized and lampooned. Too timid. Too unfocused. Too slow. Too inept. But this week demonstrated that the campaign officials are more skilled than they have been depicted, and their errors and stumbles have in large part been obliterated in the lingering glow of the convention. There is some personal vindication for them as well." [Right Turn, 8/31]

Rubin now: "But if not for a stunning series of performances in the debates and unexpected eloquence on the stump in the last month, Romney almost surely would have done worse than he did. A presidential race needs more than a good month to be successful."

Rubin then: "We've made the case that not only the first presidential debate but the debates as a whole recast the race and vaulted Mitt Romney into a position to win the race. Pollster Charlie Cook is the latest election guru to agree." [Right Turn, 10/31]

Jennifer Rubin: Obama's Terrorism Record Worse Than Bush's (9-11 Doesn't Count)

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters for America

Washington Post political blogger and de facto Mitt Romney surrogate Jennifer Rubin has posed some questions that she thinks should be asked of President Obama during the upcoming debates. Harnessing illogic and leaning on right-wing mythology, she wants the president to admit that his record on preventing terrorist attacks is worse than George W. Bush's, because there were no terrorist attacks on the U.S. under Bush after September 11, 2001.

No seriously. Here's the question she wants Obama to answer:

After Sept. 11, 2001, there were no terrorist attacks on the United States, but during your administration there have been the jihad-inspired Fort Hood massacre and the killing of four Americans in Libya, so isn't your anti-terror record worse than Bush's?

So Obama has to answer for Ft. Hood and the Benghazi attacks, but Bush gets a pass on the worst terrorist attack in American history. And when you neatly excise that horrific failure of intelligence and preparedness from the Bush terrorism ledger, Bush finds himself with a spotless record (the anthrax attacks, LAX shooting, DC sniper shootings, and attacks on various diplomatic personnel during the Bush years apparently don't count either).

The question refutes itself and evinces the sort of kneejerk partisanship and lack of seriousness that one would expect to find on a right-wing message board, and not under a Washington Post byline.

Jennifer Rubin: Romney Surrogate Rallies To Romney

SIMON MALOY/Media matters for america

Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin is defending Romney's attacks on President Obama over the deadly assaults on U.S. diplomatic personnel in Libya, writing that Romney's position is drawing support from "conservative foreign policy hawks."

Conservative foreign policy hawks, outraged at the media's circle-the-wagons reaction to the attacks on two embassies, are speaking out in defense of Mitt Romney.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton tells Right Turn: "The perception of American weakness that provided the foundation for these attacks is largely because of Obama administration mistakes and lack of resolve. A repetition of 1979 in Tehran is nor fetched, especially given the weakness of Obama's statement this morning." He dismisses the media storyline as pure boosterism: "The press criticism of Romney's statement is so clearly at the administration's behest that they are giving lapdogs a bad name."

John Bolton is, of course, a Romney campaign surrogate. So the fact that he's defending Romney isn't exactly surprising.

Rubin also notes that a pair of American Enterprise Institute scholars are also rallying to Romney's side, as is Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). But they remain in the distinct minority, as many prominent Republicans are showing reluctance to echo Romney's attacks on the president.

Jennifer Rubin's Taxing Falsehoods

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters for America

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is facing a torrent of criticism from Democrats, tax analysts, and even a stray conservative or two over the lack of specifics in his tax proposals. But as per usual, there is one person who's standing by Romney, ready to fabricate any excuse she can in defense of the GOP candidate: Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, who is defending Romney's lack of detail by arguing (falsely) that President Obama doesn't have a tax plan.

Romney finds himself in this situation after both he and running mate Paul Ryan appeared on Sunday morning news shows and repeatedly declined to identify the tax loopholes they'd close to pay for the steep tax cuts their plan would put in place.

Rubin, who recalibrates her opinion on the specificity of Romney's tax plan depending on how it better serves Romney's interest, argues today that Romney's level of detail is less important than Obama's alleged failure to release a tax plan:

The media have accused Romney of being nonspecific about his tax plan. (At least he has both an individual and corporate one; the president does not.) He explained: "I can tell you that people at the high end, high-income taxpayers, are going to have fewer deductions and exemptions. Those -- those numbers are going to come down. Otherwise, they'd get a tax break. And I want to make sure people understand, despite what the Democrats said at their convention. I am not reducing taxes on high-income taxpayers. I'm bringing down the rate of taxation, but also bringing down deductions and exemptions at the high end so the revenues stay the same, the taxes people pay stay the same. Middle-income people are going to get a break."

This won't fly with the media (the same people who never ask Obama where his tax plan is or where his entitlement reform plans are), which will continue to press him for details.

For the moment, let's set aside the spectacle of someone with a Washington Post byline criticizing the media for wanting too much detail. The assertion that President Obama has not released a tax plan is flatly untrue.

It's right here, as part of the president's FY 2013 budget proposal. The Tax Policy Center has a whole section of its website devoted to the tax provisions contained therein. You can critique Obama's plan, disagree with it, argue that it has insufficient detail, but you can't say it doesn't exist.

With regard to corporate taxes specifically, the president released a plan in February for overhauling the corporate tax code, which one can read here. It calls for cutting the corporate tax rate and closing specific loopholes and tax expenditures (for instance, taxing carried interest as income and ending "last in, first out" accounting).

Again, one could critique this plan to their heart's content. You could call it "terrible," a "corporate tax hike," "picking winners and losers," "an explicit revenue increase," and even "mind-numbing." In fact, that's exactly what Jennifer Rubin called this plan on February 22 -- the plan she now says doesn't exist.

On Romney Policy Details, It's Jennifer Rubin Vs. The World (And Jennifer Rubin)

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters for America

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post thinks the Romney-Ryan campaign has been exquisitely detailed in their explanations of their economic policies. And this puts her in rare company, since even the Romney-Ryan campaign says they're purposefully avoiding detailed discussions of the ideas they have in store for the country.

Writing on her Post blog this morning, Rubin gave the Republican ticket a high-five for their ability to "explain their plans" for Medicare and the economy:

Romney has his whiteboard to explain Medicare. Ryan has his charts and PowerPoint slides. They really can explain their plans and do the math. In this reality-based company, the president (who thinks ATMs cause unemployment) is out of his element. Hence, the resort to increasingly nasty language. If he had good answers for these questions, he might not be descending into the political sewer. Unfortunately for him, there isn't a chart that can explain how higher taxes are going to make our economic outlook rosier. The math just doesn't work.

"Do the math." Interesting choice of words, given that earlier this week, Paul Ryan told Brit Hume point-blank that they haven't been doing any math:

HUME: But what about [budget] balance?

RYAN: Well I don't know exactly when it balances because -- I don't want to get wonky on you but we haven't run the numbers on that specific plan yet.

And then there's this gobsmacking sentence from a Politico article this morning which relates the campaign's purposeful evasion of detail on Medicare, owing to what they see as the "suicidal" nature of an in-depth policy discussion:

To be sure, the debate is likely to be more sniping than substance -- more attacks on Obama than parsing of the options for entitlement reform. Advisers say the campaign has no plans to pivot from its previous view that diving into details during a general-election race would be suicidal.

This all plays into what Rubin's colleague Greg Sargent calls the [extra space]"just trust me" campaign, in which Romney and his surrogates talk proudly and openly about withholding details of the candidate's plans until after the election:

In one sense, Romney is throwing down the gauntlet before the news media. He is betting that the media will either fail to hold him accountable for his refusal to share basic info about his finances and policies with the American people before they choose their president -- or that those efforts won't matter, because the public simply won't be informed enough either way to know the difference or just won't care at all. In other words, Romney is betting on media incompetence -- its inability to inform the public -- or on voter apathy, or on a combination of both, to allow him to skate through.

And, just for good measure, let's travel all the way back in time to August 7, a mere 10 days ago, when Jennifer Rubin defended Romney's tax plan from charges that it would raise taxes on the middle class by arguing that "the plan has insufficient details" to make that assumption:

The study is no more than a model, a model in which the assumptions do not correspond to the Romney plan (because the plan has insufficient details). In fact, the authors never got any specifics from the Romney plan. So, as I reported previously, the authors simply stuck in what they think the Romney people could use (continuing to exclude municipal bond interest and life insurance contracts from income, for example). And wouldn't you know it, the numbers don't "add up"! The assumptions made by the authors may be good tax policy or bad tax policy, but that is not what the authors say they are doing; instead they say they are showing that Romney's plan is "impossible."

So even Jennifer Rubin doesn't think the Romney campaign has been overly detailed. Someone should tell Jennifer Rubin.

Jennifer Rubin And "Intellectual Laziness"

SIMON MALOY/media Matters for America

Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin wrote this morning that the media's coverage of the 2012 race is terrible because they're just not engaging with the substance of Mitt Romney's campaign. CitingPost columnist Ruth Marcus, she pegged "intellectual laziness" among the press as her chief concern: "I think 'intellectual laziness' in the media corps ('how much easier to critique a candidate's gaffe than to dissect his tax plan') is the most pervasive and serious issue."

Rubin's complaint was fortuitously timed for a couple of reasons.

First, it coincided with Alex Pareene's knife-edged examination of Rubin's own intellectual rigor. In short, Rubin's views on any given subject mirror those of Mitt Romney, which is to say that they're extremely malleable. Pareene wrote of Rubin's reaction to Romney's indecision on moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem:

"As for Jerusalem, it really is time to stop promising something that the U.S. can't and shouldn't deliver unilaterally," she wrote, in direct opposition to everything she'd ever written on the subject before. Romney has now, of course, come around again: He has made the pledge to move the embassy, and Rubin, predictably, has returned to her initial position.

Second, Rubin herself gave us a taste of that intellectual rigor this morning with her own "dissection" of Romney's economic proposals. Reading an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from former Bush and current Romney economic adviser Glenn Hubbard, Rubin was impressed with the "four substantial policy initiatives" Hubbard laid out. Those allegedly substance-heavy policies are rote GOP boilerplate: Reduce federal spending, lower taxes, entitlement reform, and deregulation:

Stop runaway federal spending and debt. The governor's plan would reduce federal spending as a share of GDP to 20% -- its pre-crisis average -- by 2016. This would dramatically reduce policy uncertainty over the need for future tax increases, thus increasing business and consumer confidence.

Reform the nation's tax code to increase growth and job creation. The Romney plan would reduce individual marginal income tax rates across the board by 20%, while keeping current low tax rates on dividends and capital gains. The governor would also reduce the corporate income tax rate -- the highest in the world -- to 25%. In addition, he would broaden the tax base to ensure that tax reform is revenue-neutral.

Reform entitlement programs to ensure their viability. The Romney plan would gradually reduce growth in Social Security and Medicare benefits for more affluent seniors and give more choice in Medicare programs and benefits to improve value in health-care spending. It would also block grant the Medicaid program to states to enable experimentation that might better serve recipients.

Make growth and cost-benefit analysis important features of regulation. The governor's plan would remove regulatory impediments to energy production and innovation that raise costs to consumers and limit new job creation. He would also work with Congress toward repealing and replacing the costly and burdensome Dodd-Frank legislation and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Romney alternatives will emphasize better financial regulation and market-oriented, patient-centered health-care reform.

This counts as "substance?" What programs will Romney cut to get spending down? What does "broaden the tax base" mean? What will be put in place of the repealed health care law? Rubin didn't seem concerned.

To cap it off, she wrote: "The problem has not been a 'lack of ideas' or lack of 'details' by Romney." This after the Romney himself said he will not release details of his economic proposals until after he's elected.

"Intellectual laziness" indeed.