Back of the Envelope

Jeremy Pierce of Parableman is defending Armstrong Williams:

Here's what Amstrong Williams did. He accepted money from Ketchum, an independent PR firm, to do two things. One was to run an advertisement they had created to promote No Child Left Behind. The other was to talk about his views on NCLB and encourage other black conservatives to do so, something he already would have done, though perhaps this encouraged him to do it more. I see no problem with the first. A PR firm can buy as many ads as they want, and he is not unethical to accept their money for it. The second is at most a gray area. He's a pundit with a view. They included with their ad money a request to talk more about it and ask others to do so. I don't see how that's corruption of the sort people keep pretending this is. It's just a request to get him to talk more about something he already feels very strongly about and to request that others who also feel strongly about it would talk about it too. If someone paid me money to talk more about abortion on my blog, I'd accept it. It's fairly common in the media, in fact. NPR does that sort of thing all the time. Their donors stipulate coverage of certain issues. The only worry here is whether he should have said someone was paying him money to talk more about that issue. He probably should have, but I don't see that as a major ethical problem. Being a little more honest would show more character, but this isn't corruption of the more serious kind that people are accusing him of.

Now I haven't said anything about the role of the government in this. That's because he didn't know about that until he saw the headlines. I don't think he can be blamed for not knowing that Ketchum had been hired by the Department of Education (which is not to be identified with the Bush Administration, as some headlines have mistakenly done, though it is a branch of the Bush Administration, mainly because saying it was the Bush Administration gives the implicature that the Bush Administration as a whole was behind it rather than some small group within one department, as is most likely). There's little more to say about that.

The one other factor that's worth looking into is whether there was wrongdoing from the governmental end of things. Most people who have attributed less wrongdoing to Williams have insisted that Bush is at fault here. Even ignoring what I just said about those misleading claims of Bush's involvement, I'm not so sure that the Education Department officials who initiated this were wrong to do so. This is a longstanding government tradition. When Reagan was president, the government hired PR firms to run ads in favor of their drug policies, which were certainly popular among many people but not without controversy. Bush's father and Clinton did the same sort of thing. Perhaps it goes significantly before Reagan even. I have no idea. I do know that it's a fairly normal practice. That the Department of Education would hire a PR firm to run ads promoting the No Child Left Behind program is pretty much in the same vein.

So across the board we've got people saying false things and assigning moral wrondoing that goes well beyond what actually happened. None of it is in accord with the facts. Saying that the White House or the Bush Administration paid him to argue its case is misleading in two ways. Most people reading that statement will assume it was a direct payment, and he knew the source, which is false. Most people would also assume that he wouldn't have already made the case for that program, which is false. That means that those saying that are making misleading statements. Calling it a bribe is equally misleading (and probably just false).

As is usually the case, there's more to this than the mainstream media reports. None of the articles which I had read had information this detailed. Does it change my view? Yes and no. Based on what Jeremy has said, I've decided that I don't really know enough about this situation to judge what happened, so I'm drawing back and withholding my judgement. More to the point, I don't plan on doing the research necessary to reach a sound judgement right now. Maybe later, once the passions die and all the cards are on the table.

At the least, I am glad to see someone defending Mr. Williams. You can expect liberals to go after any conservative they dig up some dirt on, but when one of their own is criticized, even when he does something appalling, they circle the wagons and defend him to the death. With most of the mainstream media on their side, they can get away with it. Conservatives are among the first to turn on one of their own. This can be both good and bad--there needs to be a bit of internal discipline and self-policing in a movement--but mostly it's just a response to their relationship with the media. A liberal can defend a fellow liberal who's done wrong without being tarred with the wrongdoing, but a conservative defending another conservative always suffers for it. (Incidentally, the roles are reversed when it's a situation of ideas rather than ethics. Conservatives are much more tolerant of heretical ideas, while liberals can be quite dogmatic.) I admire Jeremy's courage.

Does this change what I said about my personal policy? No. Anytime someone offers me money to say something on this blog, I'll tell you about it. As the sum of money I've been offered thus far would be exhausted buying dinner at McDonald's, this isn't a large concern at this time, but it's policy and I'm sticking with it.