The hallmark of every Liberal effort to persuade, cajole, or convince the public of their point of view when a simple smear won’t do is the one thing that’s always guaranteed to set me off, namely lying with statistics.

Chapter 5: Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Liberal Minds

I forget who it was who said, “there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics,” but I’m convinced that he was talking about Liberal Democrats when he offered this observation.  The hallmark of every Liberal effort to persuade, cajole, or convince the public of their point of view when a simple smear just won’t do is the one thing that’s always guaranteed to set me off, namely lying with statistics.

Now as my friends will tell you, I’m the last guy you’d ever want to balance your checkbook, let alone run a regression analysis to find the standard deviation of some arcane trend or macro-economic variable.  I leave those things to my younger brother Dan, an MBA from the University of Chicago and fellow political junkie, who in many respects is a lot brighter than I am about national politics, my Ph.D. notwithstanding.  Still, it doesn’t take an MBA to figure out that we can’t keep having “the worst economy in fifty years” every time a Republican is in office, or that the same data used to justify massive reform of the Social Security system under the Clinton Administration is invoked by Democrats to show that “sosh-security” is just fine when George Bush wants to reform it.

But these are just the egregious examples.  Anyone with a modicum of common sense can see them for what they really are.  I remember watching Peter Jennings quote a somber economic statistic in October 1992 to reinforce the notion that the U.S. economy was in the dumps, and then four months later tout the identical statistic as evidence that the U.S. was pulling out of a recession.  Fortunately, with the “big three” broadcast monopoly on information broken thanks to the advent of talk radio and cable TV, and the influence of such objective news sources as the New York Times, L.A. Times, Boston Globe and others now balanced by the rise of the Internet, I no longer have to listen to this silliness every night.  Al Gore must be spinning in his grave, metaphorically speaking, to know that his invention (the Internet) is as much responsible for breaking Big Media’s stranglehold on information as anything the Republican Party could have ever hoped to offer.

Still, having never met a half-truth or slander they couldn’t embrace, the American Left persists in disseminating “facts” about everything from the number of homeless three-legged albinos roaming the streets of Manhattan under a Republican Administration, to the size of Bush’s brain.  Naturally, every statistic shows the country on a fast line to hell when a Republican is in office, and approaching near-equilibrium with Nirvana when Democrats are in power.  Homelessness as a problem was rampant from January 1981 until January 1993, when it magically dropped off the radar until George W. Bush took office in 2001.

In an effort to paint Texas as Bangladesh-East under then-governor Bush’s stewardship, in the months preceding the 2000 election a series of talking-point stats began to circulate showing Texas as the most polluted, least educated, most poverty stricken, benighted state in the union.  That came as a bit of a surprise to many of us actually living there, but as we long ago learned from liberals, the truth can be a relative thing.  I was poor, miserable, dumb and dying, but fooled into thinking everything was hunky-dory because of the spell cast by that evil genius Karl Rove and Bush’s puppet master Cheney.

Courtesy of my friend Harry, I was sent one of these little tidbits of information in April of 2000 to show me what a miserable life I was leading.  It placed “the State of Texas, under the leadership of Governor George W. Bush” at the bottom or near bottom in teachers’ salaries, environmental spending, per capita funding for public health, delivery of social services, child-support contributions, and per-capita spending on public education.  Moreover, Texas was ranked 5th in population living in poverty, and number one in the nation in air and water pollution, working poor without insurance, and executions (averaging one every two weeks for Bush’s five years in office). The ominous tag line to this string of statistics was “just think what he could do for (or to!) the country if he were president”.

Since the list began with education, I initially focused in on that.  It just so happens that my wife is a public school teacher in Texas who was making $48,000/year at that point in time, which was pretty good money for a technologically depressed, poverty stricken, backwoods state.  But as I pointed out to her a number of times when she brought up the subject of her salary, that $48,000 was for 8 months work.  She has 10 weeks vacation in the summer time, two weeks at Christmas, and a one-week break each in the spring and fall, not to mention another week or so of three-day holidays sprinkled here and there, plus 5 paid days of personal holidays.  Yeah, when she worked for the Chicago public school system thirty years ago she made proportionally greater money for the same level of experience than a Texas teacher did.  But then again Illinois had a state income tax unlike Texas, and we had much higher living expenses in Chicago to chip away at that income.

Which means that Texas placing 50 out of 50 states in spending on teachers’ salaries is a meaningless statistic, unless all these other factors are brought into play.  Since the mantra of the Democratic Party is to never let a good smear get in the way of the truth, I decided to meet that challenge head on and drop a note back to Harry.  Not that telling him how things really were would make a difference in the way he thought, but I wasn’t one to let a silly statement pass unchallenged.

Phil: Are you sure these stats aren’t from Arkansas?  Seems to me I remember Clinton being at the bottom of the list in 1992, but that didn’t seem to matter much then.  He brought the state’s education test scores up from 50 to 49, which made it a positive news story instead of an ominous warning.

As for the other stats, in all seriousness, what is their source?  You’re really going to tell me that Texas, as an entire state, is #1 in air and water pollution?  Tell that to the people of California.  We had to cut a vacation short there because my asthmatic daughter couldn’t breathe.

Living in poverty?  Just out of curiosity, is that with or without government aid?  I’ve always wondered how you can take someone who makes $5,000 a year, and give them $15,000 worth of food stamps, housing subsidies, medical care, tax breaks, and educational subsidies, and say that they’re in worse shape than a person who earns $10,000 a year.  I’m so tired of the dishonest use of statistics by the Left.  Yes, there are millions of people in this country who make poverty-level wages.  But when you add all the state, local, and national government support they receive to their income, they are no longer “living in poverty.”

Social Service delivery?  Are you saying that the only measure of compassion is to have the state spend a lot of money?  I’ve been giving 10% of my disposable income annually to my relatives and charity.  In Texas we feel that families have a responsibility to help family members first; that you also give some money (as an individual, not through your taxes) to charity to help the public welfare; and that all others who aren’t covered by these first two actions then rely on the state.  The state keeps them alive and helps get them back on their feet so they can make it on their own –no more, no less.  I hope GW can forgive me for contributing to Texas’ bad name by spending this money privately instead of giving it to the state to distribute.

Executions — yes, we’re number one, and we intend to keep it that way!  We don’t give a sh*t if you’re young or old, black or white, male or female. Murder somebody in Texas, and we kill you back.

Bush beat a very popular governor (Ann Richards), has been re-elected overwhelmingly, and is widely respected in the state.  Even partisan Democrats endorsed him for his re-election and are refusing to campaign for Gore.  If things are really this bad in Texas, you’ll see Gore spend a lot of time campaigning here to win the state.  If he doesn’t, I think you answered your own question.

Harry was honest enough to drop the subject at this point, but it wasn’t too long before I received another one of those “pause to consider” emails about the third-world conditions we Texans were suffering through.  It was sent to another friend of mine whose wife was soccer mom Democrat, and he passed it on to me — complete with the original mailing list.  In my usual, anal-retentive way, I began to take each of these factoids and run them through the cow pie meter to formulate a response to the entire group.  Many of the slanders were variations of the same disinformation campaign I’d previously documented, but a few of them were new twists on an old theme. I guess, maybe somewhere, there’s an audience stupid enough to believe this stuff without thinking the issue through, but since the target audience for this email was Liberal Democrats, I thought I’d err on the side of the obvious and explain it to them anyway. 

Unlike the email from Harry in April, this October 2000 email placed Texas as “5th in toxic chemicals released into the air.”  I was glad to see that my state had made so much progress in such a short period of time, evidence of Bush’s leadership skills no doubt.  But assuming that someone wasn’t just pulling numbers out of thin air to paint a deliberately bleak picture of life in Texas — perish the thought that anyone would stoop to this kind of tactic, especially in an election year — it prompted me to ask a simple question.

Phil: So, who’s number 1-4?  Texas is the second biggest state in the union, and the center of all the country’s evil oil businesses that love to pollute the environment.  So, why aren’t we #1?  Could that designation belong to states like New York, California, and other bastions of Democratic Party leadership?  Is that why they weren’t mentioned in the same stats with Texas?

As a side note, I really love statistics like this. Texas has more fatal heart attacks a year than Rhode Island, so medical care must be better in Rhode Island than Texas.  Do you think the fact that Texas has 20 times the population of Rhode Island makes any difference?

● “Texas is 45th in percent of population graduating from high school.”  Now, we all know how this game is played.  Joe moves from school A to school B in his junior year.  School A lists him as “not graduating,” because that’s the way they’re required to report him.  Though he started in school A, he did not graduate from that same institution.  The statistic is skewed — even though he did graduate from another high school.

● “Women in Texas are slipping behind economically.  Texas women make 75.2% of what Lone Star men make.”  And how many men are full-time homemakers, compared to women?  Could this account for the disparity in earnings?  Note that this didn’t say “. . . make for equal work.”  It only said “what [they] make” (i.e. earned).  In Texas, we have a lot of families that choose to rely on a single income so the wife can stay home to raise and nurture their children, instead of shipping them off to a day care center.  There are other ways to measure an individual’s worth than to quibble about who brings home the larger paycheck.
 
●“Only 17.4% of women have four or more years of college.”  Let me see.  Bush has been in office less than 6 years. I don’t know how many six-year-old girls are supposed to go to college.  If the governor is supposed to be held accountable for this, Ann Richards (a Democrat) preceded Bush. Shouldn’t we hold her even more accountable?

I could go on like this for another few pages, but you get the point.  We’ve long passed the time where an opponent raises issues in the hope of engendering an honest debate.  When the facts aren’t on your side, either make them up, or do the next best thing — lie with statistics.  When a good over-the-knee spanking won’t work (i.e. replying to a ludicrous charge with actual facts or statistics), I’ve always found humor to be the next best thing.  You can easily counter an inane characterization of women’s income, pollution rankings, or education status with a proper accounting of the facts.  But when it comes to hot-button issues like the death penalty or abortion, it gets a little trickier to defuse the slime-bomb. 

Those who oppose putting convicted murders to death aren’t going to be persuaded by the proper vetting of statistics.  If they pose the question in a sincere manner, I typically respond by engaging in a respectful philosophical debate.  But if they’re just plain ignorant or self-righteous fools, it’s time to have a little fun at their expense.

● “Texas is second in the nation in prisoner incarceration rate.”  Yes, it’s true.  Sadly, Texas is #2.  But like Avis, we’re trying harder.  We want to lock up all the criminals we can find, and won’t settle for anything less than being #1!

The codicil to this type of issue usually takes the form of, “How do we rehabilitate pedophiles and mass murders?”  The answer, we don’t.  We lock them up and throw away the key, or execute them depending upon their crime.  Or, “How do we understand the reason why the terrorists don’t like us?”  The answer again, we don’t.  We kill them, so they can’t kill any more of us.   Or, “What about the poor single woman who can’t afford an abortion?  It has to be legal in all 50 states, and federally funded, to be fair.”  My answer: this is why there is abstinence, marriage, condoms in different shapes and sizes, and adoption facilities. 

The list of phony crises and breathless concerns is endless.  But the true answer to these contrived problems is always the same: personal responsibility to prevent the problem, and/or accepting the consequences for allowing it to happen.  You have a compulsion to kill innocent people?  Kill yourself, or let the state do it for you.  You’re attracted to little children and can’t resist these impulses?  Let society lock you away until your heart stops beating so innocent kids will be safe.  You don’t like U.S. foreign policy?  Become a U.S. citizen and vote, write a critical letter to the New York Times, or take it up with the United Nations if the Secretary of State won’t return your calls.  But if you decide to slam a plane full of innocent passengers into the World Trade Center and kill a lot of other innocent people just to make a point, be prepared for the U.S. military to hunt your ass down and kill you, your sympathizers, and every other low-life SOB who made the mistake of attacking or threatening to attack this country.

And so it is I return to the October 2000 email one last time.  It ended with the thought-of-the-day from its female author, who said that “perhaps the most pernicious [issue] though, is Bush’s attitude toward women.  As a self-confessed party boy and libertine, Bush saw women in two roles.  Madonna (Laura and Barbara Bush, for example), or whore (feminists, for example). And although he claims to have had an epiphany at the age of 40 when he stopped drinking, found God and reformed himself, there is clear evidence that he continues this world view.”

Can’t you just feel the love?  A woman living in the Northeast (watching Dan Rather, no doubt) has psychoanalyzed one of the most honorable and decent men in contemporary American politics to be nothing more than a split-personality frat boy who uses his phony religious conversion to mask a continuing “libertine” lifestyle.  Sure, it’s easy from the vantage point of 2007 to see what a crock this characterization is.  The Washington Press corps' greatest complaint about Bush’s lifestyle is that he’s boring, goes to bed too early, and doesn’t throw enough state dinners to suit them.  But even going back six years, to October 2000, what rational, honest person would have drawn even a fraction of these same conclusions from observing Bush’s actions?  Disagree on policy matters all you want (as long as you do it honestly).  But don’t insult my intelligence by substituting innuendo and slander for an objective view of your political opponent’s actions.  We have a saying in Texas that I’ve found useful to employ on occasions such as these.   Argue the facts with me until the cows come home, but “don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

To be sure, Republicans and conservatives like myself had a problem with the behavior of the nation’s 42nd president, so I’m not saying what a president does in the course of his public life is immune from criticism.  I’m simply pointing out that the condemnation has to be grounded in facts, at a minimum.  However, lascivious behavior of the type attributed to Bush above, or documented for Clinton, even if true isn’t enough to warrant public debate.  If Mrs. Kennedy doesn’t mind her husband John having a dalliance with Marilyn Monroe, it’s none of my business.  But if the paramour de jour happens to be the girlfriend of Sam Giancana as well, then there’s a bit more involved with this than planting the old Kennedy flagpole in unconquered territory.  National security interests come to mind here, not just the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy.
 
The same holds for Bill Clinton. Conservatives and Republicans didn’t want him impeached because he tried to cop a feel from Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Katherine Willey, Juanita Broderick, and half of the Little Rock Arkansas female population.  We didn’t even care that Mrs. Clinton either didn’t know, or didn’t care, about her husband’s extra-marital behavior.  These facts were enough to keep the Clinton’s off my New Years Eve party family-and-friends list, and to lock my daughter’s bedroom door should he happen to stop by my home for a photo opportunity, but not to remove him from office.  That’s what elections are for, not semi-judicial proceedings.
 
No, the problem with Bill Clinton is that he lied about what he did under oath, something you and I would go to jail for, not simply risk being clobbered over the head by our wife’s frying pan.  Add to this egregious policy (not personality) issues like giving the Chinese access to sophisticated American technology in exchange for partisan considerations, renting out the Lincoln bedroom for personal campaign contributions, treating the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center as a criminal act instead of an act of war (which prevented a more aggressive and coordinated response to this terrorism), and other issues like this, and the anathema we hold for his time in office becomes understandable.

The problem Liberal Democrats have in understanding this has to do with their lack of core values, and the moral relativism they apply to all situations.  We hate Clinton, so they hate Bush.  Jesus Christ, the Prophet Mohammed, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King, Jr., or John F. Kennedy, Jr. could have assumed the office following Clinton — as a Republican — and they would have been hated every bit as much as Bush.  Liberal Democrats were further offended by Bush when he had the temerity to “steal” the Florida vote.  Stealing votes is the exclusive province of the Democratic Party (remember, I’m from Chicago, and know how it works!).  The fact that Bush allegedly beat them at their own game is, well, unforgivable.  In a morally relativistic world, the only thing that matters is surface similarities.  So Bush, even before he was elected, must be evil, because Republicans/conservatives said Clinton was evil.  Case closed.

I’ve ended this foray into liberal lying with statistics by jumping ahead to the Clinton-Bush conundrum because I think it underscores perfectly the mind-set that gives rise to the lunacy of the Left that, in turn, explains the venom lacing these lies with statistics.  The statistics themselves are meaningless, whether they are true or not.  They are simply a means to an end.  If the statistics showed that Texas was actually #1 in those areas where it was #50, and vice versa for the other sets of data where it was better to be last than first, it wouldn’t have changed a single liberal mind.  The author of this liberal attack piece would have found some other reason to hate George Bush.  How can I say this with such confidence?  Once she finished telling us about Bush’s phony religious conversion and ongoing libertine behavior, she wrote the following paragraph:

At the 1988 Republican Convention (two years after Bush’s supposed conversion), George W. was talking to David Fink of the Hartford Courant.  When you’re not talking politics, Fink asked the then vice president’s son ‘what do you and your father talk about?’  ‘Pussy,’ replied the man who now wants women to trust them with their lives and futures and make him the next President of the United States.

Even if we assume that this apocryphal tale is literally true, what does it say about the woman who is outraged over this remark?  As I responded to her in October 2000:

Phil: I love this charge the most.  Would you please email me copies of all your diatribes against Bill Clinton so I’ll know that you’re not just offended by George W. Bush because he’s a Republican, but you’d feel the same way about any man who would misuse his office to abuse and degrade women? 

Since I doubt that you’ve written any, let me guess what you’ll say in response. GWB spoke about generic-pussy, so he offended every woman in America. Bill Clinton seduced a 20-year-old intern (sorry, I forgot it was a mutual thing between the most powerful man on the planet and a young naïve girl); fondled Kathleen Willey (sorry, I forgot that she lied); raped Juanita Broderick (sorry, I forgot that she lied); exposed himself to Paula Jones (who you’ll tell me lied too – but he paid her $700,000 anyway just because he’s a nice guy), and on, and on. 

So every one of Bill Clinton’s abuses against women can be explained away because the world is filled with lying women (or mutually consenting post-pubescent White House interns), but when George W. Bush says the word “pussy,” it’s enough to send shivers of horror through your system.

Honest debate is impossible with the liberal ideologues on the Left, which is to say Liberals in general.  My advice to them is simple.  Get a life, and a sense of humor, and try looking at the world as it really is instead of the way you want it to be.  Then, maybe, we’ll find common ground.  Until then, keep writing the convoluted, self-contradictory tripe that you think passes for objective political analysis.  It won’t convince anybody, but at the end of the day at least we can all have a good laugh at your expense.

Look for the next chapter coming soon — “The 2000 Presidential Election: The Fire Before the Storm.”