Friday 14 October 2005

    George W. Bush, I once wrote, "values loyalty above expertise" and
may have "a preference for advisers whose personal fortunes are almost
entirely bound up with his own." And he likes to surround himself with
"obsequious courtiers."

    Lots of people are saying things like that these days. But those
quotes are from a column published on Nov. 19, 2000.

    I don't believe that I'm any better than the average person at
judging other people's character. I got it right because I said those
things in the context of a discussion of Mr. Bush's choice of economic
advisers, a subject in which I do have some expertise.

    But many people in the news media do claim, at least implicitly,
to be experts at discerning character - and their judgments play a
large, sometimes decisive role in our political life. The 2000
election would have ended in a chad-proof victory for Al Gore if many
reporters hadn't taken a dislike to Mr. Gore, while portraying Mr.
Bush as an honest, likable guy. The 2004 election was largely decided
by the image of Mr. Bush as a strong, effective leader.

    So it's important to ask why those judgments are often so wrong.

    Right now, with the Bush administration in meltdown on multiple
issues, we're hearing a lot about President Bush's personal failings.
But what happened to the commanding figure of yore, the heroic leader
in the war on terror? The answer, of course, is that the commanding
figure never existed: Mr. Bush is the same man he always was. All the
character flaws that are now fodder for late-night humor were fully
visible, for those willing to see them, during the 2000 campaign.

    And President Bush the great leader is far from the only fictional
character, bearing no resemblance to the real man, created by media
images.

    Read the speeches Howard Dean gave before the Iraq war, and
compare them with Colin Powell's pro-war presentation to the U.N.
Knowing what we know now, it's clear that one man was judicious and
realistic, while the other was spinning crazy conspiracy theories. But
somehow their labels got switched in the way they were presented to
the public by the news media.

    Why does this happen? A large part of the answer is that the news
business places great weight on "up close and personal" interviews
with important people, largely because they're hard to get but also
because they play well with the public. But such interviews are rarely
revealing. The fact is that most people - myself included - are pretty
bad at using personal impressions to judge character. Psychologists
find, for example, that most people do little better than chance in
distinguishing liars from truth-tellers.

    More broadly, the big problem with political reporting based on
character portraits is that there are no rules, no way for a reporter
to be proved wrong. If a reporter tells you about the steely resolve
of a politician who turns out to be ineffectual and unwilling to make
hard choices, you've been misled, but not in a way that requires a
formal correction.

    And that makes it all too easy for coverage to be shaped by what
reporters feel they can safely say, rather than what they actually
think or know. Now that Mr. Bush's approval ratings are in the 30's,
we're hearing about his coldness and bad temper, about how aides are
afraid to tell him bad news. Does anyone think that journalists have
only just discovered these personal characteristics?

    Let's be frank: the Bush administration has made brilliant use of
journalistic careerism. Those who wrote puff pieces about Mr. Bush and
those around him have been rewarded with career-boosting access. Those
who raised questions about his character found themselves under
personal attack from the administration's proxies. (Yes, I'm speaking
in part from experience.) Only now, with Mr. Bush in desperate
trouble, has the structure of rewards shifted.

    So what's the answer? Journalists who are better at judging
character? Unfortunately, that's not a practical plan. After all, who
judges their judgment?