The Atlantic 50 - America's Most Influential Pundits

[Steve Eisenberg]

The Methodology
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opini...tlantic-50-983

* Influence: We conducted surveys of more than 250 insiders – members of Congress, national media figures, and political players – asking respondents to rank-order the commentators who most influence their own thinking. These surveys were done with National Journal.

* Reach: We collected and analyzed data to measure the total audience of each commentator.

* Web Engagement: In partnership with PostRank, a company specializing in filtering social media data, the Wire analyzed top commentators on 16 measures of webiness, including mentions on Twitter and performance on popular social media sites like Digg and Delicious.

The First Fifteen:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/peopl...x/selected/all

# 1. Paul Krugman
# 2. Rush Limbaugh
# 3. George Will
# 4. Thomas Friedman
# 5. David Brooks
# 6. Charles Krauthammer
# 7. Glenn Beck
# 8. Frank Rich
# 9. Andrew Sullivan
# 10. Karl Rove
# 11. Sean Hannity
# 12. David Broder
# 13. Peggy Noonan
# 14. Rachel Maddow
# 15. Arianna Huffington

Not one snopester! Gotta be rigged

[Simply Madeline]

So much for the myth of the liberal media elite.

[I'mNotDedalus]

No Chomsky? He certainly doesn't have much sway with DC insiders, but his reach and web engagement are probably larger than many of the "pundits" listed. Phooey.

[Steve Eisenberg]

Originally Posted by Simply Madeline

So much for the myth of the liberal media elite.

I'd say that most US newspaper columnists are, by US standards, liberals. To focus on the newspaper I read the most of lately, if If I read two liberal New York Times columnists, and two conservative New York Times columnists, then the average conservative New York Times columnist has a higher probability of being read by me than the average liberal columnist. So, structurally, just by being balanced in my reading, the conservatives have a better individual chance of influencing me. (For those who can't stomach liberal/conservative labeling, substitute something like "columnist who is more often sympathetic to the proposals of Party X than of Party Y" in the previous sentence. By this standard, the only conservative New York Times pundits are Ross Douthat and David Brooks, and Brooks is questionable, as he seems to have voted for Obama.) I should add that I am pro-New-York-Times, and I think they are much more balanced in their news columns.

Originally Posted by I'mNotDedalus

No Chomsky? He certainly doesn't have much sway with DC insiders, but his reach and web engagement are probably larger than many of the "pundits" listed. Phooey.

If they would have interviewed a sample of parliamentarians world-wide, rather than just in the US, I am sure they would have found Chomsky to rank high in the resulting list. I agree with this:

Chomsky, while not taken seriously in the United States, has credibility in Europe and in other parts of the world where American power is resented.

Of course, there are people in the US who take him seriously, but few are in positions of power. I think this last sentence is one of the few matters of opinion where Chomsky and I are likely in agreement.

[Simply Madeline]

Originally Posted by Steve Eisenberg

By this standard, the only conservative New York Times pundits are Ross Douthat and David Brooks, and Brooks is questionable, as he seems to have voted for Obama.)

If voting for Obama is your metric (and I'm not sure why it would be), you'd have to move Andrew Sullivan (and quite possibly George Will and Peggy Noonan) to the liberal side of the equation, which makes no sense at all.

My take:
# 1. Paul Krugman - leans liberal
# 2. Rush Limbaugh - conservative
# 3. George Will - conservative
# 4. Thomas Friedman - leans conservative
# 5. David Brooks - conservative
# 6. Charles Krauthammer - conservative
# 7. Glenn Beck - whack job (but conservative!)
# 8. Frank Rich - liberal
# 9. Andrew Sullivan - conservative
# 10. Karl Rove - conservative
# 11. Sean Hannity - conservative
# 12. David Broder - conservative
# 13. Peggy Noonan - conservative
# 14. Rachel Maddow - liberal
# 15. Arianna Huffington - liberal (for now)

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Simply Madeline

# 9. Andrew Sullivan - conservative

That was once true...I'm not so sure now. If you read Andrew Sullivan for the last 12 months, do you think that you'd come to the conclusion that he's a conservative or a liberal? Is he more likely to support a generic Republican right now or a generic Democrat? And do you think that it is democrats or republicans who are being influenced by him?

[Simply Madeline]

Originally Posted by Broken Sword

That was once true...I'm not so sure now. If you read Andrew Sullivan for the last 12 months, do you think that you'd come to the conclusion that he's a conservative or a liberal? Is he more likely to support a generic Republican right now or a generic Democrat? And do you think that it is democrats or republicans who are being influenced by him?

Since he asserts in every fifth blog post that he is a conservative, I guess I'd take him at his word.

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Simply Madeline

Since he asserts in every fifth blog post that he is a conservative, I guess I'd take him at his word.

If we attribute the labels for those 15 people based on self-identification then the labels become meaningless. Why should self-identification matter at all in analyzing their influence? (and I should note that on this message board itself, people have tended to reject other posters' self-identifications when they disagreed with them :-P)

Under "hot topics" for Sullivan on that Atlantic 50 list, the torture debate is a runaway winner with 40, legalizing gay marriage is second with 12, and the Iranian election is third with 11. Sullivan falls very much on the same side as the liberals with the first two issues (I'm not entirely sure what the liberal/conservative sides are with the third). He also has flipped his position on the Iraq war and declared it a mistake. He supported Democrats consistently in elections in 2004, 2006, and 2008. He's become a huge critic of Bush, Cheney, McCain, Palin, and all neoconservatives.

He may be a conservative by his own definition of conservative. But I think that as far as the current American political landscape is concerned and considering the topics that he has any influence on, his influence is better described as liberal.

[Steve Eisenberg]

Originally Posted by Simply Madeline

If voting for Obama is your metric (and I'm not sure why it would be), you'd have to move Andrew Sullivan (and quite possibly George Will and Peggy Noonan) to the liberal side of the equation, which makes no sense at all.

My take:
# 1. Paul Krugman - leans liberal
# 2. Rush Limbaugh - conservative
# 3. George Will - conservative
# 4. Thomas Friedman - leans conservative
# 5. David Brooks - conservative
# 6. Charles Krauthammer - conservative
# 7. Glenn Beck - whack job (but conservative!)
# 8. Frank Rich - liberal
# 9. Andrew Sullivan - conservative
# 10. Karl Rove - conservative
# 11. Sean Hannity - conservative
# 12. David Broder - conservative
# 13. Peggy Noonan - conservative
# 14. Rachel Maddow - liberal
# 15. Arianna Huffington - liberal (for now)

The Atlantic 50 is explicitly American. They only looked at influence in the US. And in the US, roughly half the people tend to vote for the Democrats, and roughly half for the Republicans. If someone wants to do what the Atlantic did on an international basis, go ahead and more power to them. However, I would suggest that there are few pundits with international influence. If most influential pundits are only influential in one country, there is a certain logic in seeing them in the opinion context of that nation.

Sorry, but it is laughable to me to say that Paul Krugman "leans" liberal. Leans? Whenever his columns criticize President Obama, Krugman is criticizing Obama from the left (for not being agressively liberal enough on health care and the stimulus.) And you've got to be kidding about Friedman. I like to read his columns, but he was a first class Bush-basher.

As for Andrew Sullivan, he is the former editor of the explicitly liberal New Republic magazine. It's true that the New Republic doesn't have any use for the likes of Chomsky. But their POV is in the mainstream of the Democratic party, whose presidential candidate they always, to my knowledge, endorse. And since his New Republic stint, if anything, Sullivan has moved leftward. He's a classic American liberal (even if an immigrant, but that's American as well).

Broder a conservative? You don't seriously believe that he is such by the standards of the country where all his columns are published, do you?

[Ramblin' Dave]

Originally Posted by Broken Sword

That was once true...I'm not so sure now. If you read Andrew Sullivan for the last 12 months, do you think that you'd come to the conclusion that he's a conservative or a liberal? Is he more likely to support a generic Republican right now or a generic Democrat? And do you think that it is democrats or republicans who are being influenced by him?

He reminds me of the old saw about how "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged/a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested." Sullivan is a conservative who finally woke up to the fact that most other conservatives hate him for reasons that are beyond his control and nobody's business but his own. I have a hard time believing he's really had a change of heart just because of that.

Originally Posted by Steve Eisenberg

As for Andrew Sullivan, he is the former editor of the explicitly liberal New Republic magazine.

Which is "explicitly liberal" in exactly the same way Joe Lieberman is.

Originally Posted by Steve Eisenberg

Broder a conservative? You don't seriously believe that he is such by the standards of the country where all his columns are published, do you?

See my last comment.

[Simply Madeline]

Originally Posted by Broken Sword

If we attribute the labels for those 15 people based on self-identification then the labels become meaningless. Why should self-identification matter at all in analyzing their influence?

You asked me if I would describe him as a conservative or a liberal. I would describe him the way he describes himself.

[Steve Eisenberg]

Originally Posted by Simply Madeline

Since he asserts in every fifth blog post that he is a conservative, I guess I'd take him at his word.

It's all a matter of context.

In the past four presidential elections, I voted for Dole, Gore, Bush, and Obama. That's pretty good evidence I am a centrist, but I describe myself as conservative here, because, by the admittedly international standards of this board, I am indeed a conservative.

[Ramblin' Dave]

Originally Posted by Steve Eisenberg

In the past four presidential elections, I voted for Dole, Gore, Bush, and Obama. That's pretty good evidence I am a centrist,

Just my opinion, but I believe anybody who voted for Bush in 2004 loses any right to claim to be a centrist. In 2000, you at least would have had the excuse of his lack of a record, and believing the propaganda that was dutifully repeated in the mainstream media, as well as your own habitual inclination to reject accusations from the left that he was a right-wing extremist. But by 2004, you had everything from the Mexico City Policy to John "Ban the Pill" Ashcroft to his disingenuous stem-cell research policy to the disgraceful post-9/11 demagoguery to his extending a gigantic middle finger at the rest of the world on Iraq...and his Democratic opponent ran barely left of center. Anyone who voted for him under those circumstances is not a centrist, regardless of how many mushy-middle candidates s/he voted for in other years.

[Simply Madeline]

Originally Posted by Steve Eisenberg

Broder a conservative? You don't seriously believe that he is such by the standards of the country where all his columns are published, do you?

If you can put the relentlessly pro-big-business Friedman in the liberal camp because he wrote a couple of columns that were critical of Bush, I can put the center-right Broder in the conservative camp based on unabashed Bush-boosterism.

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Ramblin' Dave

Just my opinion, but I believe anybody who voted for Bush in 2004 loses any right to claim to be a centrist. In 2000, you at least would have had the excuse of his lack of a record, and believing the propaganda that was dutifully repeated in the mainstream media, as well as your own habitual inclination to reject accusations from the left that he was a right-wing extremist. But by 2004, you had everything from the Mexico City Policy to John "Ban the Pill" Ashcroft to his disingenuous stem-cell research policy to the disgraceful post-9/11 demagoguery to his extending a gigantic middle finger at the rest of the world on Iraq...and his Democratic opponent ran barely left of center. Anyone who voted for him under those circumstances is not a centrist, regardless of how many mushy-middle candidates s/he voted for in other years.

I think that the fact that Kerry ran barely left of center makes a difference, and not in the manner you might expect. I didn't vote for Bush (I couldn't bring myself to vote for either one), but I was more likely to have voted for Bush than I would have been had Kerry ran further to the left on the issues where being left matters to me. If Edwards had won the nomination, I probably would have voted for him. If Clinton or Obama had been around in '04 with the same credentials they had in '08, I definitely would have voted for them. But Kerry ran in such a manner that it took away many of the positives (addressing poverty, a clearly different Iraq policy) that would have made me vote for him and made Bush's few appealing credentials (stance on abortion, judiciary picks) more appealing.

We have to remember that each election isn't based on a two-dimensional spectrum. There are many different issues, and different voters and different candidates emphasize different axises of that spectrum at different times.

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Simply Madeline

You asked me if I would describe him as a conservative or a liberal. I would describe him the way he describes himself.

You posted "your take" on whether they were conservative or liberal before I had said anything on the thread at all. If you were just posting how they all describe themselves (and is that what you were doing for all 15?), then I don't know what relevance it would have to the thread.

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Broken Sword

(and I should note that on this message board itself, people have tended to reject other posters' self-identifications when they disagreed with them :-P)

Originally Posted by Ramblin' Dave

Just my opinion, but I believe anybody who voted for Bush in 2004 loses any right to claim to be a centrist.

Perfect examples don't tend to come around so quickly!

[Simply Madeline]

Originally Posted by Broken Sword

You posted "your take" on whether they were conservative or liberal before I had said anything on the thread at all. If you were just posting how they all describe themselves (and is that what you were doing for all 15?), then I don't know what relevance it would have to the thread.

Huh?

I said that in my opinion Sully's a conservative. You asked me if I could really still say that if I "read Sullivan for the last 12 months". Since I read Sullivan's blog pretty regularly, and have done so for years (including over the last 12 months), clearly I can still say he's a conservative (since I just did). I also pointed out that he self-identifies as a conservative.

Krugman self-identifies as a liberal, but my take on his columns is that he's closer to the center, hence my "leans liberal" designation.

[I'mNotDedalus]

Well, for what it's worth, I think Madeline accurately pegged every one of these talking schleps. But then, I do lean heavily toward the Madeline camp.

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Simply Madeline

Huh?

I said that in my opinion Sully's a conservative. You asked me if I could really still say that if I "read Sullivan for the last 12 months". Since I read Sullivan's blog pretty regularly, and have done so for years (including over the last 12 months), clearly I can still say he's a conservative (since I just did). I also pointed out that he self-identifies as a conservative.

Krugman self-identifies as a liberal, but my take on his columns is that he's closer to the center, hence my "leans liberal" designation.

So are you going based on self-identification or not? And I note what someone said earlier - Krugman criticizes Obama from the left, so I'm pretty surprised by your "leans liberal" definition.


Your very first post on the thread was

Originally Posted by Simply Madeline

So much for the myth of the liberal media elite.

You then made your list to back up that post. But virtually anyone who believes in the "liberal media elite" would consider Sullivan part of them - I've seen that on multiple blogs before. There wouldn't be the slightest doubt about Krugman and Huffington, even though you put qualifiers on both of their "liberal" tendencies. Friedman also is clearly considered liberal by them (google "liberal fascist", "liberal sadist", or "liberal imperialism"), and has self-identified as liberal before. Yet, you just said straight-up "conservative" for a commentator who voted for Obama over the most moderate Republican presidential candidate we've had in at least 30 years.

I just think that if you're going to tout this list as destroying the myth of the "liberal media elite", you need a better barometer of who is and isn't liberal.