This morning's New York Times pounces on Governor George W. Bush for what the Times interprets as some sort of flip-flop with respect to missile defense. Here's how the Times writes it in its page-one story on President Clinton's decision to leave America defenseless: "On May 23, Mr. Bush signaled his support for Mr. Clinton's leaving the decision to the next administration rather than committing the country to a course based on incomplete information, saying, 'No decision is better than a flawed agreement that ties the hands of the next president and prevents America from defending itself.' But today, Mr. Bush adopted a much sharper tone, criticizing the administration's handling of the missile defense program."
In case you missed the point, the Times hammers it home again in a second news article, reporting, "Mr. Bush said he would welcome the chance as president to make the decision on deployment, but he wasted no time in criticizing 'the Clinton-Gore administration' for the announcement even though he had warned the White House earlier in the campaign not to take any actions that would ties his hands if he wins."
Note the use of the word "but" and the phrase "even though," which are nudges from the Times to the reader that might as well say, "Can you believe this hypocrite George W. Bush, changing his position on missile defense in an example of crass political opportunism?"
But the charge leveled implicitly by the Times against Mr. Bush is nonsense. There's no inconsistency between, on one hand, supporting the development and deployment of a missile defense and, on the second hand, saying it's preferable for Mr. Clinton to make no decision than to commit America to a permanent stand-down. If you read Mr. Bush's original quote, "No decision is better than a flawed agreement that ties the hands of the next president and prevents America from defending itself," it's pretty clear that Mr. Bush is hardly doing what the Times claims he was doing, signaling "his support for Mr. Clinton's leaving the decision to the next administration rather than committing the country to a course based on incomplete information." What he was trying to signal was his support for missile defense, and his opposition to any Clinton administration decision that would prevent him from deploying one. If Mr. Clinton wanted to deploy a missile defense immediately based on "incomplete information," there's no signal whatsoever that Mr. Bush would have any problem with that from a policy perspective, though, politically, it would deprive him of an issue to use against Al Gore.
Cheney's Options: Bowing to pressure generated by the Times, Richard Cheney announced yesterday that, if elected vice president, he would agree to forfeit about $3.5 million worth of options in Halliburton. Missing in the Times coverage of this issue today, and in previous editions, is any serious analysis of how Halliburton's stock price has responded to the selection of Mr. Cheney, the news reports about his options, the subsequent decline of George W. Bush's standing in the polls, and Mr. Cheney's announcement that he would forfeit the options. If there were any substance to the Times's concern that Mr. Cheney would influence American policy in order to help the Halliburton stock price, the market would already have bid up Halliburton stock in expectation of that possibility. If the stock really were going to be helped by Mr. Cheney's interest in keeping the price up, you would have expected the price to decline as polls showed the Bush-Cheney ticket less likely to be elected. You would also have expected the price to drop off following Mr. Cheney's announcement that he would forfeit the options. In order to isolate the Cheney effect on Halliburton, you could graph the stock against an index of other energy-services companies, and against the broader market indices. Our own bet, based on a quick look at the charts, is that the Cheney effect is nonexistent, and that, even as the Times wrings its hands about the potential conflicts of interest, the investors who would have the greatest stake in figuring out whether such a conflict were present have decided that it is chimerical. But if there were a Cheney effect on the Halliburton stock price, it sure would bolster the Times's case.
Mixed Metaphor: The lead story in the metro section of this morning's New York Times includes this sentence: "Although it appears that Mr. Mills is at war with Harold O. Levy, the city's school chancellor, the state commissioner may in fact be carrying the water for a lot of things that Mr. Levy would like to do, but cannot." Impressive guy, that Mr. Mills, "carrying water for a lot of things" even while in the middle of a "war."