David Yepsen?
Freivogel is a decent journalist and Yepsen is quite good, but both are journalists and journalists without a whole lot of background in Illinois. Not many people could fill MIke Lawrence’s shoes, but Turner is clearly a better choice in this case.
November 24th, 2008 at
David Yepsen is a journalist with a national reputation. The notion that he is not qualified because of a limited knowledge of Illinois politics is silly. If SIU law school was looking for a new dean would you say that they should pick a Judge from Illinois over a Suprem Court Justice? Of course not.
The analogy might not be perfect, but Yepsen’s national credentials would be an major feather in SIU’s cap.
November 24th, 2008 at
There are two issues which I didn’t fully go into in the post, but the first is that while I understand the obvious connection between a Simon institute and journalism, I’m not sure why a journalist is all that qualified to head a public policy institute. There are some who could handle it quite well, but nothing about Freivogel or Yepsen really suggest to me they’d be all that good at it.
Yepsen is a very big fish in a very small pond in Iowa and his reputation is overblown. I’d compare him to David Broder and that’s not a compliment in the sense he acts as if he’s the gatekeeper and makes some astonishingly stupid claims such as when he claimed Iowa college students from out of state might steal the election for Obama. More than that though, I see very little in the way of public policy expertise or even knowledge.
Admittedly, coming from a more academic background I’m pretty hard on journalists, but I’m not enamored of public policy being headed by journalists and prefer practicioners or academics. Turner isn’t the first guy I’d be thinking of, but I’d rather have someone with experience in the Lege who has dealt with actual legislating–especially when the focus is on Illinois politics.
February 4th, 2009 at
The vast majority of what we know of the policies that do or may, in time, affect our lives comes from journalists. This very fact has been at the root of the right wing resurrection in this country. Dial in a bit of misinformation, make sure all compliant media are on the same page (something now euphemistically referred to as “talking points” so as not to belie the insidious nature of what is being done to the idiots that will fall in line) and pound what you wish into their brains until you here them speaking it on the streets as gospel.
It works so well, too. More miners, auto workers and other laborers have voted for the party that has devastated not only their unions but now the entire economy than have insurance company execs and business owners and the rest of the selfishly greedy members of the well heeled. Why the con job? There are not enough of them to get what they want by voting so it is imperative that a lot of those who depend on a job to exist to be swayed in their beliefs or the policies that benefit the privileged would never be enacted.
As long as the person that is to represent the Policy Institute is not going to use the position for nefarious ends I believe that we should recall that Paul Simon chose as his Policy Institute partner a right wing journalist and the person who became it’s second director…right Mike?
As well, let us not forget that Paul Simon came to the Policy institute via politics and to politics via Journalism. In that capacity P.S. did a lot towards making at least one portion of Illinois far safer for the citizens as a whole.