The Real Blumenthal Scandal Is the Media

In the wake of revelations by the New York Times that Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam, the Beltway media has already gone into its protective crouch: yesterday’s breathtakingly defiant and disgraceful press conference is being hailed as a win. From Politico, which ought to know better:

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s defiant response to a report that he falsely claimed to have served in Vietnam appears to have salvaged his Democratic nomination for the Senate.

“Defiant?” That’s one way to put it.

But the controversy touched off by a story in The New York Times has robbed the Democratic Party of another safe seat and reopened the door, if narrowly, to Republicans’ retaking control of the upper house this fall. Blumenthal’s self-inflicted wound is the latest in a surprising series of retirements, deferrals, misfortunes and intramural bloodbaths that have transformed a map seen a year ago as heavily favoring Democrats into a grab bag of Republican opportunities deep in Obama country.

Boo hoo. A series of unfortunate events is robbing the Democrats of their historic opportunity to inflict unwanted hope and change.

From Beau Biden’s decision not to run for the Senate in Delaware to the failure of Alexi Giannoulias’s family bank in Illinois to bitter primaries in Arkansas, Colorado and Pennsylvania, Democrats find themselves unexpectedly on the defensive, and Blumenthal — originally seen as the surefire substitute for a damaged Sen. Chris Dodd, who is retiring — now joins the ranks of wounded candidates.

But will he drop out of the race? Resign as the state’s top lawyer, a man supposedly devoted to the truth? Hell, no! Democrats never apologize, and Blumenthal is nothing if not a good Democrat:

Blumenthal’s careful, passionate press conference Tuesday afternoon ended talk of his giving up the Democratic nomination — and appeared to put his opponents off guard. With many in both parties anticipating a contrite apology, Blumenthal would only go so far as to express “regret” for having “misspoken,” as a dozen burly, red-jacketed Marine veterans shouted down the question of whether he would apologize.

But the real scandal here is the media’s performance in this mess. Most people think of “leafy” Connecticut as one of the wealthiest states in the country, a green haven between New York and Boston with historic seaports at one end and the rolling Taconic hills at the other. But it’s also bankrupt, its politicians feature a distressing array of petty crooks and more serious jailbirds (the mayor of Hartford, Eddie Perez, is currently on trial for corruption), and the voting populace keeps returning deeply flawed hacks such as “Tammany” Chris Dodd and the useless Holy Joe Lieberman (Blumenthal’s predecessor as state AG) to office. In short, it’s a mess.

From NPR, of all places:

… the episode is something of an embarrassment for the press corps, too. It turns out several news outlets have veered between accurately presenting his military record in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and reporting, unwarrantedly, that he served in Vietnam.

But he took on the media, too. “Sometimes journalists do make mistakes,” Blumenthal told reporters who packed a press conference. “I’m responsible for my mistakes. I can’t be held responsible for all the mistakes in all the articles — thousands of them — that are written about me.”

He’s got a point. An extensive search of the news database Nexis conducted by NPR shows several Connecticut newspapers repeatedly mischaracterized Blumenthal’s service, especially the Connecticut Post.

The self-serving Blumenthal is partly right: he isn’t responsible for the reflexive hagiography accorded Democrats in the media. That just comes with the territory. And errors that fit the narrative just have a way of creeping in:

Elizabeth Hamilton, a former investigative reporter for The Hartford Courant, wrote the 14,400-word profile of Blumenthal in the paper’s magazine in 2004 that mentioned his supposed stint as captain of Harvard’s swim team. Like [former Courant reporter Mark] Pazniokas, Hamilton was laid off from the Courant last year. She says she no longer knows where she stored her tapes of her lengthy interviews with Blumenthal. Nor can she recall precisely how she checked that tidbit.

You can see where we’re going with this, can’t you? That’s right —

“Every campaign is a triage,” Pazniokas said. “The races that are intensely competitive get the most attention.”

Until Sen. Chris Dodd announced he would not seek re-election, Blumenthal had not faced a tough race in years. “These guys like Blumenthal, who are going to win with 65 percent of the vote, aren’t going to get the same scrutiny,” Pazniokas said. “I don’t use that as an excuse for the media, but it’s just a reality.”

As Pazniokas wryly points out, that may be more true than ever, given the deep cutbacks in the reporting ranks at news outlets like those serving Connecticut.

Yup, that’s it: budgets cutbacks prevented the Hartford press corps from revealing the truth about Richard Blumenthal, who escaped serious scrutiny because he always won.

Now you know.