When is a single-source story good enough for The New York Times?
When♛ it appears to confirm a 40-year-old Democratic conspiracy theory.
Peter Baker, the Times’ chief White House correspondent, published Saturday a bombshell report, “🐽A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Ca♏rter’s Re-Election.”
It was indeed merely one man’s story.
An 85-year-old Democrat, Ben Barnes, claims to have personal knowledge of efforts by Ronald Reagan alli🅠es to delay the release of US hostages from Iran until after the 1980 election🔴.
A reader has to plough through 10 paragraphs of this sensational story before encountering a co♉ncession that “Confirming Mr. Barnes’s accounꦍt is problematic.”
But🔯 not to fear — Baker assures us Barnes “has no obvious reason to make up the story.”
Suppose an octogenarian Republican from Arkansas comes forward tomorrow to ไprovide a personal account of Bill Clinton’s involvement in drug trafficking in the 1980s, a notion long promoted in certain GOP circles.
No corroboration, just his word for it.
In all the worlds of th🐓e widest cinematic multiverse imaginable, is there any in w⭕hich the Times would publish such a piece?
The new standard ♑for “news that’s fit to print” is when a source “has no obvious reason to make up the story.”
As long as that source is from the right party.
People less sophisticated than a Times White House correspondent might classify pa🐭rtisanship as an obvious motive.
Yet Baker tells readers ♉Barnes was afraid of how his fellow♋ Democrats would react to his claims.
Come again? Nothing in Bake💮r’s report explains this counterintuitive assertion.
The myth that Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 election because Reagan committed ꧃a misdeed tantamount to treason is in fact an enduringly popular conspi▨racy theory among liberals.
As Baker recounts, a Democratic-controll💧ed Congress investigated the story in the 1980s but was unable to prove it.
A former Carter administration o💖fficial published a book “advancing the theory” (as Baker writes) in 1991, promoting it with a “guest essay” in — where else? — .
Baker, in a remarkable line, bolster’s Barnes’ credibility by telling us what he is not: “Mr. ꩲBarnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility” like certain earlier proponents 💛of the “October surprise” storyline.
Instead Barnes is a career Democratic polit🐽ician who was once the protégé of Texas Gov. John Connally.
By 1980 Connally had become a R𝕴epublican, and he sought the GOP presidential nomination that year but lost to Reagan.
Barnes remained close to Co🧜nnally, however, and accompanied him on trips around the Middle East that summer.
🅺Barnes says Connally told Arab leaders to send a message to 💖Iran urging the Shi’ite revolutionaries to keep their American hostages until after the election.
This would prolong a crisis that weakened Carter, and a newly elected President Reagan wཧould look kindly on Tehran in return.
Barnes has waited until anyo🌼ne who might contradict his stꦜory is dead.
Connally died in 1993, and William Casey, the 💙Reagan campaign manager a𒉰nd later CIA director to whom Connally supposedly reported on return from his Middle East excursions, died in 1987.
In the absence of testimony from anyone who could authenticate Barnes’ account, Ba🐻ker pads the narrative by citing four men who have no direct knowledge about Barnes’ claims but who did hear the tale from Barnes himself over the years.
Although no💫ne is identified as a D🦋emocrat, three of the four have ties to Lyndon Johnson and his legacy.
Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 presidential 🌼election resound⛄ingly.
He carried onlyꦇ six states and the District of Columbia.
He 𒀰finished 9.8 points behind Ronald Reagan in the popular vote.
With nu🤪mbers like that, a partisan denial 💖of election results has to go beyond questioning returns from individual districts or states.
To discredit Reagan’s victory, and excuse Carter for the multitude of failures that led to his defeat, requires a dif𒐪ferent kind of🏅 conspiracy theory.
One that projects the taint of Iran-Contra back to Reagan before he even became president, and redeems Carter for the꧅ greatesꦯt shame of his presidency, is irresistibly seductive to liberals.
Even if the whole thing comes down to one politici✅an’s word.
Journalists write t𒉰he first draft of history and in this case perhaps the second or third as𓃲 well.
As a profession, academic histori😼ans are hardly less biased than the legacy media in their preference for one of our major parties.
When liber♛als boast of being on the right side of history, it does not mean time has proved them right.
It means their conspiracඣy theories and inadequately sourced 🍰stories have passed for truth in the textbooks and paper of record.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.
