Does the public view media reps as mere propagandists?

WASHINGTON — I ponder the commentaries (I very nearly said "rantings") of those whose politics are counter to my own, and I wonder: Do I sound like that to them?

That is, do my careful attempts at arms-length analysis come across, to those on the other side of the political divide, as mere sophistry, as argument in service of a predetermined conclusion?

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, but it was crystallized for me by the cover article in the year-end edition of Insight, the magazine of the ultraconservative Washington Times: "The Making of the Clinton Recession."

The Clinton recession? Here’s my recollection: Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote for Bill Clinton’s economic package — Republicans said it would ruin the economy — and the economy took off, reaching such giddy heights that smart people found it reasonable to warn us against "irrational exuberance," to remind us that "trees don’t grow to the sky."

The current recession officially started a couple of months after President Bush took office.

Now as it happens, I don’t think it makes sense to give Clinton all the credit for the boom or Bush all the blame for the bust, though the political rule is that incumbents get credit or blame for what happens during their watch. Clinton was there when the dot-coms took off; Bush was there when they flamed out.

If right-wing (or staunchly pro-Bush) analysts feel inclined to point out the irrelevance of both men to the market’s recent gyrations, they’ll get no argument from me. But what I’m reading now is an utterly fascinating account that says the boom started with Reagan’s tax cuts (which produced record deficits) and died at the hands of Clinton and his Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, Arthur Levitt.

Writer John Berlau quotes economist Lawrence Kudlow as dating the fall of the high-tech market from March 2000. That, says Don Devine of the American Conservative Union, is "almost precisely when , through a series of administrative rules, Levitt’s SEC blocked small entrepreneurial firms from the access to capital markets that they’d enjoyed since the early 1980s."

I suppose there are people who honestly believe that Reagan had the misfortune to leave office just before his economic genius started to pay off, and that Clinton had the dumb luck to be out of office before the booby traps laid by him and Levitt exploded. But surely at least some of those making these arguments must be doing so for partisan purposes.

I seem to be reading more and more analysis that strikes me as partisan PR. I don’t mean the apologetics of elected or party officials. I’m talking about journalists, people who, while obviously entitled to their political opinions, are expected to rise above partisan imperatives and tell us what, to their minds, is going on.

And almost all of this naked partisanship seems to be coming from the right.

Am I wrong about that? Do I see it that way only because the writers on the right see their job as exposing politicians and principles of the left? Am I kidding myself when I think of myself and other moderate-to-liberal journalists not as partisan, just earnest observers?

I don’t think so. It does seem to me that conservative writers are more apt to write as Republicans than liberals or moderates to write as Democrats. Do the left-leaners only pretend arms-length analysis while the right-leaners are more honest about it?

To return to the question that launched this discussion: Do those of us who are generally left of center strike readers on the right as cavalier disregarders of truth, bent only on pushing our political agenda? Do the readers see all journalists — or at least all opinion writers — as mere propagandists?

The questions involve more than personal reputations. They go to the heart of the journalistic calling. Are we — and are we seen as — searchers after truth and understanding, or are we using our gifts to sell the people a bill of goods? Are we doing any good? Am I the only one worrying about it?

William Raspberry can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or willrasp@washpost.com.