When people inside the Beltway want to feel important, they repeat rumors. And rumors can become self-fulfilling

By Robert Reich

Read more: Opinion, Robert Reich, Healthcare, Barack Obama

Illustration by Zach Trenholm

Aug. 28, 2009 | Washington, D.C. is an echo chamber in which anyone who sounds authoritative repeats the conventional authoritative wisdom about the "consensus" of inside opinion, which they've heard from someone else who sounds equally authoritative, who of course has heard it from another authoritative source. Follow the trail to its start and you often find an obscure congressional or White House staffer who has seen some half-assed poll...