On today's Reliable Sources, Ceci Connolly demonstrated the fundamentally warped way the Beltway media approaches policy debates:

CONNOLLY: It's interesting though because, on substance, most smart people in Washington knew the United States Senate was never going to vote for a public option. So, for the liberals to suddenly say, gosh, Joe Lieberman killed it at the last minute, just not true.

This doesn't make much sense. First of all, Connolly is saying people shouldn't blame Lieberman for killing the public option because the public option was always going to be killed. That's pretty mind-blowing in its circularity. She's essentially saying “Joe Lieberman was never going to support the public option, so you shouldn't blame Joe Lieberman for not supporting the public option.”

But there's a deeper problem here, and it's contained in Connolly's assertion that “most smart people in Washington knew the United States Senate was never going to vote for a public option.”

This is a particularly irritating example of the “smart people say” tic that has become so common among political reporters in recent years. At its most harmless, it's pointless source-stroking. At worst, its an insidious means of restricting debate and shutting off any challenge to conventional wisdom.

See, when a beltway reporter like Ceci Connolly attribute a sentiment to “smart people in Washington,” what that means is “me and the people I agree with.” (Which, in turn, often means “me and the people I associate with.”) After all, how often do you see someone use the “smart people say” construct to introduce an idea they disagree with? So the way you get described as “smart” by the punditocracy is to say things the punditocracy agrees with, leading to a homogenization of the public discourse.

Take Connolly's example: “smart people in Washington” always “knew” the public option wouldn't pass, so journalists covered it accordingly. Then -- surprise! -- the public option was stripped out. And “smart” Washington journalist Ceci Connolly says “We knew it all along” -- never pausing to consider that, had her reporting on the health care debate not been so lousy, this might not have happened.

Mightn't things have gone differently if health care reporting had made clear that the public option reduced the deficit? If every time a politician -- say, Joe Lieberman -- was quoted suggesting it was too expensive, the media made clear he wasn't telling the truth? Just to pick one example? Oh, but why would they bother doing that -- they and all the “smart people” they talked to just knew the public option wouldn't pass.

The reality is that “smart people in Washington” are wrong all the time. And when they turn out to be right, it's often simply because they all behave as though they're right and, to borrow a phrase made famous by a Bush aide in another context, “create their own reality.” Just take a look at this post by my colleague Brian Frederick, in which several “smart” journalists who have been around Congress for decades demonstrate that they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about when they pontificate about Senate procedure.

When you see a journalist like Ceci Connolly invoke the certitude of “smart people” rather than facts and logic and reason, just stop listening. Immediately.

UPDATE: From a new Jay Rosen post about what he calls the “Church of the Savvy” that has come to define political journalism:

The savvy do know how things work inside the game of politics, and it is this knowledge they try to wield in argument.... instead of argument.

...

Now in order for this belief system to operate effectively, it has to continually position the journalist and his or her observations not as right where others are wrong, or virtuous where others are corrupt, or visionary where others are short-sghted, but as practical, hardheaded, unsentimental, and shrewd where others are didactic, ideological, and dreamy. This is part of what's so insidious about press savviness: it tries to hog realism to itself.