Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Politics

25% of the Bush Presidency is Still to Come.

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Reality hasn’t changed just because the TV camera is now focused on the 2008 Presidential election. Bush is still in charge and Congress is still ineffectual.

When the Democrats won their Congressional majority a perception took root. Somehow folk started thinking that things had changed. In fact the only change was one of possibilities.

It became possible that one branch of government might restrain another. Possibilities don’t become realities by virtue of perception. Regardless of where the TV camera points.

Bush is unrestrained. One completely unchained –though perceptively lame– duck. Everyday he waddles toward a strike on Iran. With every quack he makes his intention clear.

He is not playing out the clock. He’s not idly watching “Congressional maneuvering.” He’s not reacting to events. He isn’t dishing dirt in Hollywood with fag hag columnists. Not scoring points or “positioning his candidate” for an election that is twenty-one months away.

Bush is acting. He’s creating the future in which that election will be held. He’s telling anybody who will listen that he’s not gonna tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb.

He’s as serious as death.

Either he’s not the guy who has been President for the past six years or he is going to strike Iran. He’s not going to retire and hope his successor acts.

He’s going to push ’til he draws a foul or he’s going to do it without provocation.

But what he’s not going to do is go quietly.

He’s not going to blow off a quarter of his Presidency. He’s going to create the reality with which the next Presidency will have to contend.

One Flew Over the Campaign ‘08

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Much of the press is down to its usual standards as it trivializes the campaign for Most Powerful Person in the World, 2008. The highlights in campaign coverage so far include the following:

Barack Obama has produced probably the best press story so far. Seems that a total fruitcake working for the Rev. Moon planted a story that Obama had attended a Muslim School for suicide bombers and that Hillary Clinton leaked the story. Talk about more bang for your bucks. But would any self-respecting news outlet pick up a nutty story like that without checking the facts/. Well, no. That would have to be done by Fox News, managed by Roger Ailes, the old Willy Horton ad guy. And run with it they did refusing to admit a mistake even after competing news people refuted the story with those old Fox bugaboos, facts.

Hillary Clinton: should she dress in dresses or pants suits? Donatella Versace says, “”She really should stop wearing pants. I imagine they’re comfortable, but she is a woman and should be allowed to show it. She should give her femininity a chance and not emulate the masculinity in politics.”

Ok, so that story did not have legs, so to speak. But the Big Story is whether Hillary should apologize for having voted for the invasion of Iraq when the President simply lied about the reasons for it. Seems to me if anyone should apologize it should be the president that lied us into it for pretty shabby reasons. Anyway, the press is doing its dog with a bone thing so this will continue until they rediscover the importance of wearing dresses.

John Edwards – The issue of his admitted “mistake” in voting for the invasion of Iraq excites the press less than the fact that he hired a couple of bozos to run blogs for his campaign. My good friend Kiwi sent me some wonderful satire on this which I cannot share for reasons of – well – good taste. But again is this the issue we want to decide on?

Mitt Romney is lucky to have the press focusing on his religion rather than on his remarkable ability to change his views on just about every social issue found inside and outside the Bible. For instance, when running for Governor of Massachusetts he supported a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, gun control, and same-sex civic unions. In the last year of his tenure as governor he spent over 200 days out of the state presumably getting a values-change operation somewhere.  But for now the main question for him from the press is  “what the hell is a Mormon anyway?” And “will he force Americans to give up alcohol and swear words.”

John McCain is all hot to trot about sending more and more troops to Iraq, and the press takes note of that while it asks whether it is a mistake to believe something and actually say the words. I mean Bush got elected as a compassionate conservative and someone who would bring humble pie to the international table and got elected.  Doesn’t McCain know enough to lie?

Rudy Guiliani is providing the opportunity to beat up on a man who wears out wives the way some of us wear out cheap sneakers. The press has trouble with this one though because he remains a hero in some eyes for having not died in the 9/11 attacks. So the story is not that having had a few wives is bad. It is only that maybe some Bible thumpers will not like it. But what can he do? Become an old-fashioned Mormon and remarry his previous two wives? What would Romney say to that?

Joe Biden made the horrible mistake of accusing Obama of being “clean” and “articulate”. The Reverends Jesse and Al went nuts and the press beat up on poor Joe for days. It did however take attention away from his hair transplant and also made it possible to ignore his Iraq strategy which is more sensible than most and might even be worth further exploration – once we get this Obama insult taken care of.

The election is 21 months away.  That is a long time to consider waking up to meaningless stories as we approach the need to clean up probably the worst mess ever left by any president. But we best be prepared for mindless babble about what the candidates wear, what they eat, what they drink, what they ever smoked or sniffed or mainlined, what they have ever done to other humans  or animals  in the backseats of cars, what clever little campaign lies can be told successfully, etc. Just for God’s sake, do not bore us with substance.

Lieberman’s War Tax

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It has been easy to resist writing about AIPAC’s favorite senator, but Joe Lieberman’s suggestion for a war tax to pay for the Iraq War is kind of interesting.  Not that anyone on either side of the aisle is likely to seriously consider it, but rather for the entertainment opportunity it could provide for watching the Congress discuss and debate the Iraq War in terms of its impact on American domestic policy.

The Bush-Cheney budget proposal presents a case for reducing health, education and environmental programs to reduce a deficit that results at least partly through the enormous costs of the Bush-Cheney Iraq Thing. The Washington Times gloats that Lieberman’s proposal would force the Democrats to raise taxes in order to maintain those  non-defense programs, but of course, it could also be an opportunity for Americans to hear a substantive debate on the cost of the war and the trade-offs it has allowed Bush-Cheney to make.

Improve education for Americans or bomb some towns in Iraq? Distribute $12billion in cash to unaccountable Iraqis or help shore up Social Security? Pay billions to Halliburton to construct crappy facilities in Iraq or provide food to poor American school children? Spend some money on developing alternative energy sources or spend billions to prop up Iraq’s corrupt oil industry?

The Congress would not treat this seriously because it would force both parties to face reality and address it publicly and maybe even courageously. And of course Lieberman knows that, but his suggestion allows him to play both ends of the debate – support the war and maintain social programs but pay for it with a tax that no member of Congress would have the courage to support.

The Budget: Bush’s Strategy for America

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The budget that President Bush presented to the Congress yesterday is a near culmination of his shell game. It goes something like this. He produces a tax break for the rich, spends billions on a fiasco war in Iraq, develops a huge deficit, then comes up with a budget which he says will reduce the deficit he created – but not by reducing defense budgets, which will continue to increase at a time when the country’s defense expenditures are greater than the total for all other countries together.

Rather, for Bush it has become time to reduce support of programs aimed at ordinary people – programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, education and environmental agencies, heating assistance for low-income families, etc. At the same time he wants to make his tax cuts for the wealthy, permanent.

It has been clear from the beginning of this odious presidency that he was intent on changing the nature of the American experience by returning the country’s operating ethos to that of pre-Roosevelt days. It would, in a sense, be a matching domestic legacy to that of his foreign policy, which has given us the Iraq disaster, distaste and anger from the citizens of former allies, the loss of the country’s moral edge, the end of bipartisan commitment to America among its people and the end of American prestige and honor.

The Decomposition of Henry Kissinger

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Earlier this week Henry Kissinger appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss Bush-Cheney’s Iraq policy. I finally got around to viewing a video of his appearance and it was bizarre – a scene of his mumbling, rambling and seemingly sucking up to everyone on the committee as he appeared to agree with almost any suggestion made by any Senator. The scene’s believability might actually have benefited from visits by his old pals Jill St. John, Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet.

I got very worried for Iraq’s neighboring countries when he announced the probability of a secret peace plan, remembering what his secret plan for Vietnam did for Cambodia. But then he mumbled something about not really knowing that there was a plan, only that:

“I am convinced, but I cannot base it on any necessary evidence right now that the president will want to move toward a bipartisan consensus”.

Jesus – what the hell does that mean?

He meandered along through testimony that ignored much of the reality of current policy in Iraq and moved toward a numbing kind of equivalent to: “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” analysis. There was something for everyone. Is there a secret peace plan in the Bush administration?   He did not know for sure, but it seemed like they must be moving in that direction. Is the President’s planned “surge” likely to be effective? He opined that if it worked it would serve the interests of reconciliation.  Etc. ad nauseum.

What was striking was the inability of anyone in the room to make any sense.  While perhaps easy to ignore the babblings of a man who has outlasted whatever usefulness he might have had (and that latter is up for debate) it is neither easy nor pleasant to watch a room full of Senators trying to get the old guy to give them what each of them wants and at the end of the day not knowing whether they got it.

We are told that Kissinger has been advising Bush on Iraq policy and that is totally believable given this performance and the state of the Iraq war.

An American Original, Molly Ivins: RIP

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Molly Ivins died yesterday after a seven-year battle with breast cancer. Thinking about the mainstream press with its suck-up approach to authority and its inability to write with true wit, her death is a giant loss. Who else would report on a Pat Buchanan screed on America’s “culture wars” by commenting that “it probably sounded better in its original German”. And is there another former NY Times reporter who lost his or her job by referring to a community chicken killing as a “gang pluck”?

Her reporting on Texas politics was legendary and prepared her well for the odious task of reporting on the Dubya Bush presidency, a task that allowed her to be one of a small number of journalists who saw through all the smoke and mirrors that has given us the Iraq fiasco.

A few choice quotes published in the Houston Chronicle follow:

“If you think his daddy had trouble with ‘the vision thing,’ wait’ll you meet this one,” Ivins on George W. Bush in “The Progressive,” June 1999.

“If left to my own devices, I’d spend all my time pointing out that he’s weaker than bus-station chili,” on Bill Clinton, from the introduction to You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You

“The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy,” from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.

“….our very own dreaded [Texas] Legislature is almost upon us. Jan. 9 and they’ll all be here, leaving many a village without its idiot,” from a December 2000 column.

Gullible’s Travels: David Brooks’ Trip to Reality

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Bush-Cheney’s Iraq adventure has provided David Brooks a terrific opportunity for what self-help gurus would call “personal growth and development”. It has been a strange trip in which Brooks has had to finally realize that his emperor has no clothes and that those Democratic leaders who had no alternatives actually had – and he had somehow missed them.

On Nov 2, 2006 in the NY Times Brooks had this to say:

“Partitioning the country would be traumatic, so after the election it probably makes sense to make one last effort to hold the place together. Fire Donald Rumsfeld to signal a break with the past. Alter troop rotations so that 30,000 more troops are policing Baghdad.”

On Jan. 7, 2007, it was:

“The record shows that in sufficient numbers and with sufficient staying power, U.S. troops can suppress violence. Perhaps more U.S. troops can create a climate in which decentralized arrangements can evolve.

We can’t turn back time. But if the disintegration of Iraqi society would be a political and humanitarian disaster, perhaps we should finally commit military resources, and create a political strategy, commensurate with the task of salvaging something.”

On Jan 11, he began totally to lose it:

‘If the Democrats don’t like the U.S. policy on Iraq over the next six months, they have themselves partly to blame. There were millions of disaffected Republicans and independents ready to coalesce around some alternative way forward, but the Democrats never came up with anything remotely serious.”

On Jan. 25, he came to grips with the reality that, “yes Virginia. There are alternative plans out there – some even formulated by Democratic leaders and analysts”:

“I for one have become disillusioned with dreams of transforming Iraqi society from the top down. But it’s not too late to steer the situation in a less bad direction…
for a ”soft partition” of Iraq in order to bring political institutions into accord with the social facts — a central government to handle oil revenues and manage the currency, etc., but a country divided into separate sectarian areas to reduce contact and conflict. When the various groups in Bosnia finally separated, it became possible to negotiate a cold (if miserable) peace.

Soft partition has been advocated in different ways by Joe Biden and Les Gelb, by Michael O’Hanlon and Edward Joseph, by Pauline Baker at the Fund for Peace, and in a more extreme version, by Peter Galbraith.”

Yes David, there are and have been for some time, alternatives to your Bush-Cheney approach. Glad to have you climbing on board. Better late then never I guess.

In his last NY Times column he threatens new insights to be delivered from the mount on Sunday on the NY Times Op-Ed page. As Bush-Cheney would no doubt agree: “ God help us all”.

The Press: Illuminator Or Racetrack Tout

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As we begin the bizarre process of choosing the next leader of the free world the press is approaching the process as a horserace. This allows them to be handicappers, or odds-makers, or anointers of the chosen. The way in which candidates are covered, the attention they receive, and why, gives the press a lot of power over the process and past experience is worrisome.

So when Hillary announces, it is front-page news about her “chances” as a women and her need to avoid taking any meaningful stands that might possibly be held against her later.

Dennis Kucinich announces and it is the proverbial tree falling in the forest – no one hears it because the press has determined that he could not possibly be a serious candidate – probably because four years ago he among all the others was the one who said invading Iraq was nuts – a total loser of a campaign issue.

Bill Richardson throws his sombrero into the ring and the story in the Boston Globe is  illustrated with a huge photo of Hillary talking to a group of children and a tiny headshot photo of Richardson.

Obama announces and it was as if Jesus himself had come down off the cross to make everything all right again and possibly driving Hillary out of the Garden of Eden (whoops – wrong Testament).

Much the same goes on for the Republicans with McCain picked by the press to get the nomination because Giuliani is too liberal, Romney is a Mormon, Brownback is too conservative, etc.

The press is likely to treat this horserace the way it treats them all: as exercises in tactics in which the main substance turns out to be the way the press itself presents the candidates and their campaigns and who has the most effective campaign ads, in which lies and money are the main ingredients for success.  The beat reporters will suck up their candidates to get “access” and puff will reign

The 2000 and 2004 campaigns were examples of a press largely doing everything possible to avoid serious discussion of serious issues, focusing instead on describing the candidates’ eating habits, travel travails, wardrobe, cash flow and campaign ads.  We have serious long-term issues facing the country and the day-to-day coverage of the race is not starting out well with its emphasis on whether the candidates can successfully avoid taking tough stands on issues and therefore avoid offending major blocs of voters.

The Iraq Study Group’s Shell Game

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Turns out that the Iraq Study Group (ISG) is a colossal shell game. Most of what they recommend won’t work and therefore Bush could argue for doing whatever he comes up with – for instance, bombing Iran, a favorite tactic of his neocon friends and one consistent with his schoolyard bully persona.

I was struck by Baker and Hamilton’s inability in their TV interviews to mention that this particular “Iraq problem” exists only because Bush created it. And what of the Orwellian idea that we need to punish those incompetent Iraqis who do not seem able to fix what we created and totally screwed up? So therefore we pick up our game pieces and go home? But not right away because we need a bipartisan solution  – that is, one in which no one in America need take responsibility for what has turned out to be perhaps the most destructive American foreign policy blunder in the country’s history.

And the ISG can’t come out and say any of that because the president might get pissed off and do something truly nutty just to show everyone who is in charge: mucho macho presidento.

There was a time in the not so distant past when bipartisan support of foreign policy was a centerpiece of American political life and it worked fairly well. Bush has destroyed that for now and perhaps forever. He lied the country into this fiasco, the members of Congress lay down and let him run over them, and Bush has refused to discuss options for over three years while Iraq burned and American soldiers died. And he is psychologically unprepared to take responsibility for this massive foreign policy failure.  We have not had a truly bipartisan foreign policy since the late 80s and are in desperate need of strong, intelligent leadership.

Anyone watching today’s press conference of Bush and Blair has to wonder whether the President is beginning to spin off this planet into a universe all his own. It was not pretty. Look for it on C-Span.

LA Times Reporters Warn of Dems’ Seeking Action

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Well, on the 12th of November the dust had settled and it was time to begin warning of the impending disaster of the Democrats believing they had actually won the election. In a piece of journalism designed to bring the great press critic A.J. Liebling back from dead, the LA Times warns: “…Some of the very activists who helped propel the Democrats to a majority in the House and Senate last week are claiming credit for the victories and demanding what they consider their due: a set of ambitious — and politically provocative — actions on gun control, abortion, national security and other issues that party leaders fear could alienate moderate voters and leave Democrats vulnerable to GOP attacks as big spenders or soft on terrorism….”

We just went through a period of Republican rule that has given us an untenable, counterproductive war, tax breaks for the very very wealthy, a prescription drug program that is a gift to big Pharma, a deficit that mortgages the country to China, faith-based initiatives aimed at eliminating the division between church and state, the demise of habeas corpus, illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens, use of torture to get questionable information, a refusal to use diplomacy to attack serious challenges abroad, the loss of allies’ trust and faith in the U.S. – the list goes on.

And what do we have from the LA Times? Omigod, the people who won the election actually believe they won the election! They might actually try to use that fact to change the direction of the country. The Times article warns of attempts to reduce health costs, to force the executive to follow constitutional law and to find a way out of Iraq.

The Democrats won the election and it is their turn. And while they certainly have the capacity to screw it up it is very difficult to imagine a more incompetent, venal Congress that the one that is currently embarking on a lame duck flurry of unpleasant and unwanted actions.

We can expect more of this kind of thinking (sic) in the press; the view that the Democrats must be careful and not fulfill the promise of their victory. We need a more competent press and it is papers like the LA Times that need to serve that role.