Shunning The Outsiders

by digby

Paul Krugman had some words of wisdom today on the The Man Called Petraeus:

To a remarkable extent, punditry has taken a pass on whether Gen. Petraeus’s picture of the situation in Iraq is accurate. Instead, it was all about the theatrics – about how impressive he looked, how well or poorly his Congressional inquisitors performed. And the judgment you got if you were watching most of the talking heads was that it was a big win for the administration – especially because the famous MoveOn ad was supposed to have created a scandal, and a problem for the Democrats. Even if all this had been true, it wouldn’t have mattered much: if the truth is that Iraq is a mess, the public would find out soon enough, and the backlash would be all the greater because of the sense that we had been deceived yet again. But here’s the thing: new polls by CBS and Gallup show that the Petraeus testimony had basically no effect on public opinion: Americans continue to hate the war, and want out. The whole story about how the hearing had changed everything was a pure figment of the inside-the-Beltway imagination. What I found striking about the whole thing was the contempt the pundit consensus showed for the public – it was, more or less, “Oh, people just can’t resist a man in uniform.” But it turns out that they can; it’s the punditocracy that can’t.

This is about maintaining the integrity of the Village; the public is largely irrelevant to these little beltway pearl clutching pageants. I remember when the Lewinsky scandal broke, the Villagers all pretended to be aghast at Clinton’s despicable, horrible act and were certain that the president’s “days were numbered” because the nation (people just like them, don’t you know) would rise up in revulsion. These jaded adulterers, perverts and hypocrites hyperventilated on our TV screens for months like Victorian dowagers whose corsets were cutting off the circulation to their brains, reaching for ever more florid language to decry the “deplorable, reprehensible, unforgivable” behavior of a man who did something that every one of them had either done or knew intimately people who had.

The country watched with amazement. And interest. Who wouldn’t? The endless tabloid tittilation was irresistible. And Clinton’s polls, confoundingly, went up. The day he was impeached, his approval rating soared. The Village closed its ears and continued the shunning.

Here’s Todd Gitlin, writing about the Village media dynamic:

Start with the Sunday morning barking heads, the high church that certifies each week what the political class is and ought to be talking about, issuing self-fulfilling prophecies for inside dopesters. Consider especially ABC’s “This Week,” where Cokie Roberts declared, on Jan. 25, 1998, with the Lewinsky story four days old, “There’s only one real question that’s being asked in Washington this week, and that is, can President Clinton survive?” Along the Potomac, among the knowing, it was thunderously clear what was real – and it was not the fate of women without childcare, or children without doctors. One function of the Sunday shows is to make certain notions thinkable. Between his Sunday punditry and nightly reports, no one bulldogs America’s political conversation more than ABC’s Sam Donaldson. Donaldson’s repute rests not on his reporting, not on his preparation, but on his leather lungs, his selective bullying and his bellow. He jeers the big cheese in charge, whoever it is, because ideology matters less than attitude. On “This Week,” the emphatic Donaldson makes George Will look thoughtful, the studious boy who does his homework as opposed to the loudmouth pumped up on attitude. Here was Donaldson on Jan. 25: “If he’s not telling the truth, I think his presidency is numbered in days. This isn’t going to drag out. We’re not going to be here three months from now talking about this.” Of course more than nine months later Donaldson, Roberts, Will & Co. were still talking about “this.” But Donaldson, Roberts, Will, Tim Russert and the rest matter not because of their acumen, let alone their accuracy, but because powerful people think that what they say matters – because official Washington and its eavesdroppers watch the Sunday shows in order to know what they had better take into account as they plot their own moves. Like prosecutors talking about “this case” as if they were observers from the far reaches of outer space, journalists like to talk as though “this story” had a life of its own, as if it landed and stayed on front pages and Sunday morning shows by itself. Already, on Jan. 25, Donaldson was declaring, “I’m amazed at the speed with which this story is going.” Of course it all depends what the meaning of “this story” is. On Jan. 21, the day the Monica story broke, it was Donaldson – not “this story” – who, at the White House press briefing, asked whether Clinton would cooperate with an impeachment inquiry.

I’m reminded of this because the whole of DC seems to be once again wringing their little lace hankies and calling for the fainting couch over the phony Move On controversy, pretending that Move On did something uniquely despicable and that the Republicans who wore purple heart band-aids at their political convention and slimed John Kerry as a traitor, are truly aggrieved that someone would use the word “betray” in the same breath as a General. Everyone knows it’s a puppet show. Everyone knows it’s a ploy. The country thinks it’s a waste of time. But the Villagers are determined to ensure that no outsiders influence the political process. To that end they all — the press, the Republicans and the Democrats alike — gather together to repel the invaders.

The fact is that the nation believed that the Petraeus “Report” was a set-up even before his testimony. And ever since then, the numbers are actually edging down for the president and the Republicans. But this is of no consequence to the Village. That the Republicans are obviously scrambling to hold on to their base and pulling out every stop to distract the public from their Iraq quagmire — and the public knows it — is irrelevant. It’s not about the country. It’s not about the war. It’s not even about politics. It’s about protecting the political establishment.

It’s true that the Right has a vast network of outside groups. But they are top down, stick with the program no matter what organizations. The president himself hosted a group of completely deranged wingnut bloggers just this week and they literally wept. If they go “off the reservation” it’s with the permission of the pooh-bahs. And if they are attacked, the entire right wing apparatus will be brought to bear to protect them, with the willing acquiescence of the Democrats, who have never, to my knowledge, brought any of the non-stop right wing character assassination tactics to the floor of the senate for condemnation. The right wing noise machine and the Democrats all work for the Village.

Perhaps the single most ironic thing about this latest flap is that Move-On’s original name was “Censure and Move-On” — the organization was formed to try to persuade the Senate to censure Bill Clinton for his behavior and avoid impeachment. Today, Move-on was censured by the Senate, with the help of 23 Democrats. It’s almost unbelievable. The Village will not tolerate interference.

(One would think that the Democratic Villagers, at least, would appreciate the money and the energy and the commitment and the media push-back that groups like Move-On and the blogs provide. Clearly they don’t. There’s plenty of money from pharmaceutical companies and telcom companies and defense contractors to go around. They don’t need money or help from outsiders. The Village does just fine, thank you, no matter which party is in charge.)

Outside the Village, citizens of the United States live in a parallel universe where the war is loathed, just like the president who led us into it, and where Republican phony sanctimony is seen for the cheap political theater it is, just as it was during the Lewinsky scandal, when Democrats tripped over Republicans to condemn the president. Then, as now, the denizens of the Village showed their loyalty to the Village.

But now, as then, when they look at the polling numbers they should realize that while Drudge may rule their world, the rest of the country is on another page entirely. The voters may not care about Move On (although Move-On’s three million plus members surely do) but they do care about the war.

Chris Dodd got it right:

By the way, say what you will about her, there is one presidential candidate who has handled this correctly from the beginning. Perhaps that’s because she knows exactly what the Village rodeo is all about. After all, she and her husband were also considered outsiders who came to town and “trashed the place.” As they were told in no uncertain terms “it’s not your place.“

It’s not Move-On’s either, apparently. Or mine. Or yours.

Update: For something a little bit more uplifting and inspirational, here’s Rick Perlstein’s take. It will give you reason to go on.

Update II: Move-on has a petition you can sign if you find this censorious, somewhat Mccarthyite, Village behavior to be unseemly in a democracy.

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