Just to add my voice to the chorus, I’ll agree that Wolfowitz’s retreat on the issue of al Qaeda terrorists crawling all over Iraq is a media tactic.
I’ve told the story before, but I’ll repeat it here (because, well…why not?)
When I was volunteering for the Clinton campaign in 1992, I happened to find myself alone with a very high level campaign strategist one night. I was gloating about the fact that Mary Matalin had had to apologize that day for a misstatement she’d made about our candidate.
This operative just shook his head and said, “Yeah, but she got it out there, didn’t she?”
Since then, I have expected this kind of thing coming from campaign strategists, operatives and party tools. And both sides do it to some extent. It’s their job to manipulate the media and it’s a comment on the total incompetence of that media that they can get away with it.
But, until now there was a dividing line between those people and policy wonks whose reputation rested on their professional integrity. They simply didn’t do this kind of thing for purely political purposes. Brad De Long has discussed this in terms of the economic advisors as did John DiUllio in his infamous Esquire article.
It’s true that in the foreign policy realm, there have been many examples of wonks floating untruths for the purpose of leading the press in certain directions for policy reasons. But, this complete merging of domestic politics and policy among the professionals is, if not unprecedented, extremely unusual.
Wolfowitz, by showing his true stripes these last couple of weeks, finally and completely reveals that he is not the high minded neocon visionary that everyone assumed. He’s a political hack.
In fact, it is beginning to become pretty obvious that the entire neocon movement isn’t an intellectual undertaking at all. It’s just another GOP con game.
I wrote a post a while ago suggesting that whatever our differences, Democrats shouldn’t pick each other apart. I even repented of my former hostility towards the idea that I might be forced to vote for Lieberman if he wound up on the Democratic ticket. However, over the course of the Democratic debates, I’m reminded why I thought that way in the first place.
It isn’t because I don’t believe Lieberman is a ‘real’ Democrat. And I think, as I said before, that we need to drop that whole silly line of debate. It’s because, on balance, I think he’s a pompous windbag. And god knows, Democrats have to work like hell to shake that whole pompous windbag PR.
That really is the problem with Lieberman — his politics aren’t that much farther to the right than most of the major Dems. It’s simply that he is unbearably sanctimonious. He makes William Bennet (especially these days) seem like a ring-a-ding-ding member of the Rat Pack.
Is it possible that Lieberman actually thinks that people voted for President T-Ball because of his phony spiritual pandering rather than his crotchgrabbing, frat-boy personality?
Whatever the case, he’s completely out of touch with the current climate. He’s only going to damage the party if he doesn’t wise up.
Atrios says of Bobo Brooks’ latest column, “to the extent that it is coherent it’s actually profoundly offensive.”
Arthur Silber says “I guess there might be an interesting point in Brooks’ topic somewhere, but he certainly doesn’t manage to find it, or make it.”
I think Brooks is actually doing something quite innovative with his first two columns for the liberal NY Times by subtly playing to the prejudices of his new audience in service of his old one. In both columns he presents himself in full patented “even handed” mode by ostensibly criticizing George W. Bush. But, in reality, he’s implanting certain images and memes in the discourse that help George W. Bush.
In the first column he portrayed the muscular Bush administration as being unwilling to admit it was wrong — but ending up doing the right thing nonetheless. Never complain, never explain. Just get the job done, dammit. Peggy Noonan and the girls sigh deeply and call for another Mojito. He’s no jump roping Clinton. Real Men never apologize; they’re too busy saving the world.
Today, in a twofer, he twists Dean’s straight talking image and real record of accomplishment into one of a phony blue blooded aristocrat who was bred for leadership and merely pretends to be a regular guy. This is designed to sow doubts among his followers about his authenticity.
Then, setting aside his obvious mental deficiencies and life long failures, he uses the same WASP association to elevate the image of the real inbred Little Prince to show that his silver spoon actually well prepared him for leadership.
The first two Brooks columns have very creatively made Bush appear to be a strong, decisive leader, who by birth and experience was destined to lead the world — a man unaffected by the criticism of the chattering classes, focused only on results. He’s done this in a much more subtle way than the bludgeoning you find on Fox or the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but we should not mistake it for anything but the Bush marketing it really is.
And, by the way, his new audience isn’t us. And it isn’t really the readers of the NY Times. It’s the news writers of the SCLM.
Even the Soviets had more respect for the concept of inalienable human rights than this asshole does. At least they held show trials, fergawdsake — a pretense of due process that acknowledged, however disingenuously, that a civilized society must offer a legal justification for imprisoning someone.
Matthew Yglesias has such a good post up today — honest, heartfelt and smart. The discussion of his intellectual journey from cautious multilateral hawk to Grand Strategy neocon and back is one of the first pieces I’ve read that actually describes the salient difference between the two, and one which (for once) accurately describes the difference between most Democrats and the starry eyed idealists in the “grown-up” administration.
I certainly agree that Americans aren’t especially suited for unilateralism. Spartans we aren’t. We’ve got other things to do than fight an extremely expensive perpetual war for global dominance. And our president hasn’t exactly made a case for term sacrifice other than to shop til we drop.
However, I think he gives short shrift to the “much-maligned Clinton policy of crisis-management … keep the country strong, the alliances firm, and when something goes wrong to try to set it right.” I actually think it IS a grand strategy, in that it allows the US, through step-by-step example, education, commerce and leadership to lure the world to liberal democracy. It is the only way it will work in the long term. Force is on the menu, and will of course be necessary from time to time to protect ourselves or our allies. But, it alone cannot create the necessary environment for positive change.
The fallacy of the Bush Doctrine and the entire Neocon Grand Strategy lies in its internally illogical belief that democracy and freedom can be forced on others through the barrel of a gun.
It’s basically the difference between enticing someone into bed and raping them. They both end with the same basic act, but those who are the object of the first feel quite differently about the method of getting there than the second. It’s true that the charmed may feel manipulated, but they are unlikely to feel violated and angry. The difference, needless to say, is the difference between choice and coercion.
There is evidence everywhere that, at heart, George Bush’s re-election strategy will focus on touting his aggressive use of the American military abroad (and the government’s investigative powers at home) in the war on terror—while simultaneously (by presidential inference and surrogate attack) accusing Democratic opponents of being too wimpy by nature to handle the bad guys.
[…]
White House insiders I’ve talked to in recent days say, in sum, the following: that they plan to sell the president to the country based on what they see as his strength of character, his leaderly resolve and his sense of moral clarity—a man’s man, in other words.
That’s the main reason why I’m for Clark. Bush’s so-called strength is an image that’s been created out of whole cloth, with the willing acquiescence of a confused and shallow media. We should throw down the gauntlet and challenge this absurd perception. But, we have to do it right.
As much as I hate to deal with matters of life and death in this way, I’m afraid that we have no choice. The post-modern presidency isn’t really the problem. They’re simply taking advantage of the post-modern media.
Focus groups and opinion polls can be seen as an effective way that parties can stay in touch with public opinion, and one which is more representative of the general electorate than reliance upon the opinions of local party activists.
Alternatively, the evolution of modern and post -modern campaigns can be seen as threatening the democratic process, widening the gap between citizens and their representatives. If parties and candidates adopt whatever message seems most likely to resonate with focus groups, if pollsters, consultants and advertisers rather than politicians come to determine the content of campaigns, and if ‘spin’ outweighs ‘substance’, then the serious business of government may be replaced by the superficial manipulation of images. ”Packaging politics”, Bob Franklin argues, “impoverishes political debate by oversimplifying and trivializing political communications.”
[…]
Some fear that the shift in campaign techniques may have a direct impact on civic engagement; if voters have become passive spectators of symbolic events staged in television studios rather than active participants in local party meetings and community campaigns. As discussed earlier, the most common concern is that post-modern campaigns turn off voters due the decline of face-to-face communications and the rise of practices such as negative news highly adversarial to government, horse-race journalism, and trivialization of campaign discourse.
The Dean and Clark phenomena are exceptionally good news, then. Instead of being passive spectators, the people have used one of the new technologies to facilitate the face-to-face communications that many believe are indispensable to counteract the increasingly deadening impact of the post-modern campaign.
But, if anyone believes that this is going to supplant the powerful mainstream news media by 2004 they are living in dreamland. For the coming election (and perhaps for the foreseeable future) political campaigns will have to be run, at least in part, as product marketing — “packaging politics” as it’s referred to above. As long as huge sums of money are at stake in elections, as long as human beings are more engaged in their day to day lives than in the abstract and complex issues of national governance and as long as television remains the public’s primary entertainment and information medium, we are going to have to recognize that symbols, archetypes, images, soundbites, brands and metaphors are the means to sell the message.
And, I think we need to relax a little bit about it. Post modern communication isn’t immoral and it isn’t stupid. It’s just fast, fleeting and simple. The problem is that policy, politics and governing aren’t.
I don’t think there’s any turning back. We must accept this new reality and learn to work with it, while we try to balance it out with sincere grassroots democratic efforts like the Dean Meet-ups and the draft Clark campaigns. If we fail to do both we will lose, and the simple reason is that the other side is doing it already.
The hard core of the Republican party are, by and large, very amenable to appeals to authority. The dominance of talk radio and fundamentalist pulpits and it’s insularity from the chaotic give and take of real debate give the dittoheads the illusion of winning without ever having to fight.
But, the GOP’s dirty little secret is that they know that the majority of Americans are not by nature authoritarians — they are individualists and communitarians. This goes back to the puritans and pioneers who settled this country. And it is why they have used the post modern media to portray the Republican Party caring about such formerly local concerns as education and why they spend so much time promoting their brand-name-in-a-suit as a particular archetype — a manly, maverick warrior. The Party is branding itself as the New England Town Meeting meets the Western ideal and the Southern Cavalier.
They are remarkably successful at this largely because the post modern media is set up to deal with images, sensation and speed and the Republicans are willing and able to give them what they need. Not surprisingly they have also figured out that in this fast and fleeting post modern media world, dishonesty and rank manipulation are more possible than they’ve been since Hearst practically ran US foreign policy.
Unfortunately, it is happening at the very time when a radical ideology has overtaken the GOP that literally threatens American democracy and national security. This is the kind of dangerous confluence of events from which unanticipated, cataclysmic political changes are made.
We simply must become more sophisticated in our thinking about these issues. We have to realize that it is not enough to have the best ideas, the best policies or even the best candidate. We have to come to terms with the fact that in this high speed post modern world, we must begin to sell our politics in a post modern way.
In a world where a sub-sentient, fratboy can be successfully marketed as a strong, decisive leader to a significant number of independents and Democrats, I think it’s obvious that the Republicans are on to something.
Unless Clark turns out to be a complete bumbling idiot on the trail (which would be very surprising) I believe he is the best positioned, by way of image, biography and association (“packaging”) to expose the Bush “mystique” as nothing more than a chimera and at the same time begin to revitalize the outdated image of the Democratic party.
I’d like nothing more than to reject this simplistic formulation and have the candidates run solely on the issues. But, the brutal politics of the last ten years have convinced me that we must learn to compete in the post modern media. I’m not interested in tilting at windmills while the power crazed modern Republicans turn the country into a functional one party state.
One doesn’t exactly expect last night’s Democratic debate to receive fair treatment at the hands of the National Review Online, but Michael Graham’s attack on Howard Dean goes beyond the anticipated:
Gov. Dean’s claim that what he wants more than anything as president is to “restore the honor and dignity and respect that this country is owed around the world” may not inspire the typical union member or soccer mom, but to the internationalists of the far Left, it was right on key.
If only the “far Left” is interested in making America honored and respected around the world, then Tapped thinks a lot of new members are going to be signing up for the “far Left,” including members of the Bush administration who are currently begging for help in various foreign capitals. It’s especially odd because Dean’s closing statement included a remark far more worthy of criticism:
Over a decade ago, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down without America firing a shot. And that was for two reasons. The first was that we had a strong military, and that’s important. But the second is that on the other side of the Iron Curtain most people wanted to be like America and they wanted to be like Americans.
And in the two and a half years into this presidency, you would be hard-pressed to find a majority in any country in the world where people wanted to be like Americans again.
TAPPED says the North Koreans probably would. That’s true, but the North Koreans live in hell.
*And did everyone notice that FoxNews cut away before the closing statements in the debate were even finished to have their partisan spinners immediately spin it in the most negative fashion they could find?
I would trust the California polls over the national polls on this question. This is a very fluid political situation in a very unusual state. The California pollsters are invariably closer to the mark here than any of the big national guys.
I have to say that in the last few days of doing business around LA, I have had (and overheard) more conversations with strangers about politics than I can remember since the Nixon years. (The impeachment featured a lot of covert whispering. You never knew when you were going to be confronted by a rabid, out of control, wing-nut Clinton hater … plus the pornographic Starr Report was often “inappropriate” in public.)
I’m hearing almost across-the-board derision about Arnold, some of it disdainfully humorous and some plainly insulted by his lack of preparation.
This is all anecdotal in the extreme, I know, so take it with a grain of salt. It’s just unusual in my experience for people to be so openly engaged.
I also happen to live just 4 blocks from Ahnuld’s campaign headquarters. You’d think at least a handful of his supporters would show up from time to time in the local Starbuck’s talking up their guy while standing in line for their soy latte’s. I haven’t heard anything but loud, vociferous Arnold bashing throughout the neighborhood. If Ahnuld can’t get the desperate, brown nosing, Hollywood opportunist contingent behind him, he’s got problems.
I also think Davis is making some headway with his “hair shirt and humility” tour. He looks tan and almost human. But I believe that the biggest thing that will help him was the appearance of Howard Dean, calling the GOP out. If it’s followed up with more of the same from other candidates, along with the Big Guns — Bill, Hill and Al — I think he might pull it out.
Now the 2004 election — little more than a year away — is shaping up as a referendum on Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war, the argument that he made in the year leading up to the invasion of Iraq that it would be too dangerous for the United States to wait until Saddam Hussein’s regime had developed weapons of mass destruction.”
RJ says:
…is that what Bush said? No, what he said was that Saddam had endless supplies of WMD, poised at the ready, to attack us at any moment. The press are shaping up to be the chief revisionist historians.
That’s for sure. Get a load of this bucket of crud, from the same article:
It will also be a referendum on America’s uncomfortable role as custodian of Iraq, a country whose citizens seem increasingly ungrateful for having been liberated from Saddam’s tyranny.
You invade and occupy a country that’s been tightly controlled and highly repressed for 30 years, all hell breaks loose, the “uncomfortable custodians” stand around like a bunch of raccoons caught in the garbage and the citizens seem increasingly ungrateful for having been liberated.
The bastards.
The prism of Sept. 11 remains the key to understanding Bush’s policy. He believes he is deterring future attacks, not inviting more of them, by pursuing the occupation.
It seems to me that if Operation Iraqi Flytrap was his secret cunning plan all along, then he’d have been wise to have kept his piehole shut about it. Unless the terrorists are blind and deaf they’re on to his little scheme now. Golly, I sure hope they don’t decide not to cooperate. That would be bad.
(What’s really weird is that the writer understands what the “prism” of 9/11 is. It’s something about tilting the windmills of Rummy’s mind where he left the cakewalk in the rain. I think.)
The electoral question for Democrats is: How can their presidential candidate profit from Bush’s agony in Iraq?
Those Democrats are always trying to profit from Bush’s agony. It’s so, like, totally unfair.
Supreme Commandante Flightsuit Arbusto would never, ever try to profit from the agony of others. Ever.
The assumption among all the Democratic contenders is that NATO countries and nations such as Morocco would be willing to chip in troops — if only a president other than Bush would ask them.
Morocco? WTF???
And yeah, maybe if the guy asking wasn’t the smirking asshole who just told everybody in the world who didn’t jump to attention when he whistled that they were “irrelevant” and “corrupt” they might chip in troops. Golly, they might even get some weird ferriners like Canada to join in.
The Democratic candidate will be at something of a disadvantage because Bush can control the timing of events, such as strikes on terrorist havens or announcements of the capture of key terrorist leaders.
uh huh. You betcha. Good point.
Democrats harbor deep distrust of what they see as Bush’s manipulation of the terrorism issue.
So, Bush controlling the timing of strikes at terrorist havens or capture announcements wouldn’t be objective evidence of his manipulation of the terrorism issue. Democrats just see it that way. Interesting.
But as commander-in-chief, Bush will not always be the master of events — sometimes he’ll be at their mercy. He may again feel compelled to come to the American people and argue that their own survival is at stake in Iraq.
Ok. So, he’s not just keeping these evil villains from attacking us on our homeland. He’s keeping them from annihilating us. Except when he’ll be at their mercy. Then he’ll again be compelled to argue that our very survival is at stake.
In Iraq.
Smoking mushrooms on a cloud in the prism of 9/11, apparently.
“There’s a reason that foreign fighters are coming into Iraq. There is a reason that we’re seeing evidence — not really yet completely clear evidence — of terrorists trying to operate in Iraq.”
“They know that this is the central battle in the war on terrorism.”
Condi Rice
Boy them Bushees shur r smart. Thank the gud Lord the Ayrab terrists finely kno wear thuh centrul battel is. Now we kin meat ’em on thuh battelfield and Genrul Bush kin kill ’em. Then we wull be saf.