malice redux

Two months ago I wrote a rather heated commentary on the mainstream media, politics, and the war. I made a few minor errors, like lumping John Edwards in with the other Democratic candidates who were (and are) appealling to the basest anti-Bush factions. (Though in my defense, at that time his Mr. Sunshine act hadn't yet caught on.) Still, taken as a whole, I do stand by that post.

And now it's high time for a sequel. Many of the links that follow have been circulating round the blogosphere this week; unless otherwise noted, it's safe to assume that Glenn Reynolds got there first.

Item one: a refreshingly—nay, astonishingly—honest confession from ABC's The Note:

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.

They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are “conservative positions.”

They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.

More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war — in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.

It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.

It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.

It believes President Bush is “walking a fine line” with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between “tolerance” and his “right-wing base.”

It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him — and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.

Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press's scandal bias — not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!).

The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.

That means the President's communications advisers have a choice:

Try to change the storyline and the press' attitude, or try to win this election without changing them.

Now, some of these items—such as the bit about preferring fluid story lines—are merely press fetishes; after all, a story in motion actually gives journalists something to do. But the rest reveal an agenda scarcely removed from that of the DNC.

But wait! cry the skeptics. The press clearly enjoys revealing the character flaws of Democratic candidates. Doesn't that weigh against charges of bias?

Well, no—but it is a good question, especially as it appears John Kerry is about to suffer a bimbo eruption. Sure, in 2000 Al Gore suffered from a reputation as a serial liar exaggerator; and no matter how much I despise the man, in fairness some of the evidence used to support this image was a little thin. And sure, the recent Icarus-like fall of Howard Dean was due in some (perhaps even large) measure to press glee at his strained imitation of a Vermont moose mating call.

So how do we explain this? It's actually quite simple: If the press corps covering your campaign doesn't like you personally, you're in for a world of hurt. In 2000 there were plenty of whispers that Gore's weird fusion of alpha male aggression and Tennessee prom queen hauteur drove his press entourage to previously unimagined depths of loathing. Dean's wounds were largely self-inflicted—but nothing screams Loser! louder than whining about attacks from one's opponents or unfair press coverage. Dean has now done both, and the media sharks smell blood.

Apparently it's now Kerry's turn. Human nature, really; if someone enjoys an unexpected and meteoric rise, the press will look for some way to tear him down. But there's more, at least if we're to believe the multiple reports from The New Republic over the past year, and from Mickey Kaus nearly every single freaking day:

It seems that almost no one who knows John Kerry, actually likes John Kerry.

Especially in the press. But make no mistake; journalists know where their loyalties lie, and they will vote for Kerry in overwhelming numbers, just as they voted for Gore before him. And no perceived wrongdoing by the Bush Administration is too small to blow into a *-gate of some sort.

Item two: Like the AWOL story, for instance.

The issue of President Bush's service record came up in the 2000 election, and was dismissed: journalists discovered that there was really nothing to see. So why did it suddenly become news again?

Well, because Terry McAuliffe brought it up again a few weeks back, after retired Gen. Wesley Clark refused to dismiss charges that even Peter Jennings called “reckless.”

That would be DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe. Since then, the Washington press corps has been shamelessly carrying water for the Democrats. Absence of evidence is interpreted as evidence of perfidy, and when the Administration does provide corroboration, that whooshing sound is of goalposts being moved back at full impulse.

Bill Hobbs is the definitive source for refutation of this calumny (here for instance, though Hobbs has many other posts on the subject). Black at Ace of Spades HQ has been mercilessly fisking two prominent lefty bloggers (this is but one of his offerings).

My prediction? The story will flame out again within a week, except among the gonzo freaky conspirazoids of DU. There will be no corrections from the press, except for perhaps minor notes buried on page A23, and certainly no apologies. The president's reputation for trustworthiness will continue to take an undeserved hit, as John Q. Public seems to vaguely recall something about a coverup, though gosh, it all seems so fuzzy.

Which is precisely the point.

Item three: “Bush Lied.”

Admittedly, the lack of WMDs in Iraq is a problem—well, several problems, actually: Not only are our intelligence services lacking, but now we have (even worse) international credibility issues to boot.

But suppose you believe that the Administration lied about WMDs, and suppose moreover that you are capable of rational thought. Then you must believe that, on the one hand, the US military could execute one of the most brilliant campaigns in the history of warfare, but on the other that the scheming Commander-in-Chief, with all his evil neocon advisers, didn't think far enough ahead to have arranged at least some evidence of banned weapons in order to justify the conquest. (I mean, Halliburton would surely have jumped at the chance; there must be more profit to be had in planting evidence than in dressing fake Thanksgiving turkeys.)

I have faith that hypothetical-you would reject the above scenario as untenable. But much of the mainstream media hopes that their audience will not do so; for proof, just google “Bush lied WMDs”. I'm not going to provide examples here. It's just too damn depressing.

True, when making the case for war the Administration did focus on WMDs. There were good reasons for so doing, in particular that weapons issues were the easiest way to make the case before the UN Security Council. But there were other arguments provided as well.

I could make the full argument here, again, though in the end it would closely resemble Steven Den Beste's strategic overview. But tonight instead let's consider support from an unlikely source: the NYT's putative Middle East specialist, and the man with the mustache that only a Ba'athist could love, Tom Friedman.

The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.'s) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it's the wrong issue now.

Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.

The “real reason” for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough. Because a terrorism bubble had built up over there — a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things “martyrs” was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such “martyrs” was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government — and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen — got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.

The “right reason” for this war was the need to partner with Iraqis, post-Saddam, to build a progressive Arab regime. Because the real weapons of mass destruction that threaten us were never Saddam's missiles. The real weapons that threaten us are the growing number of angry, humiliated young Arabs and Muslims, who are produced by failed or failing Arab states — young people who hate America more than they love life. Helping to build a decent Iraq as a model for others and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are the necessary steps for defusing the ideas of mass destruction, which are what really threaten us.

The “moral reason” for the war was that Saddam's regime was an engine of mass destruction and genocide that had killed thousands of his own people, and neighbors, and needed to be stopped.

But because the Bush team never dared to spell out the real reason for the war, and (wrongly) felt that it could never win public or world support for the right reasons and the moral reasons, it opted for the “stated reason”—the notion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to America. I argued before the war that Saddam posed no such threat to America, and had no links with Al Qaeda, and that we couldn't take the nation to war “on the wings of a lie.” I argued that Mr. Bush should fight this war for the right reasons and the moral reasons. But he stuck with this W.M.D. argument for P.R. reasons.

Unlike so many Friedman columns, this one is actually pretty good—well, until the last bit I quoted, anyway, which is an early (June 2003) appearance of the imminent threat canard (more here). But he neatly states the gist: that there is a strong case to be made for our action in Iraq, as part of a broad strategic vision that aims for the democratization of the Middle East.

Because that may be the only way to vitiate the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism.

Because if there is another 9/11, it may well take the form of a 40 kiloton nuke based on a Pakistani design, perhaps smuggled by ship into one of our port cities (farewell, my beloved Seattle).

One can make an argument against the Administration's strategy, though I have yet to see a good example. But the “Bush Lied!” meme isn't a case: it's the thin edge of a campaign to destroy a wartime President's credibility for political gain, and to do so on the cheap, without providing anything remotely resembling a policy alternative. And in this campaign the mainstream press and the Democrats are all but indistinguishable.

There are words to describe these tactics: cynical, perhaps, though nihilistic might be better. We are at war against militant Islamism, a war not of our choosing, but one in which we must be victorious. Yet as I said in December, if the Democrats win this election, the war will almost certainly be lost.

And this should tell you exactly why.

UPDATE: Over to Bryan Preston.