Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

It's pretty simple, really. The structural problem with the White House press pool is that they insist on covering all presidential speeches as hard-news events, like a local gastation explosion or something, where the reporter's job is to use the inverted pyramid format to explain what happened in Oak Ridge, Tennessee at such-and-such a time on such-and-such a day.

What they should be doing is treating presidential speeches like they're op-eds, to be assessed as arguments, not "covered" as news. But they don't. Not because it's a whole bunch of dirty rightwingers (they would need to all be rightwingers -- every last one of them) but because it's a bunch of newspaper reporters. Note that Dana Millbank comes to the Post from TNR rather than the more normal process of rising through the newsroom hierarchy.

A compassionate guy??? Just because W pays lip service to fighting AIDS and "leaving no child behind" and stuff like that doesn't make him compassionate, Matt. On other hand, by grossly underfunding his own press op initiatives, it surely makes a hypocritical... never mind. Meanwhile, it did the trick: the President seems to care about AIDS and education. Better yet, back then he even enjoyed the cheap political thrill of critizing other Old Europe for pledging less money than he did. At least people who don't make good of their pledge on radio station funding drives dodn't win anything for pledging above their head. Perception is reality, would reply my Republican-marketing-instructor colleague of mine... Right, but not for AIDS patients nor poor American children left behind.

The Bush logic on Iraq seems to be as follows:

bin Laden was a threat.
We did not take him out.
bin Laden attacked us.

Saddam is a threat.
Sanctions are not enough
We take him out before he attacks us.

It is a crude lesson, crudely applied by a crude leader.

The compassionate Bush data-point I had in mind made it into today's Millbank: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45237-2004Jul12.html

"It seems that reporters will do anything these days to get an exclusive with President Bush. On a recent presidential trip, a reporter for U.S. News & World Report became ill after a hot and rough ride on a military helicopter. Aboard Air Force One, Bush's doctor offered the young woman, whose Harvard education had not prepared her for such rigors, a bed in the plane's sick bay -- right next to the president's suite."

"While the writer recovered, a familiar figure in workout attire happened by to inquire about her health; later in the flight, he checked on her again."

"Bush may have a testy relationship with the media these days, but you can't fault his bedside manner."

That's the incident I was referring to.

Sorry Matt, but your "explanation" is inadequate. Whether or not the media cover Bush's statements like hard news events, they could always choose to do some hard fact checking and analysis, but they rarely do. The fact is that many of the media Heathers, and even many of those whose hearts are in the right place, such as yourself, are just a little too frightened to call a spade a spade when that spade is big and powerful and doing so would rock too many boats.

Also, being what passes for "compassionate" in a public, one-on-one situation is a long way from demonstrating sincere compassion.

"It is a crude lesson, crudely applied by a crude leader."

Indeed. Saddam was *not* a threat to the US in any realistic sense (and anyone who cared to get his/her news from sources other than the US and UK government knew that). There were a hundred other ways to have him stop sending money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, if that was one of the serious reasons for going after him (why not - although I would still argue it's just a patch). And, recall, by the end of the (one-sided) bargaining process, Saddam had proposed to organize elections (ego-maniacs like him seem to truly believe they are popular.)

But North Korea already is and Iran is / will soon be a real threat. Not that I am necessarily arguing the use of brutal force (or the threat thereof) against these regimes (and therefore, as unfortunate corrolary, their innocent people) but that, somehow, for the sake of consistency, you would think the Bushies would seriouly deal with those threats, at least by genuinely trying to engage them (like with Libya - note that the only one time they deviated from the ideological cold war logic they succeeded in making the Middle East, the World and the US safer.) Surely, it's no fun making friend with Kadafi, but it's a whole lot more fun than seeing nu-cu-lar mushrooms explode over that part of the world (not to mention other doomday scenari.)

Once engaged, the Western world can always (explicitely or implicitely) threaten to take back or shorten the carrot of international trade and aid if these regimes become overly cruel with their political opponents. Do we seriously believe the Chinese people would be better off, now and in the foreseeable future, if the US had refused / refused to normalize its relationship with not-so-Communist-anymore China (and would China be less communist if China has been ostrasized by sucessive admisnistrations.) Very fortunately, this Administration did not follow through on its calling China a strategical opponent 3 1/2 years ago. Ouufff.

It is of vital importance for Democratic strategists to tune in to Dana Milbank's weekly LiveOnline sessions. Hints are dropped. Explanations for the structural inadequacy of the press corps offered.

My explanation, which I'm sticking with, and which is similiar to Somerby's I think, is that reporters judge their work by their position and pay, rather than by professional standards. there's a dilemma for every profession in this regard -- some self-promoting MD's make millions without gaining their colleagues' respect -- but I think that it's dominant in journalism (which has always been weakly professionalized anyway).

I'm waiting for a book "Into the Buzzsaw" about reporters whose careers ended when they covered a story too well.

By watching who's promoted and who's not, neophytes figure out the game without explicitly being told everything. I've made the comparison to the dogs and horses who have been trained to answer math questions by looking at their trainer's face as answers are suggested. Ambitious young talent learn to read the publisher's mind.

In Somerby's coverage of the Gore-Bush campaign, he didn't find the press corps to be conservative or pro-Bush. They apparently disliked Gore for incredibly shallow, personal reasons and wrote stupid articles about trivia and the Gore's shoes. But shallowness was not the cause. It was just easier for them (in the Wonkette Cocktail Nation ass-fucking world of cheesy irony) to admit to being shallow than it was to admit to being tools. If the powers-that-be at the Times and Post had wanted fair and intelligent coverage, they would have gotten it. The Heatherness of the gaggle was not causal.

The story of the Harvard-educated reporter Bush was nice to wasn't a story compassion. Bush has worked very hard at convincing the gaggle that they're part of the team, part of the in-croawd, buddies of the Prez, etc. That's a big part of the problem right there.

Matt needs a little cynicism education, unless he's really cynical and just too zmart to let it show.

The trouble with the press treating speeches as op-eds -- which I think would otherwise be an excellent idea -- is that they are often repetitive. Stump speeches get repeated over and over. That is why "side-bar" material now makes it way into the main story. It is new. Another problem with covering speechs as arguments is that the analysis depends on the argument. Bush may have been slam-worthy, but Kerry would not be sitting pretty. Imagine if reporters asked Kerry or wondered in their stories on his national security addresses:

"In 1971, Kerry said, 'Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first president to lose a war."  We are asking Americans to think about that because: how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?' In his comments on Iraq, Kerry has never promised to end the war in Iraq. Indeed it seems that he would continue to ask men and women in the US military to die for a war he clearly considers to be a mistake, pending greater UN or other international participation. And he has not explaind why US allies who opposed the war would ask their soldiers to die for a mistake. The Kerry campaign is seeking to criticize the Bush administration for a poorly planned war, but is bereft of solutions itself, short of withdrawing from Iraq."

Such reporting, however honest and incisive, would be cold comfort for Democrats.

The real problem is that the Kerry campaign is making the same error as the Gore campaign -- needlessly managing the media. The 11 July NYT report mentions the strict controls on joint interviews. Kerry would seem to have the advantage that Bush had in 2000 -- because he is not the president or VP, he need not be locked away. But Kerry seems to be squandering this.

During 2000, Gore rarely appeared spontaneously with the press corps traveling with his campaign, leaving the press with little but the inane stump speeches. Bush, by contrast, frequently joshed with the press corps on the campaign trail in the back of the plane (this is how, "Travels with George" could be made). McCain acted similarly on his bus, and likewise received far more sympathetic coverage. Reporters, correctly or not, believed they were seeing the "real" candidate.

Many in the press, consciously or not, became friendlier toward them since they believed they had more candid access to them. More importantly, editors got lively copy from their Bush reporters, who could throw in comments Bush made to them on the plane and avoid trite stumpings, and stale or incidental reports from Gore reporters. Moreover, Gore reporters would report the managing tactics, as everyone did since 1984, in response to Reagan's clever management.

Of course, all this changed re Bush once he was in the White House, and even more so after the terrorist attacks, but the Kerry campaign seems to be squandering its advantage as a challenger in attempts to act presidential by being aloof, an image they hardly need to reinforce.

CLB

"The story of the Harvard-educated reporter Bush was nice to wasn't a story about compassion".

I listen to NPR every day to and from work. This afternoon I heard Andrea Seabrook's report on the latest Bush campaign speech. She relayed his statement on the liberal ratings of Kerry and Edwards. We've all heard it a hundred times by now—Kerry number 1 and Edwards number 4. What she failed to do was put it in proper perspective by reporting that those rating were only for the year 2003 when both men missed a huge number of votes due to campaining and that their ratings, when averaged over the last three years, put them at 12th and 24th, respectively.

I am so tired of listening to reporters who simply repeat political crap, whether liberal or conservative. If that's all they're going to do then why do we need them? The news media could just print transcripts or broadcast tapes of the speeches and be done with it. Hey, it would certainly save newspapers and networks a lot of high priced salaries.

"What she failed to do was put it in proper perspective by reporting that those rating were only for the year 2003 when both men missed a huge number of votes due to campaining and that their ratings, when averaged over the last three years, put them at 12th and 24th, respectively."

You know, this type of info is readily available in the internet age, so you're not going to get away with it. In 2003 Edwards actually scored his lowest rating of 65, which rather dramatically LOWERED his lifetime rating to 81.

Kerry's lifetime rating is 92.

So are what you complaining about, they're the usual suspects kinda guys.

Two alternate explanations of the "Harvard educated reporter incident":

1/ Bush is smart enough to realize that treating a reporter in need with kindness just may be reported on by that reporter.

2/ It is merely a chivalrous gentlemanly act toward a damsel in distress that says nothing about true altruistic compassion.

Methinks Matt gets a little carried away by this single event.

I also think Zizka gets it right about the press core figuring out how to stay employed and get ahead in their profession. Corporate America functions this way everyday. You figure out what the company wants and do it even if you know it's wrong or second rate.

"that says nothing about true altruistic compassion"

Heck, I doubt that even Nixon lived with a constant snarl. I am full willing to believe Bush committing individual sincere acts of kindness, compassion, altruism. These acts do not make Bush generally kind, compassionate, altruistic.

I would not be surprised if MY did not know the Harvard Grad and heard in conversation a favorable impression of Bush.

However, that someone is kind to me does not mean my benefactor is not also carving up little boys in his basement. Hard lessons to learn, but human beings cannot be objectified or behavior predicted; and personal impressions, judgements, and experience of other people are worse than useless.

I'm nauseated by the story of Bush's compassion on the plane. It is pathetic that someone who purports to be a political analyst could think that this demonstrates "compassion" of any politically relevant sort. Is it so astonishing that Bush would inquire about the health of a sick person on his plane? What does that have to do with concern for others in the exercise of power? Where is the compassion for innocent Iraqis? For all those people executed in Texas? Honestly!

Funny, I thought everyone was like me. If someone's sick I play practical jokes on them, mimic their miserable appearance, make fake puking sounds, etc. I guess that's why I'm not President.

A little note on compassion. It seems that most of terror suspects leaving Gitmo alive keep quiet. However there is an exception: some Russian suspects talked to (by the way, pro-Western) Novayagazeta newspaper. (http://2004.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2004/49n/n49n-s23.shtml) :
- The worst was that is your wounds got infected, the doctors would just amputate hands or legs.

Maybe Brad needs to start a new post:

"Bush is not really compassionate, let me count the ways."

I think Julia has us off to a good start. I will add to it by stating that Bush has not attended a single funeral of the service people killed in Iraq.

Another press goof.

Atlanta Journal Constitution writes that Bush's approval rating drops three points for every 100 American casualties in Iraq. Not true. chillinois.blogspot.com for more info.

zizka/John Emerson:
There actually IS a book called "Into the Buzzsaw" but having moved recently, I can't find it. It deals with journalists whose careers were cut short because they covered stories too well and was published a few years ago.

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