A Celebration of Arrogance - Bush and the Media

The arrogant assault on our sensibilities continues from all sides. Despite a national consensus that the country was on the wrong track and an electoral victory of major proportions, media pundits and Republican loyalists have contorted the election-day message so as to diminish what voters were saying when they elected Barack Obama.

Everyone from Karl Rove to Fox to congressional holdovers have their own version of why Republicans lost the election and what is needed to bring them back to being a party of ideas and perhaps even one where the sign over their tent's entrance would say something other than "white men welcome, people of color not so much." And members of the mainstream media haven't always been helpful in guiding the public through all the political posturing.

The shallow nature of what this administration and its surrogates call genius was all too evident in the Karl Rove NY Times interview (11/16/08). Asked if the election results were a repudiation of his politics Rove replied that Obama had won by one and a half points more than Bush had in 2004 and that he did so by adopting the Bush campaign methods of  "conducting a vast army of persuasion" to identify and get out the vote. Of course the Bush army of persuasion spent much of its time scaring voters into believing that only he could protect them from the terrorists hiding in every corner of the universe.

One must take care to look closely when percentages are used because in 2004 Bush won with an electoral vote of 286 to 251 and a popular vote margin of three million. This year Obama rolled up an electoral vote of 365 with a popular vote margin of over eight million. In addition, Obama's 52.7% over McCain's 46% is significantly stronger than the Bush 50.7% over Kerry's 48.3%. It isn't clear where Rove derived his figures but as readers may recall, he also insisted Republicans would hold Congress in 2004; which proves you can say anything to make a point if accuracy isn't a requirement.

For his part, Bush claims history will honor him, a sentiment that allows him to swagger past the horrific chronicle of his eight years in the White House - - a record that has saddled the country with debt, foreign entanglements and short-sighted energy policies. As he rushes to complete an agreement with Iraq concerning our occupation and to push through relaxed environmental standards, his arrogant disregard for the country's welfare is a shameful statement about how frail his sense of duty and patriotism is. If history treats him kindly it will be an indictment of the methodology used by historians.

As Republicans try to reconfigure their party, many have resorted to the time-honored ideologies they believe will provide a foundation for future success. They insist their failure is due to the fact that they ignored their core values, overspent and didn't cut taxes enough. Few seem to acknowledge the flawed rationale of cutting taxes during wartime. They drag out the old saw that Democrats are ‘tax-and-spendthrifts', never questioning the Bush administration's ‘tax-and-borrow' policy that limited the nation's ability to fund desirable programs even though it went ahead and brokered an expensive prescription-drug plan for which there was no available revenue stream to finance it.

Between Republican spinning and the often incoherent ramblings of many in the media, it is clear the American people need to become more sophisticated in the way they digest information provided by mainstream sources. "...the press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth." (Introduction to Collateral Damage, by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian) It should not be forgotten that in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Scooter Libby delivered ‘inside information' to NY Times reporter, Judith Miller, whose front-page articles highlighted White House talking points. Vice President Cheney, in what was probably his first and only reference to that ‘liberal rag', then cited the Miller articles as confirming the efficacy of administration positions.

In the world of silly, a conservative blogger suggests that Obama should be guided by the care Bush took with his public utterances since he has been relatively gaffe-free over time - - no joke. And in what passes for journalism these days, Diane Sawyer will have an exclusive interview with the prostitute former Governor Spitzer lost his office over. It's getting harder and harder these days to tell the just plain stupid from the utterly ridiculous, and arrogance is everywhere.