April 2004

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How'd He Do?

W Meets the Press on Iraq

A bravura performance. One of his best, and absolutely as well as he could have done under the circumstances. Bush stayed to point, he projected concern, thoughtfulness, conviction. He brought off the right blend of humility and resolve. Iraq may be going to hell, but W told a coherent story about better days ahead and made some good TV. 

Practically everything he said was bullshit: the canting about a "free Iraq," the claim that our Iraqi adventure will inspire US-style governments throughout the region, the ceaseless implication that Iraq and 9/11 were related in some way. But hey--that really is not the point. This isn't politics we're watching. It's theater. And that was a very fine act.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 13, 2004 8:43 PM

 

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

A dialogue on the Clarke Affair and the Polls

Tuesday a.m. update: The whole thing's here now; you can visit my ex-BW cohort Mark Gisleson's own blog here.  

Steve Perry: I'm still trying to get my head around the past two weeks--the Clarke era, let's call it, because while his role in this thing is certainly not over, it's past its crest now. The question's pretty obvious: How is it that the most damning and most public indictment to date of the Bush White House's greatest "strength," the wartime president thing, has not only failed to damage Bush, but actually coincided with a continued rebound in his poll numbers?

When we talked last week, you were trying to convince me this seeming disjunction wasn't particularly meaningful--that people just needed time to absorb what Clarke was saying. But that's not how it works. Most people aren't going to go round scavenging for more information after the media blitz has come and gone. They just move on, with whatever impression they formed at the time. If Condi doesn't step in shit with her testimony this week--and I mean egregiously so--the Clarke thread is mainly played out, at least until the 9/11 Commission report in July.

So what the fuck happened? I can see three possible explanations.

1) A staggering number of Americans really does not care that they were lied to about one war at the expense of that other war against the organization that actually did attack the United States.

2) A great majority of the people commonly surveyed as "likely voters" or "registered voters" have already made up their minds, and it will take something more damning, or at least more digestible (and Kerry et al. deserve a good deal of blame for not *making* it more digestible as it went along--not with public pronouncements, but by working the media to simplify and amplify the most damning elements of Clarke's story), to unmake their minds in significant numbers.

3) The apparent irrationality of the public reaction is another hint about the two Americas we're dealing with here. Specifically, journalists and news junkies--the information-age "haves"--are wrong to assume that the masses are hearing the same stories and forming roughly the same impressions as they are, only in less detail.

That used to be roughly true, but it's not anymore. There's an information caste system evolving in this country, and it requires a little bit of anthropology to understand what the masses are taking in every day: You've got to watch TV and listen to the radio, and read the first two or three paragraphs of your paper's front page. Then you'll have some idea where the disconnect in Clarke v. Bush occurs.

If you do those things--I try to go that way about one day a week, seriously--then here's what you know: Some guy is saying the president hasn't done a good job on terrorism. But most people in the know don't seem to think 9/11 could have been prevented in any case, and part of this guy's deal is just trying to sell books.

As you can see, I favor the third explanation. But I think there's something to number two as well. It seems to me there is a very large core of people who have their heels dug in very hard for Bush: the Christians, the whole corporate culture, the Sports Bar Bombardiers--the whole me-first American Belligerati.

I have a hard time seeing how you could fail to be alarmed by what's happening--rather, what's not happening--in the Kerry campaign and in the polls.

 

Mark Gisleson: Well, let me start with something Atrios posted today:

To the Editor:

A woman I had dinner with the other night said to me that the atmosphere in this country since the Persian Gulf war is like that at a party in a beautiful home, with everybody being polite and bubbly. And there is this stink coming from somewhere, getting worse all the time, and nobody wants to be the first to mention it.

Kurt Vonnegut 

Nine American soldiers died in Iraq Sunday. I say soldiers because I'm not counting any mercenaries, contractors, Baghdad-based Republican operatives or other minions of Paul Bremer. We're in much more deeply than most people realize, and just because the savvier element of Bush's base hasn't publicly repudiated him yet doesn't mean they're not deeply concerned.

Let me tell you something about Republicans. I grew up on an Iowa farm in a Farm Bureau household. That's about as Republican as it gets. I know there are many other flavors of Republicans now, but they all have something in common and that's a deep mistrust of authority and "others."

Bush got the nomination by convincing people like my mother that he was just like them. Mom bought it, but anyone else who thinks they can come up to me and tell me my mother likes Bush is looking for a knuckle sandwich. Maybe she won't figure out that Bush lied before the election, but it will sink in sooner or later. Believe me, we don't talk about Nixon much anymore.

So don't trust polls that tell you people don't care about being lied to. Telling a pollster what they really think when they're in the process of changing their minds is the last thing these folks want to do. Admit weakness to the "enemy?"

Nope, Zogby's not the one who'll let us know that the tide has turned. More likely it will be Chuck Grassley erupting at a committee meeting or John McCain surprising everyone by taking the second spot on Kerry's ticket. Prominent Republicans are beginning to flake, and it won't be long before some are in open revolt. That will legitimize dissent and the floodgates will burst open with doubts, fears and complaints, drowning our un-elected bastard in a sea of righteous dissent.

As for the belligerati (as you coined them), those puffed up pieces of cheesy shit will be the first to duck for cover when the transfer tubes start arriving at Dover in earnest. Already the bellicose warriors of the airwaves have taken to bashing 9/11 families and smearing dissenting hawks, and I think everyone's starting to notice that there's something downright bizarre about trashing the defense record of a war veteran with a Bronze Star.

Bush's base is filled with good and honorable people who — precisely because they are good and honorable people — are slow to catch on when one of their "own" flim-flams them. But when they do, it won't be a happy ending like when the townspeople forgave Prof. Harold Hill. No, it will be a time for tar and feathers and "most people" will be
wondering how Bush kept his numbers so high for so long.

Clarke is just one of many messengers, all riffing on the same line: Bush lies. Maybe, somehow Karl Rove will help Bush survive Richard Clarke, and maybe the administration will survive Condi Rice's sure-to-be-bad cross-examination by 9/11 Commission Democrats. But there are a lot of books and a lot of movies/documentaries coming out this year, and they'll take a toll. The message will get through.

 

Perry: So you think the Republican establishment will repudiate Bush? No way. On what grounds? There's a lot of hand-wringing over this White House in those circles, but most of it is about whether they can get their shit together and get reelected. The Republicans have no way around Bush at this point. And they don't want one. They may have the willies over his seat-of-the-pants management and his recklessness, but they aren't going to kick him out of bed over little things like that. Not to mention, of course, that his people run the party apparatus. Sorry, but you're dreaming about all this. It may happen during the first Jenna Bush administration, but not this one.

I also think your never-say-die Democratic partisanship is making you overlook the central puzzle of the Clarke episode and in some ways of our whole politics now: What is the disconnect about? How is it that the news can be full of damning information about the conduct of Mr. Wartime President and so relatively few people are fazed by it?

There's a tremendous class gap in access to news and information. It's practically a caste system now. And it's not just about media consumption habits--who watches Fox News versus who reads the big dailies--though that's a big part of it. But this "disconnect" we're talking about is much bigger than that. It also demonstrates that people aren't talking, or listening, across class lines anymore--either in any sort of face-to-face way or by consuming the same media and ideas.

You've got two Americas grown up quietly beside each other, and they are further apart in experience and consciousness than most of us imagine. And they're both quite rigid now. Off-radar America knows a lot about Official America, but Official America knows almost nothing about Off-radar America--doesn't even recognize, for the most part, that it exists, much less that it thinks and responds differently. John Kerry and the Democrats don't know a damn thing about how to talk to that America. Unfortunately for all of us, Bush/Rove and the Republicans do.

I'll close by reminding you of that Josh Marshall item you sent me a couple of weeks back, in which he quoted a Democratic strategist saying this thing would be won early in the second quarter by whoever did the best job of "defining themselves." I think that's slightly misstated--both guys are actually competing to define George Bush--but the timing feels right to me.

Let me put it this way. This race is dull, nasty, and maddening, and public attention is already starting to wane. Pretty soon most people will be watching with one eye at best, except for ceremonial moments like the conventions and any crises that arise. Or let me put it more plainly yet: Kerry and the Dems' chance to define Bush by painting a simple, vivid portrait of the kind of guy he is is fading away before our eyes. And in the Clarke story, they've put one of their very best public exhibits to almost no use at all.

 

Gisleson:  There are two major political arcs at work right now, one demographic and one material. Demographics give shape to electoral cycles, but reality has a way of folding and mutilating statistical projections.

Iraq continues to be the pin bursting your Brooksian balloon. True enough, America is dividing up into homogenous camps, but "burbs vs cities" doesn't change "lousy economy" or "fucked up war." Iraq (the name even looks needle-ish) is heating up and now we've got 17 dead since we started this exchange on Sunday. Fox can alternately spin and ignore Iraq but people can't shut out the news entirely. Even red staters notice the body count, hear about the wounded, and catch the buzz that things are worse than we're being told. Each and every one of those soldiers is the locus of a network of several dozen people or even more, and for each of them the war is very real, and something they all talk about with each of their friends, acquaintances and coworkers.

The demographics of race and class are working against the Republicans, even as other forces pressure us into re-segregating ourselves by economic interest (burbs), theoretically allowing parents to isolate their children from bad influences.

Reality, however, intercedes in the form of an internet that gives children access to knowledge, and phone technology that tethers kids to home (RFID tracking — the next big thing) even as it frees them to be in virtual contact with their friends 24/7.

Demographics say that we're not red state - blue state so much as red county - blue county thanks to housing developments and sprawl. Reality says extended commutes in SUVS eat a lot of gas, and high gas prices are driving Bush's low numbers according to the latest Pew poll. If many Americans are as selfish and easily manipulated as you seem to think, then my guess is that they'll be choking on those prices each and every time they gas up their Escalades and Expeditions. That's plenty of reinforcement, and regardless of exactly why prices are high, the fact that we are occupying a very oil rich nation will not escape the voters' attention.

So my assessment is that Karl Rove is busting his ass to manipulate everything within his power to blunt the worsening demographics even as their shit piles up and is starting to really stink. Iraq, gas prices, jobs (did I mention that IF we continue last month's best ever job production figures we'll be at zero net losses under Bush by 2008?), mercury, Medicaid, Plamegate, the 9/11 Commission. . . we won't lack for reasons for regime change in November.

Don't trust polls, don't trust the media, just be sure to get out and vote. It's a simple game plan, and it wins every time we follow it, but with cheerleader George in charge, I'm sure we'll have a record turnout.

 

Perry: You've been talking about the Coming Golden Age--when a majority of folks will wake up en masse and decide it's a good day to repudiate Bush and all his works--for a year now, amigo. You even predicted last summer that Bush would be too beset by scandal even to secure the Republican nomination this year. He was LBJ in '68, remember? You sound a little like a millennialist preacher at this point.

I'll say it one more time: I think you wishfully assume a rationality and coherence to our politics and public culture that they just do not possess. The Democrats had a good one-month run at Bush in January, when the primary season started. And Kerry's been riding the fumes of it, and slowly sliding down the polls, ever since. Your golden age is not only failing to draw nearer; it's receding as we talk about it.

I think this campaign, and what it says about the country, is a) complicated, b) salutary in some important ways (as I said in the Rove thing, a staggering number of folks do have Bush's number despite the kid-glove treatment he's usually gotten from the media and the Democrats), and c) nonetheless incredibly depressing at the end of the day.

 

Gisleson: You continue to act as though events are controllable. Spin can be controlled, but reality has a tendency to unfold regardless of media coverage. Bush's woes are manifold and patently of his own making. Frankly, Bush should stand down, and most politicians would be seriously considering bailing out at this point if they were forced to deal with his steaming pile of issues. Republicans aren't stupid, and I believe that more than a few of their office holders are burning up the phone lines to the White House demanding to know how Rove intends to salvage this mess.

The White House, however, true to form is advancing its own cause even at the expense of the GOP majorities in both houses of Congress. I don't think this year will be seen as another 1932, but history will point to this election as the end of a particularly vicious and base political cycle, comparable to the lead up to the Great Depression and reminiscent of the legendary Gilded Age.

But I must admit, if the economy continues this recent "rebound," if Iraq turns around and we leave on time this summer, if the 9/11 Commission report is delayed until after the election due to security vetting, and if New York doesn't erupt into massive riots during the RNC, Bush just might pull it off. 

That's a lot of "ifs."

Posted by Steve Perry at April 5, 2004 5:54 PM

 

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